There’s no doubt that Burton’s “Dark Shadows” has issues, and it will probably be considered a misfire in many quarters. It’s so incredibly specific — in its detailed recall of the original late-’60s “Dark Shadows” soap opera (truly one of the strangest series in television history), its finely honed hambone acting by Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer and Helena Bonham Carter, and its campy but affectionate treatment of its Nixon-era setting — that it’s hard to tell who the intended audience is. Me, evidently, along with other relics of that era and longtime “Dark Shadows” fans who’ve been waiting — and waiting, and waiting — for Barnabas Collins to be exhumed yet again, along with his lugubrious extended family. (We’ll talk about the doomed 1991 series some other time, OK?) But I honestly don’t know what sense it will make to people who show up because Johnny Depp and Tim Burton made a vampire comedy and that sounds cool. This “Dark Shadows” clearly leaves the sepulcher door ajar — nay, gaping wide open — for potential sequels. But it’s such an odd movie and it’s facing the triumphalist superhero tidal wave of “Avengers.” Disaster is definitely possible, so I’m not holding my breath.

Anyway, here’s the principal issue I see with Burton and screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith’s (he of “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”) strange blend of nostalgia, farce and spooky-loo: Total delicious goodness! Oh, sure, it all comes unglued in the final 15 minutes, when like all Hollywood movies the story devolves into CGI fight scenes and stuff blowing up. But “Dark Shadows” offers potent atmosphere and delirious ’70s fashions and hilarious gags and some really terrific performances, none better than Pfeiffer’s triumphant return to the screen as a pitch-perfect family matriarch. This film seems to engage Burton’s attention and imagination as no movie has since — well, a very long time ago. You can definitely make a case for his 2007 version of “Sweeney Todd,” and the animated “Corpse Bride” is more enjoyable than most of Burton’s live-action films, but so much of his career — like that of Depp, his good friend and muse — has been expended on stylish resuscitations of moribund pop-culture properties that look great but just go through the motions, storytelling-wise.

That Schwinn bike outside Collinwood is a good way of explaining the delicate balance Burton and Grahame-Smith try to strike here. This “Dark Shadows” seeks to be just as melodramatic and claustrophobic and ridiculous as Dan Curtis’ original series — which only introduced its supernatural elements out of desperation, in an effort to raise abysmal ratings — but not exactly in the same way. Yes, the self-aware camp factor has been turned way up, and that will no doubt displease some original fans. When Depp’s Barnabas, an 18th-century gentleman vampire, is first loosed from his 200-year imprisonment by a road construction crew, he marvels at the towering luminescence above him, clearly the work of Mephistopheles (the golden arches of a McDonald’s). Later, upon glimpsing Karen Carpenter on TV, he is disturbed and beguiled: “What sorcery is this? Reveal yourself, tiny songstress!” Curtis’ show certainly never contained internal gags of that sort, but from the audience point of view, it was a camp object even at the time; its goodness and badness and creepiness and sex appeal were always intertwined and inextricable.

If you’re too young to have seen the original “Dark Shadows” — which remained a daytime staple, in reruns, well into the 1980s, and is now available on DVD in (almost) its 1,245-episode entirety — or just aren’t wired that way, explaining its importance may not be possible. The main thing to point out is the immensely different cultural context in which the show emerged. Barnabas Collins predates not just “Twilight” and “True Blood,” but also Anne Rice’s “Interview With the Vampire” and the entire rise of the Goth sensibility. In the 1970s, vampires were something that only marginal weirdos who went to science-fiction bookstores and watched Hammer films like “Dracula: Prince of Darkness” knew about. People like the teenage Tim Burton, in other words. (Christopher Lee, who played Dracula in seven Hammer movies, has a cameo role here, at least his fifth performance for Burton.)

Many of us unlucky enough to be conscious during the 1970s were desperate for markers of cultural difference, and “Dark Shadows” offered a big one in the years before punk rock. If you were into that show, you probably listened to records by Alice Cooper and the Rolling Stones and the Velvet Underground. You read Tolkien, and Harlan Ellison. You also watched “Star Trek,” an extremely different kind of show with some odd similarities. (Each became more popular after their cancellation; each starred a Canadian Shakespeare actor — William Shatner and Jonathan Frid, respectively — who took a low-paying TV gig that would define the rest of his life.) You probably knew the guy in your town who sold Acapulco Gold and Panama Red.

But I wouldn’t make an argument for “Dark Shadows” purely on context and significance, and Depp and Burton don’t either. Curtis’ show made a virtue out of poverty, and while that might not have been entirely new in pop culture, it sure felt that way. Wobbly sets, flubbed lines and wandering stagehands became part of its live-to-video appeal (nothing was ever shot twice), but the zero-tech effects, stilted dialogue and noodly score (by Robert Cobert) were often surprisingly powerful. After Barnabas was loosed from his coffin about a year into the series, the storytelling became increasingly unhinged and improvisational — there were werewolves, zombies, witches and time travel — and the show’s long arc featured two long detours into two different past centuries, along with parallel and contingent universes that might befuddle Stephen Hawking. It was all made up on the fly, of course, and didn’t necessarily make sense, but there’s no question it fired the imagination of a generation: Burton and Quentin Tarantino and Joss Whedon and J.J. Abrams and countless others.

