“Iron Man 2″ has taken in $194 million overseas since it debuted in many international markets last week, bringing its worldwide total to over $327 million. While Hollywood blockbusters typically open around the same date in most countries, some get an overseas jump of a week or more on their U.S. debuts. The biggest opening came from China with $7.3 million.

“It’s a perfect kickoff to the summer of 2010,” said Paul Dergarabedian, box office analyst for Hollywood.com. “It literally sets the tone for the entire summer movie season. To have the fifth biggest opening week of all time certainly sends a message that this summer season is going to make its mark. Audiences really do get caught up in that.”

The victory of “Iron Man 2,” which is only available in 2-D, comes at time when 3-D films like “Avatar” and “Alice in Wonderland” have recently dominated the box office. IMAX chairman and president Greg Foster said the $10.2 million earned by “Iron Man 2″ from IMAX theaters set IMAX’s 2-D record, beating out the $8.5 million debut of “Star Trek” last year.

“I think people recognize IMAX is the way to see blockbuster titles, whether it’s a 2-D or 3-D movie,” he said.

The film continues the story of Stark, a genius industrialist who builds metal suits loaded with gadgets. In the follow-up, the superhero employs the assistance of his longtime friend and fellow crime fighter James Rhodes, played by Don Cheadle, to battle baddies such as Whiplash, a nasty villain with his own high-tech arsenal, played by Mickey Rourke.

“When we opened the original ‘Iron Man,’ it seemed to be one of the lesser known properties in the Marvel galaxy,” said Paramount’s Harris. “Two years later, it’s one of the most beloved characters. I think the people at Marvel are incredibly bullish about how future ‘Iron Man’ movies might do and how ‘Iron Man’ interacts with their other characters.”

Despite the triumph over its predecessor, “Iron Man 2″ didn’t best the $158.4 million bow of “The Dark Knight” in 2008 or the $151.1 million debut of “Spider-Man 3″ in 2007. It also didn’t surpass last year’s $142.8 million dawn of “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” or the $135.6 million course charted by “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” in 2006.

“Iron Man 2″ was untouchable at this weekend’s box office though. The previous weekend’s No. 1 movie, the Warner Bros. remake of “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” fell to No. 2 with $9.1 million, clawing to a total of $48.5 million. DreamWorks Animation’s “How to Train Your Dragon” remained at No. 3 with $6.7 million, bringing its seven-week total to $201 million.

“Babies,” the Focus Features documentary that tracks four tots during the first year of their lives, was the only other new release, debuting in 534 theaters at the No. 10 spot with $1.5 million. Hollywood.com’s Dergarabedian said “Babies” could continue to crawl along this summer as an alternative to flicks like “Robin Hood” and “Prince of Persia.”

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com; final figures will be released Monday:

1. “Iron Man 2,” $133.6 million.

2. “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” $9.1 million.

3. “How to Train Your Dragon,” $6.7 million.

4. “Date Night,” $5.3 million.

5. “The Back-up Plan,” $4.3 million.

6. “Furry Vengeance,” $4 million.

7. “Clash of the Titans,” $2.3 million.

8. “Death at a Funeral,” $2.1 million.

9. “The Losers,” $1.8 million.

10. “Babies,” $1.5 million.

——

On the Net:

http://www.hollywood.com/boxoffice

——

Universal Pictures and Focus Features are owned by NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric Co.; Sony Pictures, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount and Paramount Vantage are divisions of Viacom Inc.; Disney’s parent is The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is a division of The Walt Disney Co.; 20th Century Fox, Fox Searchlight Pictures and Fox Atomic are owned by News Corp.; Warner Bros. and New Line are units of Time Warner Inc.; MGM is owned by a consortium of Providence Equity Partners, Texas Pacific Group, Sony Corp., Comcast Corp., DLJ Merchant Banking Partners and Quadrangle Group; Lionsgate is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.; IFC Films is owned by Rainbow Media Holdings, a subsidiary of Cablevision Systems Corp.; Rogue Pictures is owned by Relativity Media LLC; Overture Films is a subsidiary of Liberty Media Corp.

