The reviews surrounding Iron Man 3 remain solidly mixed, with some calling it a great success and others unable to get past the plot twists that veered from the source material (see my positive review here). Over at Rotten Tomatoes, critics have ranked it at 79-percent fresh after its opening weekend while the audience has it slightly higher at 83-percent. More important is the Iron Man 3 box office, where the movie was the second-highest opening ever.

Iron Man 3 box officeThe opening weekend Iron Man 3 box office saw the Marvel movie bring in $175.3 million, second to only The Avengers $207.4 million opening. That gives Marvel the two top spots, proving that Marvel movies are the hottest things going in Hollywood right now.

That is also not even the biggest news. Iron Man 3 opened last weekend internationally and those totals are now all the way up to $504.8 million. To save you math time, that means that – after its opening weekend in the U.S. – the Iron Man 3 box office is sitting at $680.1 million worldwide. The movie is more than halfway to the billion mark and has only been running in America for three days.

The movie even made $63.5 million in China.

The Iron Man 2 opening weekend box office was $128.1 million, and it really looks like Iron Man 3 is not playing to audiences as a sequel to Iron Man 2, but as a sequel to The Avengers. If that is true, then Thor: The Dark World and Captain America: The Winter Soldier could have huge jumps from their debut movie totals, which were pretty low compared to the other movies in the franchise.

The worldwide Iron Man 3 box office totals have already surpassed Iron Man ($585 million), Iron Man 2 ($624 million), Thor ($449 million) and Captain America ($369 million), meaning that it is already the second most successful Marvel movie after only two weekends. It looks like Marvel might have finally conquered the world.

Source: Box Office Mojo