Burton and Grahame-Smith essentially build a series of affectionate riffs on the characters and situations of the original series, and personally I can only wish there were a lot more of it. The aforementioned Vicky Winters bears an uncanny resemblance to Barnabas’ long-ago lost love, Josette, who was driven to suicide by Angelique (spectral French actress Eva Green, still awaiting her moment of Hollywood stardom), the comely witch he spurned who then sought gruesome revenge. Indeed, when Barnabas returns to 1972 Collinwood and divulges his secret to the resolute Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Pfeiffer) and then to drunken, zaftig New York psychiatrist Julia Hoffman (Bonham Carter, hilariously mimicking the mannered performance of the late Grayson Hall in the original), he soon discovers that Angelique has endured into the 20th century as well — and, like all women, still wants him.

Is it inherently bizarre and pointless that Burton has spent millions of dollars on a studied, postmodern attempt to both emulate and parody something that was made on the cheap, and that essentially parodied itself at the moment of its creation? I dunno. If you rely on Susan Sontag’s famous definitions of camp, the original “Dark Shadows” would count as naive or “Pure Camp,” whereas Burton’s film can only be “Camp which knows itself to be Camp,” which Sontag says is less satisfying. I’m not sure these distinctions hold up, personally, and I see no moment of innocence in pop culture’s past. Burton and Depp have made this film out of a pure, deep passion for something that was created 40 years ago for entirely pragmatic reasons — a desire to keep a TV show on the air and get paid for it — and then fed on its own nuttiness and the public’s almost erotic appetite for something new. In so doing, they may have created a movie that’s meant for a mass audience, but that only a few people will enjoy the way they do. (The “Cable Guy” of vampire movies, perhaps.) A mistake, and a failure? Maybe. But isn’t that a wonderful twist to the tale?

But I feel pretty confident that even Moore would not make a movie about a laid-off worker who hits the road with a runaway teenage girl and goes on a killing spree aimed at right-wing talk-show hosts, obnoxious reality-TV subjects and people who talk on the phone in movie theaters. “God Bless America” is Goldthwait’s fourth film as a writer-director — I’m going clear back to “Shakes the Clown” in 1991, often described as the “‘Citizen Kane’ of alcoholic-clown movies” — and it’s definitely his most coherent and most consistently hilarious, perhaps because its canvas is so large and the world it depicts so insane. It plays a little like “Network” mixed with Mike Judge’s “Idiocracy” mixed with “Natural Born Killers,” and in the very first scene its main character, the depressed, divorced and soon-to-be unemployed Frank (Joel Murray), does something completely unforgivable.

That first scene turns out to be a dream sequence, thankfully, but it’s not like the stuff Frank will actually do in the waking world “God Bless America” is so much better. After losing his job and getting some really bad medical news, Frank decides to seek violent retribution against the evil, stupidity and cruelty he sees streaming out of the TV every day. (He could, after all, just turn it off instead; I think that’s part of Goldthwait’s point.) While hunting down an ultra-spoiled Southern teenager and her stupid-rich parents — the subjects of an especially insulting reality show — he meets Roxy (the wonderful Tara Lynne Barr), a precocious high-school girl who says she’s fleeing an abusive home life and whose appetite for destruction beggars his own. Roxy’s delighted to waste vapid cheerleaders and reactionary creeps, but wants to up the ante: People who high-five! People who say things are “punk rock”! Adult women who call their breasts “girls”! Diablo Cody (described herein as “the only stripper with too much self-esteem”)!

Yeah, OK, that’s all pretty funny. But what about 50-year-old guys who go on cross-country road trips with cute underage girls, without asking themselves too many hard questions? Somewhat less funny, right? On one level, “God Bless America” is grossly inflated, over-the-top satire, but on another, it possesses its own kind of moral subtlety. Goldthwait doesn’t so much want us to root for Frank and Roxy without question, or to excuse actions that can’t be excused. Rather, he wants us to acknowledge that the idiotic and insulting state of public discourse in our country has made us all a little crazy. And this critique isn’t coming from some avant-garde outsider or media-studies professor, by the way. Goldthwait is a lifelong showbiz professional, who spent four years as the principal director of his friend Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night talk show.

I met Goldthwait last week in his Manhattan hotel room, where he was joined by Joel Murray, who plays ultra-violent anti-cruelty crusader Frank in “God Bless America.” You may know Murray from his recurring role as Freddy Rumsen on “Mad Men,” or before that for extended runs in “Still Standing” and “Dharma & Greg.”