“Already did that,” shrugs Tony. He acts mildly surprised to see us, almost bored. He barely seems to register the presence of the two dozen or so hot-pants-clad hotties cavorting around him, who seem imported not from the future but from the past, specifically from the sidelines of a Dallas Cowboys game, circa 1982. A friend I saw the movie with observed that there are no “quotation marks,” no irony, in director Jon Favreau’s loving, loop-the-loop tracking shots of these dancin’ hoochie-mamas with their spray-bronzed legs and perfect Spandex asses. Of course not. How could there be? The kind of sardonic commentary that might have been possible at the time of, say, Paul Verhoeven’s “Robocop” has been devoured by our self-knowing pop culture and reprocessed into ambient, empty, unfulfillable desire, which is all a movie like “Iron Man 2″ can give you.

Please note: I didn’t say it wasn’t fun. Downey, Favreau and screenwriter Justin Theroux (better known himself as an actor) have decided to drive Tony Stark’s self-regarding, vainglorious character right to the brink of WTF-did-he-just-say hubris. Yes, yes, yes, Downey is blasé, intelligent and hilarious as Tony Stark — what do you expect me to say? — but I’m convinced that sticking with this character much longer won’t be good for him. (It will be good for his unborn grandchildren, yes; different question.)

Oh, Tony tells the worshipful throng at StarkExpo — supposedly occurring in Flushing, N.Y., on the real-world site of the 1964 World’s Fair — he’s not saying that it’s because of him that the world has enjoyed an unmatched period of peace. He’s not saying that “never has a greater phoenix metaphor been personified in human history” than his own regeneration as an ass-kicking cyborg, one who is slowly poisoning himself with the toxic metal leaching into his body.

But Tony is saying that he has “successfully privatized world peace,” as he tells the cameras on the way out of his confrontation with the Senate Armed Services Committee, which wants him to surrender the Iron Man suit to the military. We’re supposed to think he shouldn’t, or at least to kind of think that. Iron Man stands astride the globe solo, keeping the North Koreans and Iranians and unidentified wackos at bay, accountable to nothing and nobody except his own conscience, which would be, let us note, the conscience of a depraved, narcissistic war-profiteer zillionaire with a wicked sense of humor. In fairness, that’s reasonably true to the spirit of the original Marvel comic, whose hero is a uniquely uncomfortable blend of Nietzschean Superman and self-sacrificing Christ figure.

I’m reasonably certain, based on what I know about Jon Favreau and Justin Theroux, that they want to wield a double-edged sword in “Iron Man 2,” and make a vast fortune off a movie that both comments upon (or, ahem, “subverts”) the superhero genre and embraces its most militaristic, fascistic, ultra-individualist ideology. They want to be too cool for school while still giving the masses what they want, in other words, but that’s a little like looking for the missing quotation marks around those dancing girls’ butts. At a certain point — very quickly — it stops mattering, and you’re left with a misshapen mega-hit movie built around some sparkling dialogue, a few devastating action set-pieces, Scarlett Johansson in her underwear just for the hell of it, and a whole lot of indistinguishable fight scenes that might just as well be in “Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots: The Movie.”

“Iron Man 2″ feels canny, smart and out of control, which is probably what Robert Downey Jr. was like when he was doing lots of coke. As if we needed any reminding about the actor’s wild years, there’s a shot of Tony Stark that echoes the memorable morning-after shot of Downey near the end of his 1987 “Less Than Zero.” In this case, though, Stark-Iron Man is reclining, with shades and cigarette, within the rooftop Randy’s Donuts sign in L.A., and while he is indeed contemplating his past and his future, he presumably hasn’t had to blow 14 guys to pay off a drug debt. Samuel L. Jackson shows up right then, as eye patch-wearing secret agent Nick Fury, to say, “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to exit the donut.” (Can you be terrific in a minimal role that will be nonsensical to all the non-comics geeks in the audience? If so, then yes, Jackson is.)

When Tony and his screwball foil Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) — she’s his secretary! She’s his CEO! She enables his sleazy liaisons! She’s the girl for him! — travel to Monte Carlo for a vintage-auto Grand Prix, Favreau offers up a near-pornographic display of too-rich excess. Again, maybe this is meant as satire and maybe not, but either way it has a subtly destabilizing effect on the narrative. When leathery, grimy, wrinkled and tattooed Mickey Rourke shows up, playing a vengeful Russian physicist with steel teeth who seems to have been moonlighting as a pro-wrestling villain, I cannot have been alone in really, really, really wanting him to kick Iron Man’s ass.

