This reboot/prequel is a genuine triumph. It is not just a great comic book film or a great X-Men film. X-Men: First Class stands proud as a just-plain terrific film.

X-Men was used to being near the top of the box office charts, but now has to rebuild from the ground up, emphasizing quality and character over big-budget spectacle.

All of these mini-epics are lushly animated, impeccably acted, and filled with the kind of big-scale action that the Bruce Timm-shepherded DCAU is known for.

Super 8 made me nostalgic for a lot of things this weekend. It made me nostalgic for the days when $50 million was a big budget and when movies had their biggest single night on Saturday of their opening weekend.

Green Lantern is a deeply problematic comic book adventure, with structural and character development issues that should have felled the film. But like its title character, it overcomes its own weaknesses and embraces its flaws.

When is a $52 million three-day opening a genuine disappointment? Well, in the world of box office, all things are relative. And when it comes to opening weekend, the quality and estimated staying power has to be taken into account.

To the surprise of no one, a Pixar picture topped the box office in its debut weekend, making it 12/12 since 1995. Cars 2 weathered some surprisingly savage reviews to still debut with $68 million over the weekend.

At long last, Michael Bay gives us a healthy helping of robot-on-robot smackdowns. The problems with the previous two films are still there, but they are that much easier to forgive because we finally get what we actually came for in a Transformers movie.