So — another work of subtle and delicate social satire from the mind of Bobcat Goldthwait.

Bobcat Goldthwait: Well, in these not very subtle times, this is what’s called for.

You’re just about the right age to have seen “Network,” growing up, and I couldn’t help thinking there’s a lot of that movie in here.

Oh, I actually went back and watched it when I was writing the movie. You know, this movie’s influences are like “Bonnie and Clyde” and “Network,” a movie I love. I went back to movies where obviously comparisons were going to be drawn and watched those too. You know, like “Falling Down.” Which, by the way, is a terrible movie.

Yes, absolutely terrible.

Some people absolutely love it. I’m like, I don’t know. I could never get into the movie. When Michael Douglas finally kills somebody, they make the guy a closet Nazi. So you don’t have to feel bad, you know — Michael Douglas’ character isn’t a bad guy. And he really just wants to get home. It’s also a very racist movie.

I mean, I didn’t want this to be a vigilante movie where everybody that Frank kills — not only do they talk in the movie theater, but they also happen to be Nazis or they kill a puppy in the parking lot. Because it isn’t OK to shoot people that text in the movie theater! I was just trying to make it clear to people that text in the movie theater that there’s a lot of people that really don’t like them. It’s funny with some of the comments I’ve gotten: “Oh so — what? I’m not supposed to be using my phone in the movie theater?” I can’t even comprehend that someone might be upset by that.

Here’s one scene I found upsetting and challenging. When Frank kills the sleazy contractor dude who has challenged him about his relationship with the girl, I think that gets at something very essential in the movie. Because that guy hasn’t actually done anything except make a disturbing comment. It’s like he’s spoken a dangerous version of the truth, and Frank doesn’t want to hear it.

Joel Murray: It’s a moment in the film where I realize I brought this girl along for the ride and that was a complete lie. I was doing a thing in the movie about the pain in my head — when it was relieved by killing, suddenly the pain would go away. In that scene, I’m slamming that steering wheel in that Camaro as hard as I can, and the pain in my head was really bad. Because suddenly everything was wrong, and I had to kill someone right about then.

B.G.: To me, what’s happened is that guy represents Frank. You know, Frank is flawed because he’s a human being. He has these really strict ideas about how people should live and then he can’t live up to them. He’s not killing that guy because that guy’s a scumbag. He’s killing that guy because he represents a side of himself he did not expect to encounter. He’s been fooling himself: Yeah, I could go home more often, I could have a life to go home to.

J.M.: Yeah, maybe we really can move to France and get some goats! It’s pretty nice dancing with you and touching you and … [growls]

It’s like for the whole movie Frank has been aware of the danger of being around this teenage girl, and trying to reassure himself that he’s not that kind of guy.

B.G.: That he’s not a creep. You know, for the first two-thirds of the movie the girl just supplies Joel’s character with this family he doesn’t have. And then the wheels fall off.

Bobcat, there’s a lot of material in this movie that feels somewhat like your comedy routines, so I’m tempted to see a lot of it as the author speaking through the characters. Is that misleading?

You know, it’s funny, and I haven’t said this in any other interview or anything. But I’ve seen reviews where they say, “It’s clearly Bobcat saying this and that.” But I’m like — well, Bobcat has access to a medium where he gets to say everything he wants and rant for an hour on Showtime. So it’s a character. Clearly I agree with about 90 percent of the things Frank says, but it’s not a showcase for me. I wanted to make a movie that explores our appetite for distractions. Like I said, I do agree with almost everything Frank says, outside of killing people. But I didn’t feel like as a human being I was being ignored and I needed to make a movie because I was pissed off no one was listening to me.

Well, one of the things Frank is pissed off about — or you’re pissed off about, I guess — is the cruelty and sadism we see in popular media, reality shows and talk TV. Frank talks about how that’s a symptom of a dying empire. But do you think that cruelty is specific to the media, or is it a larger social phenomenon?

It’s our appetite for the cruelty. I didn’t want to make a movie that blamed the media because I thought that was really lazy. Both the right and the left blame the media constantly. It’s either bashing Fox News or bashing the “lamestream media.” As soon as I see a post or comment where someone uses the word “Hollyweird” or “elitist” I go, oh, your opinions are already formed for you. You don’t make your own ideas. I’m not interested in what you have to say. But I didn’t want to make a movie that blamed the media because that’s too easy. I didn’t want to kill the messenger. I think the media takes a beating. You know those guys who are trying to give you the truth? We hate them. [Laughter.]

I’m talking about the public’s willingness to be spoon-fed their opinion and not even discuss the different sides. Just: This is my team, I root for this news. This is what I think. I’m jumping off the cliff. I like this radio personality because they’ll make all my decisions for me and I don’t have to. I’m going to sit around for hours talking about Charlie Sheen instead of my own life.

