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Well, Thor is in charge of thunder and lightning and stuff, so...

Kim Hollis: We've now had a $152 million opener and a $200 million opener in 2012, with The Dark Knight Rises yet to debut. What is your gut reaction now about the opening weekend of Christopher Nolan's final Batman film. Will it finish above The Avengers, or has it had its thunder stolen?

Felix Quinonez: I had pictured this playing out similarly to the summer of 2008. I thought The Avengers, like Iron Man, would have an awesome opening weekend. Everybody would love the movie...and then The Dark Knight Rises would come out and steal its thunder. But now I'm not so sure. I mean audiences have a whole lot of goodwill towards Nolan's Batman franchise, the commercials look great so it will definitely have a huge opening weekend and if Nolan delivers another quality film it has a chance to match or maybe even pass The Dark Knight's total domestic gross. But I just can't imagine another movie opening to over $200 million dollars (at least not for a while) and The Avengers was so good and people love it so much that I think it will show some very strong legs. So as shocked as I am to say it, I think The Avengers will come out on top and will very likely be the biggest movie of the year.

Bruce Hall: I know that fixating on box office is part of what you do when you write about movies, but I kind of think we're talking apples and oranges here, or at least two different kinds of apples. The Avengers and The Dark Knight are both superhero films, but they're different KINDS of superhero films. The Avengers is kind of like a Michael Bay movie with, well, at least HALF a brain. Nolan's Batman franchise is downright operatic. It's a whole different animal. I am not sure Nolan's films aren't shooting for a slightly narrower audience, so in my mind I'm not even sure it's a fair comparison.

But nonetheless, it's an inevitable one that people are going to make, and it needs to be addressed. I will say that The Avengers will probably be the biggest film of the year. But if The Dark Knight is as good as I am starting to hear it might be, things could well be different. Iron Man garnered the same sort of audience goodwill that the Avengers has, albeit in a smaller portion, yet The Dark Knight was so...damn...good...that it didn't matter. The only two things I am comfortable going on record saying is that 1) The Avengers might...might be the biggest comic book film of 2012, but it's not going to be the best.

And 2) Spider-Man will be neither of those things. This is a two horse race.

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