POW! BAM! The Summer of Superheroes!
And it kicked off in high style -- with summer's Iron Man. We knew it would be big -- we just didn't know how big: thanks to Robert Downey Jr.'s humanity and Jon Favreau's sly direction, nearly $200 million in global weekend box-office and $102.1 million domestically (including $3.5 million in Thursday previews).
Then, in mid-July, Heath Ledger's Joker and Christian Bale's increasingly dark The Dark Knight swooped down and generated $158.4 million its opening weekend, setting a new benchmark for opening weekend revenue. $260 million for the Friday-Saturday- Sunday period gave the industry its biggest movie-going weekend of all-time, obliterating numerous records and in the process, raising the overall marketplace to unprecedented box-office heights.
Other notable superhero films -- despite lukewarm reviews -- included Will Smith's drunken superhero in Hancock, Edward Norton in a re-tooled Incredible Hulk and Guillermo Del Toro's terrific Hellboy 2: The Golden Army.
The top he-men of the year:
The Dark Knight ($530.8M)
Iron Man ($318.3M)
Hancock ($227.9M)
Incredible Hulk ($134.5M)
Hellboy 2: The Golden Army ($75.7M)