This isn’t in your movie, but I’ve been working in the media for 25 years, and while watching this I couldn’t help thinking about all the tools we have now and the changes they have wrought. It used to be that TV had the Nielsen ratings and the newspapers had circulation numbers. You did marketing surveys or whatever, but that was about it. These days we can tell precisely what people are watching or reading at any given moment. If I publish an article on our site, I can find out, in real time, exactly how many people are looking at it.

So later on, editorial policies — wow, I didn’t even think about that — will be dictated by that.

Sure. Back when I worked at an old-school alternative newspaper, we could decide to run an article about some avant-garde dance performance that nobody else was interested in, just because we thought it was cool and because it was the sort of thing we were supposed to cover.

And you were forcing people to expose themselves to it. My wife is younger than myself — she’s not Roxie’s age, she’s actually age-appropriate. Which is, whatever, new. [Laughter.] But, you know, newspapers seem weird to her: “Why would you hold those dirty things?” Well, because before I rush to the entertainment section, I have: Oh, what are we doing in Syria? On the Web you just click to your site and just keep clicking, like a mouse who has something that stimulates his pleasure zone. I think it’s very cocainey.

Well, that depiction of the workplace in your movie, where people only talk about what they saw last night on TV or what they just heard on the drive-time radio shows. It’s obviously exaggerated for effect, but there might be a kernel of truth there. And it’s very much like mice responding to stimulus.

My exposure to that world is when I go to comedy clubs and do the morning shows and I’m up against this talking that’s all about non-information. Now, I don’t think everything should be the heavies, but very little of it is about our own selves. I’d be more interested if someone tells me something about themselves, versus posting something about their political opinions or whatever. It’s like, I’m about to say that I’m an atheist who owns a gun and is a vegetarian — is he still going to like me? Instead I go: They’re going to take our guns away!

I wanted to talk about the violence in the movie. There’s a fair amount of it! Let’s just say that. And one of the things about contemporary society is that there’s all this cruel and angry discourse you’re talking about, and there’s a national fixation on crime and violence, yet we’re living in a time of relatively low violence. The three of us can all remember the ’70s, when crime rates were double or triple what they are today.

B.G.: Yeah, maybe people are getting it out? I think it’s like, most people don’t even know or feel that, because we’re just constantly told how violent the world is.

J.M.: And how you can’t even let your kids walk to the corner. “What are you thinking?” And it’s less dangerous than it was in the ’70s.

B.G.: We must be comfortable in fear. It must be rewarding for some reason that we want to live in it so much. What I’m learning is that there are a lot of extreme right-wing websites that are really going after me. But what I realize now is that it really doesn’t matter. It’s so funny how little it affects my life in any way at all. They’re saying I’m the worst thing ever.

Because of your movie?

Yeah. I guess I’m really naive about how much anti-Semitism there is. When I ego-surf the comments under the trailer there’s so much stuff about what a dirty kike I am. And I’m not Jewish.

I was gonna say: Wikipedia definitely conveys the fact that you were raised Catholic. They’re just making the incorrect assumption because your name has “Gold” in it?

Yeah. I’m willing to become a Jew, but it’s just really funny.

J.M.: Right when the trailer first came out they were calling us dirty Jew bastards. My first name is Joel, OK, that’s Hebrew. But Murray is 100 percent Irish. I got a sister that’s a nun. I went to Catholic school growing up. Do some research before you start, you know, posting this stuff!

B.G.: You know what’s also funny is that this really isn’t the world I live in, this movie. This is just a theme I wanted to explore. I’m actually fairly happy. I was the one up on the bar last night at Blazing Saddles, dancing with a couple of hot young dudes. They were aping my moves! Aping the moves of a 50-year-old.

J.M.: He’s a shrinking violet.

B.G.: I was like, look, man, carpe diem. How many times am I going to have that kind of access? Can I get on the bar?

There are some truly delicious rants in this movie, both from Frank and Roxy. I love the rhythm of those, because you’ll start out with something almost everybody hates, like texting in the movie theater or whatever, and then it becomes completely absurd. Let’s kill everybody who high-fives! Let’s kill everybody who says “punk rock”! Which spoke to my personal animus, by the way.

J.M.: Right. I try to call her on it when she says we should kill NASCAR fans. What?

Yeah. That’s, like, 40 percent of the United States population.

B.G.: I think the “punk rock” thing is about doing a lot of radio. I’ll be on what they call an alternative rock station and this guy is giving me attitude and I want to say, “Dude, I opened for Nirvana and actually roadied for the Ramones when they were in central New York, the original Ramones. Don’t talk to me about punk rock, you fucking prick.”

I sympathize, it’s the diminishment of discourse. Terms stop meaning anything, you know? You didn’t even bring up the word “hipster.” Let’s shoot everyone who uses that word, positively or negatively.

It means nothing. It’s like the new version of yuppie. In the ’80s, everyone, including me, was always bashing yuppies, and now it’s hipsters that everyone’s decided they don’t like.