In a dazzling special-effects sequence that all on its own comes close to justifying the price of admission, Rourke’s Ivan Vanko strides onto the race track in his homemade cyborg suit apparently constructed from dismembered X-ray machines and coat hangers, wielding 15-foot wire whips crackling with lightning-strength electricity. The combination of Rourke’s slow, ugly, monumental grace, the magnificent machinery bearing down on him at 170 miles per hour and the hackneyed grandeur of the Monaco chicane is unspeakably gorgeous — it’s the one sequence in Favreau’s two “Iron Man” movies where he seems to have learned something about action cinema from (say) John Woo.

Rourke’s villain doesn’t get much screen time in “Iron Man 2,” and that may be because every time he appears he threatens to root this movie’s moderately entertaining, slam-bang spectacle in something resembling moral reality — and God knows we can’t have the audience opening that door. As Tony Stark’s incompetent corporate rival Justin Hammer, Sam Rockwell is a comic-relief nerd without much to do. Although I will say that Rockwell’s soft-shoe Michael Jackson dance routine, performed while wearing a Bluetooth headset and a truly heinous pale blue suit that looks as if it was left over after prom night in 1979, was probably my favorite moment — for its delightful and total irrelevance — in the entire movie. One can only wonder: How many times did Theroux write a “Please, Hammer, don’t hurt ‘em” joke, only to take it out?

Special mention should be made of one of Favreau’s cleverest touches, using John Slattery (that’s Roger Sterling from “Mad Men”) to play Stark’s late father in a 16mm archival-film excerpt that provides a central clue to one of the film’s not very interesting mysteries. Drawing on his mysterious ability to cultivate emotional depth in a character who appears cartoonish and insincere, Slattery goes a long way toward explaining Tony Stark’s damaged character, while suggesting (in a very brief appearance) that the kid still has a lot to learn from his old man. It’s a humanizing touch that, like Rourke’s role, threatens to undermine the picture.

As for Scarlett Johansson’s near-cameo, I’ve already said that she looks good in her underwear. She looks fine in her other outfits too. At one point her double-agent character comes purring up to Stark with a martini she’s just made and asks him, “Is that dirty enough for you?” Anything else you’d like to know?

This is a movie where Christiane Amanpour whores herself out worse than Downey’s character did in “Less Than Zero.” Not because she appears in the film, although that was a regrettable decision, but because in so doing she equates herself to Bill O’Reilly, also seen here as himself, opining on the world significance of Iron Man. But asking whether the “Iron Man” franchise has jumped the shark is meaningless. It is the shark. That question, indeed, assumes the existence of something in the universe that is non-shark. Robert Downey Jr. has stared the shark in its abyssal eyes until it flinched, blown pot smoke up its horny nostrils and kneed it in the ‘nads. Now he’s back onstage with the dancing hotties.

Whiplash has the right idea.

The comic book film has become a gravy train to nowhere. The genre cranks up directors’ box office averages and keeps offbeat actors fully employed for years at a stretch by dutifully replicating (with precious few exceptions) the least interesting, least exciting elements of its source material; spicing up otherwise rote superhero vs. supervillain storylines with “complications” and “revisions” (scare quotes intentional) that the filmmakers, for reasons of fiduciary duty, cannot properly investigate; and delivering amusing characterizations, dense stories or stunning visuals while typically failing to combine those aspects into a satisfying whole.

I don’t relish saying any of this. I grew up on superheroes and superhero films. And as a critic who made a point of clinging to my sense of wonder long past childhood, I’ve tried (too hard at times) to find signs of life in formula. I will always treasure that iconic shot of the Joker hanging his head out of a car window in “The Dark Knight” like a family dog on a road trip, and the poster-ready wide shot of Superman in “Superman Returns” hoisting the Daily Planet’s globe on his shoulders, and that slow-motion image of Peter Parker in “Spider-Man 2″ — an ex-superhero playing hooky from his obligations — stumbling down a Manhattan street to “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.”

But for God’s sake, enough is enough.

