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After a couple of weeks, and a couple of solid holds, Guardians of the Galaxy may earn the slot as being the best success story. Go back just a couple of months. Would any of us have been surprised if this film had opened to $30 or $40 million? And we would all be barking about how Disney doesn't care about quality, about how they just have enough money to tolerate mistakes like John Carter and The Lone Ranger. On some level I think a lot of people EXPECTED Guardians to fail. Now it is a massive hit, and we don't know where the ceiling is.

Pete Kilmer: I agree with Felix that the first Iron Man has to be ranked as number one. Here you have an actor who was sleeping in other people’s houses instead of his own by mistake just a few years prior. Robert Downey Jr. was an actor who everyone liked, but also who everyone thought was done. He was a HUGE risk to bank your $500 million bank loan on. Remember that this was prior to Disney acquiring Marvel for $4 billion. If the first Iron Man failed, then Marvel Studios was in all likelihood done. And with the stinger at the end of the film wihere Nick Fury showed up and indicated that an Avengers movie was going to happen, that was huge in terms of winning hearts and minds of superhero fans.

With Avengers, that movie was clearly a huge risk as well, because lots of studios thought something like that couldn't be done. No way can you put all those leading actors in one movie together and make it work. Boy, were they wrong. You get a visionary director and writer (Joss Whedon) who actors respect, you have a leading actor who was there from the beginning and who wants to play (Robert Downey Jr.). Mix it together and you've got something special.

As for Guardians, it's a very close second. This group of characters was D-list at best. Even among comic readers, sure we knew of them and enjoyed the Abnet and Lanning run of the series in the mid-2000s… but a movie featuring them? Nahhhh. We all figured Marvel would do something else. But they captured something very special with Guardians of the Galaxy and that has to do with writer/director James Gunn and his great cast.

Guardians was a huge risk, but since Marvel Studios does not have the Fantastic Four, X-Men, or Spider-Man franchises, they were forced to get creative in developing a new movie brand. And they succeeded.

Max Braden: Agreed on Iron Man. Guardians had the advantage of being an underdog. The Avengers had the advantage of being a sure thing. Jon Favreau really only had one prior solid directing credit with Elf five years before Iron Man, and Zathura in the interim failed to made back its budget with worldwide grosses. Robert Downey Jr. really had no character like this in his filmography since Chaplin. Iron Man could have done okay, but it hit a homerun and set up the franchise, which allowed for the success of The Avengers and the ability to pull in fringe characters like the Guardians. Still, to smash the August opening weekend record (which had stood for seven years, with the previous record set in 2001), I think means that the Guardians get to claim Marvel's second most important success. At this point it looks like anything they touch will turn to gold.

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