Some people think it’s just me writing a list of what I like and what I don’t like. Today, people find a bond because they hate the same things. Or like all of us, because somebody’s listening to them. But Frank has a moral code, which is that he wants to kill people who are mean to him. It sounds trivial but that was the point.

J.M.: I could definitely relate to Frank and the people he had problems with. And then Roxy enters and brings this whole Pandora’s box of people she wants to kill. It was a great contrast of her, with all the energy, and me being very low-key. I tried to become paternal, to say, “No, you can’t do that. People who really deserve to die and not just anybody.”

I’m glad that you pulled her back on her plan to kill Diablo Cody. I don’t know that you’re going to be on her Christmas list this year. Maybe she has enough of a sense of humor, I’m not sure. You know that people are going to say that Roxy seems like a Diablo Cody character, right? That’s part of the joke?

B.G.: Of course. Another movie that’s often brought up, and it’s not a movie that I’m a fan of, is “Heathers.” So when I wrote “World’s Greatest Dad” someone said, “This script is like ‘Heathers,’” so then I just named the Goth girl Heather. I just ran into it. Someone else said it’s a little bit like Wes Anderson, so the principal is W. Anderson. So, clearly, Roxy speaks like a Diablo Cody character. I thought that was funny. It was originally one line, because my daughter is really funny and people say, “You’re like Juno,” and she said, “Dad, whenever people say that I want to stab them right in the fucking throat.” And then, when it was pointed out that I should remove that line, I went back and added an entire page of dialogue about it. Whatever you tell me to do, I don’t do it.

I have to admit that I don’t watch the kind of TV shows you parody here, so it’s impossible for me to gauge how far you went.

Oh, I didn’t parody it at all, I just refilmed it.

That’s all real stuff? The girls throwing used tampons at each other?

Yeah, and a lot of the stuff the political pundits are saying are really paraphrased or not even paraphrased. My first exposure to Glenn Beck was when I was flipping around the channels and he had Obama with a Hitler mustache next to Stalin, and I was like, what is this guy? All those shows are real and I just reshot the footage. Even the ringtone commercial with a pig that comes out and farts. OK, it’s an elephant, not a pig. But the animation is exactly the same animation. I took it really personally, it really hurt my feelings. The elephant sticks his ass to the camera and makes a farting noise, and it’s the funniest ringtone.

Were you consciously thinking about the question of audience sympathy for Joel’s character, and how complicated that gets? Because Frank seems like a likable guy. He’s not a creep, and he’s going through a hard time, and then he starts doing stuff that from any standard is not defensible. And, as an audience member, you’re sort of stuck with him.

I like the idea that you empathize with this guy and he’s doing these horrible things. So then hopefully, if it’s working for the movie, you’re uncomfortable with the fact that you’re empathizing with this guy who is doing horrible things. That’s the point. I didn’t want to make this vigilante movie where you cheered along with the guy. That’s not the movie, and that’s not what I had any interest in doing. What’s cool about Joel is he’s a fabulous actor but he’s great at playing people who you empathize with, who you care for, but he’s not pathetic. I don’t like that. That would have been bad; the wrong actor would have screwed it up and made a gross movie.

We have to quit, but I wanted to ask you about maybe the most hilarious and painful thing in the movie. That’s the character named Steven Clark, who performs “Theme From ‘Mahogany’” on a show called “American Superstar” and becomes a kind of celebrity for being talentless and terrible. I assume that was based on a really similar case in real life, right?

Right. It’s loosely based on my dealings with William Hung when I was directing the Jimmy Kimmel show. This other director was shooting a piece with him and said, “He’s such a pain in the ass!” I go, “Come on!” And I go down there and his mother’s saying, “We don’t want William saying that.” And William Hung is like, “This is bullshit. I’m William Hung!”

Even William Hung turned out to be a diva after all.

Well, I realized that everybody gets corrupted. No one is mentally ready for fame, including myself.

“God Bless America” opens this week in Chicago, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Northampton, Mass., Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix and San Francisco; May 18 in Atlanta, Boston, New Orleans, Portland, Ore., and Salem, Mass.; May 25 in Austin, Texas, Charlotte, N.C., Columbus, Ohio, Dallas, Gloucester, Mass., Mobile, Ala., Palm Springs, Calif., Peoria, Ill., and Pittsburgh, with more cities to follow. It’s also available on-demand through many cable and satellite providers.

First of all, “The Avengers” is the first film in modern times (going back to “Batman” 23 years ago) to break the opening weekend record without shattering the opening day record. “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II” still holds the record for the biggest single day, biggest opening day, and biggest Friday with $91 million. “The Avengers” earned a massive $80 million on its first Friday, good for the second-highest single day of all time. But for the last several years, massive opening weekends of this nature have been predicated on overly front-loaded opening days, in turn predicated on front-loaded midnight showings. “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II” made $43 million at midnight alone, or 25 percent of its $169 weekend total. “The Hunger Games” did 12 percent of its $152 million debut at midnight. “Twilight Saga: New Moon” did 18 percent of its $142 million debut at midnight alone. “The Avengers” did just 9 percent of its gross, or $18.7 million, at midnight. This means that the film played obscenely well all weekend, not just on opening day for frenzied fans.