The aforementioned moments are just that: moments. Dazzling fragments of films that tend to be visually adept and dramatically inert or vice versa. Even at the peak of their creative powers, big-budget comic book films are usually more alike than different. And over time, they seem to blur into one endless, roiling mass of cackling villains, stalwart knights, tough/sexy dames, and pyrotechnic showdowns that invariably feature armored vehicles (or armor-encased men) bashing into each other. When such movies accumulate praise, it’s encrusted with implied asterisks: “The best superhero film ever made,” say, or “The best Batman film since Tim Burton’s original.” If the Hollywood studio assembly line is high school in a John Hughes movie, superhero films are the jocks — benighted beneficiaries of grade inflation and reflexive fan boosterism. (Critics who don’t like a particular superhero film — any superhero film — are apt to be simultaneously blasted in online comments threads as aesthetic turistas ill-equipped to judge the work’s true depth and snooty killjoys who expect too much and need to lighten the hell up. Neat trick.)

Meanwhile, the assembly line keeps rolling along, siphoning $100 million to $200 million per film from Hollywood’s economy to fund all that CGI, spurring the creation of ancillary merchandise that’s ultimately the real reason for any superhero film’s existence, and generating advance publicity that’s instantly transformed into free advertising by buffs, who parse each new superhero casting announcement as if there were, in fact, a character to play. (Is Chris Hemsworth the right choice to play Thor? Let’s check the requirements: 1. Be blond. 2. Swing a hammer.)

By virtue of its basis in familiar, oft-beloved source material, the superhero film has the audience in the palm of its gloved hand from frame one. But it too often squanders that advantage by coddling the viewer. The death of Rachel Dawes in “The Dark Knight” — a visually sloppy, exposition-choked saga that at least had the courage of its source material’s grim convictions — is a rare example of a superhero film daring to make its audience hurt. The norm is closer to the opportunism of Sam Raimi and company cherry-picking elements from the newsprint back story of Gwen Stacy — superimposing the circumstances of her shocking death in “The Amazing Spider-Man #121″ onto a routine cable car set piece involving Mary Jane in 2002′s “Spider-Man”; then shoehorning her into 2007′s “Spider-Man 3,” hinting at a different, perhaps equally upsetting demise, then letting her live. (That’s like ending a remake of “Old Yeller” with a freeze-frame of the title pooch frolicking in a meadow, surrounded by pups.)

The superhero movie too often avoids opportunities to summon tangled feelings, lacerating trauma and complex characterizations — qualities that make genre films worth watching and remembering for reasons beyond their capacity to kill two hours and change.

Which genres? Glad you asked. Conceding upfront that this is an apples-and-oranges comparison — then countering that any comparison seems like apples and oranges if you nitpick enough — let’s set the most notable modern superhero movies alongside titles from another durable genre: the zombie film.

The zombie movie as we’ve come to know it (live humans vs. snacky fiends) has been around for slightly longer than the superhero picture (provided we date the modern superhero picture to 1978′s “Superman: The Movie,” and the modern zombie picture to George A. Romero’s 1968 shocker “Night of the Living Dead” – which I’m doing here because, hey, it’s my piece). The zombie film — and what I call the zombie-by-proxy film, a sister category that includes “28 Days Later,” “28 Weeks Later” and both versions of “The Crazies” — has a list of familiar core elements: the collapse of civilization; the forging of expedient alliances based on the need to survive; the debate over whether to kill a loved one who’s morphing into a ravenous Other, etc. But in spite of such ironclad narrative mandates, the zombie genre has produced the following short list of notable works, any of which I consider more engrossing, uncompromising and consistently imaginative — and more likely to reward repeat viewings — than pretty much any superhero film made since 1978.

My list includes six examples of zombie-fied social satire, all directed by Romero — films that are inconsistent in quality but all strikingly different and worth seeing and having an opinion on: Danny Boyle’s beguiling “28 Days Later,” with its unexpectedly life-affirming conviction that no matter how grim things get, love and beauty can still be found; the domestic nightmare of “28 Weeks Later,” with its scalding primal image of a deranged patriarch blinding his wife; both versions of “The Crazies,” with their staunch anti-authoritarian plotlines; Zack Snyder’s “Dawn of the Dead” remake, with its arena-rock strut and knack for finding droll humor in unlikely alliances; Peter Jackson’s Freud-joke-riddled comedy of social repression “Dead Alive”; the anything-for-a-laugh nihilism of “Zombieland“; and the Mel Brooks-style silliness of “Return of the Living Dead” and “Shaun of the Dead.”

