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Finally, I will put myself in the utterly shocked category with respect to this opening. Part of it is the recent summer box office. We are in a span that has been fairly profitable, but it certainly has not grabbed many headlines or made much history. Guardians of the Galaxy, as obscure as it was, has done something that no other August earner has ever done, and it established its place as a legit heavyweight out of nowhere. It opened much higher than known franchises like Planet of the Apes and X-Men, and scored among the highest earners of the summer.

What Guardians has effectively done is use the seventh or eighth man off the bench and hit a three pointer from well behind half court. The chance of success when this started was pretty small. Now the reverse is going to happen. With such positive ratings, we might see actual legs behind a summer offering, something we have not seen for a long time. If that happens, look out. If the buzz for this continues for even a little bit, we could have 2014's first $300 million earner.

Pete Kilmer: The big difference that Guardians of the Galaxy has over John Carter and Green Lantern - and it's a key one - is that Marvel Studios devised and implemented the marketing and they had the vision in place to create this in the first place. Disney approved it left Marvel to implement it.

With John Carter you had a director with vision but no steady leadership (three heads of studio in five years?) to help him and a marketing division that kept testing the word "Mars". With Green Lantern, which really doesn't compare with Guardians of the Galaxy in any real way story-wise, had a director with no faith in the product, a lackluster script and a studio (Warner Bros) that just wanted to crank out another potential franchise with minimal effort (which is a shame because Ryan Reynolds was actually solid. I would have liked to have seen a real script and director for him to work with).

With Marvel Studios there is a vision there. And yes, Kevin Feige is the man with the vision. With the creative committee he's assembled to consult on the projects and with Joss Whedon giving his help and his blessings to James Gunn, you have a WHOLE different picture than the other two listed above. Neither of those two studios (Disney at the time, Warner Bros then) had that.

This movie is certainly more in Serenity’s lineage in terms of heart and attitude. And it's certainly in line with what I call the Marvel Snark.

Marvel, for decades, since Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and the other creatives were working on the books, was never afraid to imbue the comics with real character moments and humor. DC Comics and other companies played it much more straightforward than what Marvel did. Marvel over the years developed a bit of a smartass attitude with some characters and I feel that with GOTG we're getting to really see that attitude on display. We've seen it before with RDJ displaying his swagger and charm and with Loki as well, all in Whedon's wheelhouse of characters. Now we're getting it full force with Rocket Raccoon and Peter Quill going full bore with the one liners and attitude.

Also, the early trailers were very much filled with this kind of attitude that made them different from the Avengers/Thor/Captain America trailers and made them a real breath of fresh air for Marvel Studios.

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