In terms of single-day records, “The Avengers” actually did break one Friday record, as it made $61 million not counting midnight screenings, crushing the $49 million “regular business hours” Friday grosses of “Spider-Man 3,” “The Dark Knight” and “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II.” It handily broke both the Saturday and Sunday records by wide margins. “The Avengers” actually made more on Saturday ($69 million) than it did during “normal business hours” on Friday, besting “Spider-Man 3′s” $51 million Saturday record. And while final figures could change, “The Avengers” grossed $59 million on Sunday, crushing the $43 million earned by “The Dark Knight” on its first Sunday.

“The Avengers” did not have a sub-2.0x weekend multiplier like the last “Harry Potter” film, or the barely-2.0x multiplier like the last couple of “Twilight” films and “The Hunger Games.” “The Avengers” pulled a rock-solid 2.57x weekend multiplier. That’s the kind of consistency you rarely find with big opening weekends, let alone monstrous record-setters like this. The film earned an A+ from Cinemascore, and these numbers bear that out.

The picture played 50 percent over/under 25 years old and 60 percent male. It earned a surprising 52 percent of its gross in 3-D ticket sales with 8 percent of that being from IMAX.  So yes, even without the 3-D bump, it still would have set a new opening weekend record (around $175 million, although theoretical 2-D IMAX showings would have had the same “bump” as 3-D IMAX showings). And yes, even with inflation factored in, the film sold more tickets over its opening weekend than any other film ever (26.5 million tickets, about 3.5 million more than “The Dark Knight”). “The Avengers” played all weekend to packed houses all day and night for audiences of all shapes and sizes. And, if only judging by my Twitter feed, there was lots of repeat business just over the weekend.

I may have token issues with the film in terms of its worth as a piece of art (non-spoiler review and spoiler discussion). But as a big-budget spectacle rooted in characters worth cheering for, the picture absolutely delivers the kind of popcorn entertainment that these kind of films often fail to deliver. Marvel did the groundwork over the last four years, releasing stand-alone films that introduced most of these heroes in their solo adventures, and this was the glorious payoff. This was the first Marvel film distributed by Disney, as Paramount sold the rights to its Marvel characters to the Mouse House back in 2010. While I may carp about the quality of the marketing materials (mediocre trailers, hilariously Photoshopped posters), they did take the time and money to guarantee curiosity and awareness, while the film’s quality was the most potent tool in creating interest outside of the die-hards, as Disney correctly screened the film early and often to create a typhoon of buzz heading into its domestic debut.

Opening weekend is usually more about marketing than the quality of the film, but the consistent numbers clearly show that the film’s quality was a key component of the marketing campaign. Still, if I may, I’d like to take a moment to remember the stellar marketing work that Paramount has done with the prior five films, starting with marketing a B-level hero (“Iron Man”) to a $100 million debut four years ago. They sold “Thor” despite having little buzz-worthy footage and managed the tricky feat of turning “Captain America” into a global blockbuster. Disney deserves plenty of credit for this weekend’s debut, but let’s not let Paramount become the Chris Columbus of Marvel marketing efforts (although Paramount will get their share of “Avengers” movie too).

Oh yeah, the film continued to burn up the foreign charts too, and the film now has $648 million worldwide, good for the top-grossing worldwide earner of 2012 (it will probably surpass “The Hunger Games” domestically within a week, so I was wrong on that count). How high it climbs is a complete mystery at this point. The strong weekend multiplier, the rousing audience reactions, the strong replay value, and the comparative lack of competition over the next month (sorry, “Battleship,” you’re officially sunk) leaves the field open for a huge sprint.

In 12 days worldwide, it has out-grossed every prior Marvel movie on a worldwide scale outside of the first three “Spider-Man” films. It out-grossed the domestic totals of “The Incredible Hulk,” “Thor” and “Captain America” in three days. In just three days, it is the 12th-highest-grossing comic book film of all-time in America, and will surpass ”300″ ($210 million), and “X2″ ($214 million) tomorrow while passing “X-Men: The Last Stand “($234 million), “Men in Black” ($250 million) and “Batman” ($251 million) by Tuesday or Wednesday. This isn’t a guarantee, but if it can hold up and weather what should be a solid debut for Tim Burton’s “Dark Shadows,” we could see the first $100 million second-weekend and a 10-day total dangerously close to $400 million. Again, it’s not just the three-day figure, but the manner in which it was earned.