That’s a rainbow spectrum of modes and moods. Not bad for a genre that’s as ritualized as the western or the romantic comedy (genres I could have invoked if I wanted to make this an even less-fair fight).

And in the 32 years since the release of ”Superman: The Movie,” what has the superhero genre given us? What’s the cream of the crop?

“The Dark Knight” and “Batman Begins” head up the list; whatever one thinks of their approach toward dramaturgy (director Chris Nolan’s M.O. is to have his characters deliver freshman psychology and philosophy dissertations while whirling the camera for no good reason and cutting every few seconds), they were true to the dark (at times ugly) essence of their source material. And they were confident enough to disgorge raw data at a stock-ticker pace and expect viewers to keep up. But neither film contains a moment as moving as Brendan Gleeson’s fight to keep his sanity after being infected in “28 Days Later,” or a cinematic flourish as wickedly clever as the twinned tracking shots in “Shaun of the Dead” that compare life in a pre- and post-zombie world. Where’s the heart in Nolan’s movies? Where’s the poetry? Where’s the soul?

The Joel Schumacher “Batman” movies are regrettable in almost every way (1997′s epically terribly “Batman and Robin” was a disco camp goof, minus the laughs: “Captain Fantastic and the Brown Nippled Batsuit”). But Tim Burton’s two predecessors weren’t that much better. Despite characteristically detailed panoramas, smart visual puns and memorably screwed-up bad guys, 1989′s “Batman” and its 1992 sequel “Batman Returns” feel less like pop art than pop art-flavored product. They’re disorganized, sometimes dull movies, lousy with dead-end subplots, inconsistent performances, and network TV-quality fight scenes. And as is the case with all “Batman” pictures — even the comparatively ballsier Nolan efforts — the title character is a yin-yang cardboard cutout, a recessive, numb, raspy-voiced bore. It doesn’t matter who plays Batman; the suit always swallows him up. Watch Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman in “American Psycho” or Dieter Dengler in “Rescue Dawn” and you’d think he was the second coming of Gary Oldman. In Nolan’s Batman films, he just seems smug and cranky. (As Commissioner Gordon, a grayer, subtler Oldman acts circles around Bale — which, given Bruce Wayne/Batman’s connect-the-dots psychology, is admittedly no great victory for anyone, including extras playing riot cops and waiters.)

“Spider-Man 2“? Damn near perfect for what it was — but there’s that phrase again. Raimi’s second entry in the series maintained a soufflé-delicate adventure-comedy tone throughout, while still finding time for Catholic schoolboy flourishes (the exhausted Spidey borne Christ-like over the heads and shoulders of fellow citizens). But I wouldn’t prize it over a mid-level zombie film (or mid-level western, or a truly terrible musical — like, say, this). The other “Spider-Man” films were largely unmemorable. The original was more noisy than clever, the third overstuffed, unfocused and full of strangely misjudged moments. In about seven hours’ worth of web-slinging spectacle, three are worth watching — and that’s being generous.

The third “X-Men” is a stinker, the second propulsive and stylish, the original awkward but also funny and sincere. And yet when I look back over the series, I can’t easily recall what events happened in which film (except for the second film’s “coming out” scene — a great example of how to turn subtext into text without killing a good movie). “Hancock” is filled with promising moments, delivers on none, and cravenly introduces an origin story built on interracial love and racist violence only to drop it without further comment. “Kick-Ass” serves up a punk-rock tough first act, then regresses into a meaner, filthier gloss on the usual mayhem. Snyder’s “Watchmen” seems a milestone in the genre until you revisit the source and grasp how Snyder, in his determination to keep the story flowing and earn back his budget, amps up the fights, cranks up the music and ends up endorsing some of the same superficial genre traits that the graphic novel’s writer, Alan Moore, pushed against.

The first two “Superman” movies are fondly remembered, but for what, exactly? Mostly for Christopher Reeve’s ability to make indestructible decency charming. Despite a handful of resonant moments (the creation of the Fortress of Solitude; Superman and Lois Lane’s first flight), they’re big, glitzy, often tackily produced white elephants. And the third and fourth “Superman” films are mind-bendingly awful.

You may have noticed I didn’t mention Ang Lee’s 2003 “Hulk,” and that I managed to discuss the first four “Superman” films without mentioning the fifth, 2006′s “Superman Returns,” directed by Bryan Singer. That’s because I consider these films to be the most creatively daring large-scale experiments yet attempted in the genre.

