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Jason Barney: I think the Guardians of the Galaxy opening is the much bigger story. Even if Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles came out of the box office grave to achieve highly unlikely success, it is still an established franchise with a built in fan base. I am not trying to discredit this opening at all, because it is awesome, unexpected and amazing. However, given the question of which is the more surprising opening....it seems clear to me the product that came out of nowhere last week is the much larger story. I don't even think it is close.

Bruce Hall: Guardians. As I think I mentioned last week, I am the exact demographic for that movie, grew up in the '80s, read comics all through high school and had never even heard of Guardians of the Galaxy. So imagine how Joe Average felt watching that "Hooked on a Feeling" trailer? If I said "What the %$^& is THIS supposed to be?", I can only imagine what my neighbors must have said!

I do believe very strongly that the Ninja Turtles have a built-in fan base going back to their inception, and a fair amount of generational crossover due to the sheer number of iterations of the franchise. TMNT may not have been at the forefront of pop culture for some time, but they've remained on the radar. Even I was fascinated to see what came of this latest version, despite knowing what the result was likely to be.

Ninja Turtles crushed it this weekend, no doubt. Paramount didn't even wait till sundown today to announce the sequel. Well done, Michael Bay. Your demonic handlers are no doubt impressed. But Marvel took one of the silliest and most obscure comic books of all time and turned it into one of the biggest hits of this young decade.

The devil's been hard at work this year.

David Mumpower: Unlike some other folks here, I do believe the answer is close. I always maintain that scale matters. In the column, Guardians of the Galaxy wins handily. For six months, I expected it to debut somewhere in the same range as Thor and Captain America, and I thought it would be lucky to do that. The fact that it initially matched and has since surpassed Captain America: The Winter Soldier’s pace. That is shocking.

One of Kim Hollis, Tim Briody or I was going to write the forecast last week. We compared notes on expectations, and the answers came down to regular, large and extra-large. Had I done the forecast, the estimate would have been about $10 million more than Tim (to her credit, Kim almost nailed it to the dollar…few people can say that this week), which means I was projecting mid-$40s. Ergo, I was still $20 million short on it. Generally speaking, I only made it 70% of the way to each opening. I…did not estimate either one accurately.

Having acknowledged my failure on each, I understand the breakout success of Guardians of the Galaxy more. The idea of a new team of Avengers-ish characters in a Star Wars-esque setting holds a lot of appeal for consumers. And for all of the opening weekend excellence, it still reflects less than half of what The Avengers managed. Relative to scale, the Marvel brand for a new clone of The Avengers can, should and did earn over $90 million.

Mutant Ninja Turtles, on the other hand, is a storied franchise (no, really!) that has faded into oblivion. The first three releases averaged three weeks spent in first place. Up to and including the new one, every TMNT movie has finished in first place at least one weekend at the box office. None of them inflation adjusts higher than $48 million on opening weekend, though. Also, this franchise is supposed to be dead, right? Effectively, TMNT is a known commodity that was hugely popular in 1990 and 1991 then less so every year since then. Meanwhile, the Marvel brand is hotter than ever. For this reason, I give the ever so slight edge to the reptilian warriors as the bigger surprise. Both are pretty damned shocking, though.

Jason Lee: This debate has been fascinating. Two prophets find the answer "not even close" and they're on opposite sides. While I was absolutely blown away by Guardians' opening number, I ultimately come down on the side of the turtles. First, as Tim mentioned, the trailer was beyond ridiculous - a true "WTF were they thinking?" moment. Second, though the current TMNT animated show is a hit, the last couple of TMNT movies were horrible. Vanilla Ice, anyone? The turtles riding horses? Certainly, few were clamoring for a new TMNT movie. Third, you have the PG-13 rating - potentially too dark for kids and too juvenile for adults (who potentially had the aforementioned bad taste in their mouths). While the Guardians' opening was stunning, you still had the enormous success of the recent Captain American and Thor films as indications of what was potentially to come. Here, you have the TMNT movie opening at $65 million with a potential final take of around $170 million. Six months ago, I wouldn't have been surprised with the Guardians movie coming out with numbers near or slightly above those levels. Cowabunga, indeed.

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