This is no quick-kill blockbuster that dies off after the hardcore fans see it over opening weekend. Even a somewhat healthy 2.5x weekend-to-final gross multiplier gets the film a $517 million domestic total while a 3x multiplier has it flirting with besting “Titanic’s” original theatrical release with $621 million (these pesky 3-D reissues make everything more complicated). If it performs like “The Dark Knight” (3.3x multiplier), it ends with a stunning $683 million. We’ll know more next weekend, but for now, this is an incredible weekend performance by a film that was rewarded for delivering exactly what it promised.

For a look at the history of the opening weekend record-breaker, go here.

The movie, which opens in theaters Friday and is available on demand on iTunes, tells the story of Marley, a free-spirited young New Orleans advertising executive. Marley has good friends — including a pregnant lady and a gay black man, because she’s awesome. She has an adorable dog and a penchant for casual sex and whimsical bike riding. But no sooner can her pals offer a champagne toast celebrating the “youngest and hottest vice president” in her company’s history than things start to go terribly wrong. Like millions of helpless white people every day, Marley begins having visions of a cool African-American as God. There is no known cure. Once Marley starts chatting with Whoopi Goldberg in that ethereal, cloud-heavy set, you know she’s in trouble. She’s got terminal Movie Cancer. Naturally, this is the perfect opportunity for her to get in touch with her feelings, have many scenes of hugging her crying costars, and start banging Gael García Bernal. It’s a little weird because he’s supposed to be her oncologist.

It’s not easy making entertainment out of cancer. Yet Showtime’s “The Big C” has mined the terrain to Golden Globe-winning effect. Llast year’s “50/50,” based on writer Will Reiser’s real experiences as a young person suddenly diagnosed with a potentially fatal diagnosis, became a critically acclaimed sleeper hit.  And when you’ve got a condition that will directly affect roughly 41 percent of us, there’s surely some dramatic and comedic resonance to be found in the subject matter. Speaking as someone who has had Stage 4 cancer and endured a clinical trial, and who believes firmly that anyone who’s been through all that ought to at the very least get to bang Gael García Bernal in the Big Easy, I am the ideal audience for this movie. Why, then, somewhere around the inevitable shopping spree montage, did I scrawl the words “WORSE THAN CANCER” in my notebook, and then underline them fiercely in the darkness?

Maybe it’s the way Bernal, as a doctor with seemingly zero ethical problem about sleeping with his terminally ill patient, says “schmuck” – because he’s supposed to be Jewish. Maybe it’s because Kathy Bates, as Marley’s mom, looks like she’s trying so hard with such unforgivable material. Maybe it’s because the biggest audience laugh of the whole movie came when Hudson said, with a straight face, “Come on, Doc. Level with me.” Maybe it’s because when Peter Dinklage, as a male escort, says the title of the movie, it turns out it’s his character’s nickname. Little Bit of Heaven. Oh, human suffering. Truly, this is what it looks like.

Mostly, brothers and sisters, I think we know why this movie causes a pain all the medical marijuana in the world can’t make a person forget. It’s Hudson. Hudson, whose character ostensibly goes through chemo, yet never loses a bouncy curl off her blond head. Who enters a trial but quits with a shrug about “quality of life.” Hudson, who, thanks in large part to director Nicole Kassell and first-time screenwriter Gren Wells, willingly put herself in a movie about cancer that seems to have been created by people who’ve only had cancer described to them. Hudson, who chose to place herself in the pantheon of life-affirming doomed sick girls like “Sweet November’s” Charlize Theron and “Autumn in New York’s” Winona Ryder and the mother of them all, “Love Story’s” Ali McGraw, and comes across as a shrill, affected parody of her hair-tossing Almay ad persona.

It’s an occupational hazard that any actress with marquee value will sometimes find herself in romantic schlock. Yet women like Renee Zellweger and Sandra Bullock have managed to balance their turkeys with riskier performances and a broader range of films. Hudson, in contrast, has remained frozen in time, forever doing variations on her young rebel with a heart of gold, Penny Lane. So let us remember Hudson today not as the husk of an actress she became, endlessly subjecting moviegoers to lazy dreck. Let us remember her as bright, fearless Penny. She’d want it that way. Let us move on, and spare ourselves the ordeal of further films in which a daffy blonde flashes a megawatt smile and recites terrible dialogue and dances adorably even though she’s, like, dying, you guys. For truly, life is much too short for such trials.

All this is standard operating procedure in 21st-century Hollywood, where the industry is dominated by post-boomer males reared on the comic books, TV shows and blockbuster movies of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, and the audience is understood in almost Pavlovian terms as a slavering horde of permanent adolescents. Audience familiarity and “pre-awareness” are greatly prized, so nearly all these guy-oriented movies derive from superhero comics or video games or other decades-old pop franchises. (It is, of course, possible to go too far into the pop-culture past. Let’s observe a moment of silence, once again, for “John Carter.”) We can certainly argue about which of these movies create an interesting twist on existing formula and which are cynical crap, but I don’t think we can argue that it makes much difference to the bottom line. “The Avengers” will make a kazillion dollars, and so did “Transformers: Dark of the Moon.” The differences between the two are mostly a matter of fine-grained detail; they’ve both got cartoonish male bonding, a lot of stuff blowing up, and hot-chick eye candy.