Granted, they were not remotely close to perfect. “Hulk” was an intriguing failure, combining Eisenhower-era pop-Freud melodrama and 1970s-style split-screen mosaics. “Superman Returns” is one of the most visually splendid and emotionally complex popcorn films made in the last decade — a fantasy blockbuster distinguished by its mature characters, depressive atmosphere, slow pace, brazenly mythic tableaus (likening Kal-El to Atlas, Jesus, Prometheus and Icarus) and last but not least, its moments of mundane psychological realism (Superman using his X-ray vision to spy on Lois; ex-jailbird Lex Luthor stabbing the hero with a Kryptonite shiv). Nearly everyone I know considers both movies pretentious and dull. I cite them here as evidence of nothing but my own odd tendency to have more fun at films that try something different and fail than at films that do the same old thing for the 10 zillionth time and succeed. (Marvel Comics’ ongoing attempt to enfold all Marvel properties into a single movie universe is underwhelming from every standpoint save that of marketing. Remember when Dunkin Donuts and Baskin-Robbins joined forces? Like that, but with tights.)

And yet: Perhaps the mix of indifference and hostility that greeted “Hulk” and “Superman Returns” confirms the limits of this still-young genre — limitations imposed by studios and marketers, and endorsed by viewers who desire slight variations on a familiar recipe and cannot abide a film that has the stones to take their money, try something new, and choke.

Audiences and studios alike are conditioned to view superhero films as more product than art. Art is allowed to fail; product isn’t. There’s a reason why positive reviews of superhero films often use the phrase “delivers the goods,” as if the movie were UPS or Fresh Direct. The tonal equivalent of “28 Weeks Later,” “Land of the Dead” or “Zombieland” would never get financed in the superhero genre, much less distributed or seen.

Are there any other superhero films worth seeing — much less discussing? Well, “Iron Man” and “Iron Man 2,” I guess — if you think cool competence is synonymous with excellence, and you’re willing to prize director Jon Favreau’s ease with improvisational comedy over his apparent lack of interest in cinematic values, by which I mean imaginative editing, drastic and daring tonal shifts, and shots that do more than “cover” action and record the actors’ performances.

Think of those eerily beautiful helicopter shots of the mall in the original “Dawn of the Dead,” or that shot of Jeremy Renner’s surrogate good dad in “28 Weeks Later” comforting the two parentless kids in close-up, then exiting the frame to reveal Robert Carlyle’s rage-crazed bad daddy in the background. Now name me one image in either “Iron Man” that’s as functional, startling and expressive as the two I just mentioned. Hint: You can’t.

And what of Downey Jr.? Yes, of course, he is Tony Stark. And his metrosexual wiseass routine (and off-screen bad-boy reputation) spiced up the franchise and gave Favreau license to get loose and funky and foreground the banter. (Franchise!) But even a pinch of spice stands out when it’s added to vanilla pudding, and what does it say about the genre that Downey would receive near-unanimous acclaim for showing us a fraction of his range and power?

Rourke’s lizard-skinned, beady-eyed, I-will-knock-you-down-and-take-your-woman realness in “Iron Man 2″ reveals the genre grade curve that emboldened fans to describe Downey’s PG-13 swagger as “edgy.” Robert Downey Jr. in “Two Girls and a Guy” — that’s edgy. The “Iron Man” films are not edgy. For all their repartee and self-awareness, they’re showcases for boxing robots. And the series’ great triumph is its ability to persuade audiences to sit still for 15 or 20 minutes at a time without wondering when the boxing robots will return.

Rourke’s personal triumph in the second film is more mysterious. His ferociously committed performance — so weird and overwhelming that Favreau uses him sparingly, the way Ishirô Honda used Godzilla — reminds us that there’s a world beyond the edges of this movie’s Dave & Buster’s-meets-Disneyworld panoramas, a world of silence, hunger and rage. It’s a world that has nothing to do with billionaire playboys and boxing robots and everything to do with deprivation, ambition and revenge. Whiplash won’t show you that world because you’re pampered and weak, and because he’s not done eating his goulash. But he will be happy to knock you down, take your woman and show her.

The next superhero film should star Mickey Rourke. As himself.