If you’re female and you’re interested in any or all of the above pictures, by the way, I apologize for making it sound as if you don’t exist. But in marketing terms, you don’t. There’s no end of paradox in Hollywood’s patronizing attitude toward female viewers, especially given the long-held marketing truism that in a date-night situation, the woman’s vote typically holds more sway than the man’s. (It’s a standard sitcom joke, right? She persuades him to go see “The Notebook,” and he has to pretend he didn’t cry at the end.) But broadly speaking, women are supposed to be satisfied with the mid-budget, low-prestige romantic comedies made on the Hollywood margins, many of which are so phoned-in and formulaic — hello, Garry Marshall! — they make Michael Bay look like Fassbinder. (Actually, Michael Bay is kind of like Fassbinder. But let’s not get distracted.)

Of course, the Hollywood suits have no objection to making enormous piles of money off female moviegoers, whom they rediscover every few years. (See also: “Ghost,” “Pretty Woman” and the careers of Meg Ryan and Hugh Grant.) But even enormously profitable franchises like “Sex and the City” and “The Twilight Saga” exist in a sort of pink-hued ghetto, and are widely understood both inside and outside the industry as being silly and second-rate. As opposed to the movies about muscular guys in colored costumes who fight evildoers from outer space, which attract the biggest budgets, the biggest stars and the highest possible production values. When feminist critics argued, for example, that “Sex and the City 2″ received far more scathing treatment from male reviewers than did guy-oriented movies that were every bit as wretched, I at first resisted. I now think they were correct: Critics make allowances for dumb, macho action movies, because they conform to unconscious norms and expectations, in a way they don’t for silly, superficial “vagina movies.” I have long contended that if you construct a Venn diagram showing the best of the (universally derided) “Twilight” movies and the worst of the (universally praised) “Harry Potter” movies, there’s way more overlap than fans of the latter would easily admit.

All of this reflects deeply ingrained social and cultural ideas about gender, which are present in people of both sexes. Maybe men’s preference for violent action yarns and women’s preference for sappy love stories — and our tendency to understand one as more “serious” than the other — are hard-wired in some biological way, although that falls a long way short of scientific truth. But despite the torrent of male-centric franchise flicks we’ll see this summer, and next summer, and for all the summers into the foreseeable future, the tide in the Hollywood gender wars has begun to shift, slightly but perceptibly. As I said earlier, “The Avengers” will be No. 1 this coming weekend. But the top-grossing film for the preceding six weeks was a female-oriented picture: Four weeks of “The Hunger Games,” followed by two weeks at the top for surprise hit “Think Like a Man,” whose principal audience was not just women but African-American women, who make up about 6 percent of the United States population. (Clearly a lot of other people went to see it too.)

Those six weeks aren’t statistically meaningful by themselves. But when added to the big numbers rolled up last year by “The Help” and “Bridesmaids,” and the $1.7 billion taken in so far by “The Twilight Saga” around the world, they begin to suggest the contours of a new reality, one in which films aimed at girls and women are high-end blockbusters on an equal footing with guy-flicks. This year, “Hunger Games” will be somewhere near the top in global box-office returns, alongside “The Avengers” and Chris Nolan’s final Dark Knight film. While I don’t think “Hunger Games” is likely to be remembered as a cinematic breakthrough, it’s an important movie in other ways. Its canny blend of science fiction, action flick and love story nosed it out of the pink ghetto in various ways; it was presented by industry insiders as a high-stakes gamble and a worthy successor to the Harry Potter franchise, and male critics were mostly respectful, not reacting as if they were being flooded with icky estrogen. If the film’s audience was predominantly female, the film’s ethos — the cultural narrative surrounding it — was more butch.

Maybe it’s coincidental that two of the biggest female-oriented films we’ll see this summer — Pixar’s animated “Brave” and “Snow White and the Huntsman,” with Kristen Stewart and Chris Hemsworth — are genre-mixing action pictures with independent-minded heroines. But when it comes to the sluggish, reactionary and massively over-thought process of making Hollywood movies, I don’t believe in coincidence. Some of you with long cultural memories may be wondering whether this could mark the beginning of a long-arc trend that brings us back to big-budget Hollywood movies that aren’t so niche-marketed and gender-specific, that are meant to appeal to all ages and both sexes. One answer to that question is “Hey, Tim Burton and James Cameron and Peter Jackson,” and another answer is “only sort of.” In the meantime, it’s business as usual: “Battleship,” which is based on “the classic Hasbro naval combat game,” will open directly opposite “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” which is based on a series of lecturey and divisive pregnancy advice books. I honestly can’t decide which one to see first.