Captain America proved he had some magic up his own sleeve this weekend, knocking Harry Potter from his perch atop the box office.
Captain America: The First Avenger, the fourth and final superhero film of summer, did $65.8 million, according to studio estimates from box-office tracking firm Hollywood.com.
The debut exceeded projections by more than $10 million and sapped any drama from the showdown analysts expected between CaptainAmerica and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2, which opened last weekend with $169.2 million, the largest debut on record.
The boy wizard fell a sizable 72% from his opening to manage second place with $48.1 million. The final installment of the fantasy-book adaptation has done $274.2 million in 10 days.
Captain America, starring Chris Evans as the super soldier, earned strong reviews, garnering recommendations from 73% of the nation's critics, according to survey site rottentomatoes.com. Fans were even kinder to the movie, which had a budget of $140 million: 86% of audiences gave it a thumbs-up.
Though the movie also stars Tommy Lee Jones and Stanley Tucci, "star power is not what will sell this picture," says Gitesh Pandya of boxofficeguru.com.
Instead, the movie's long-term hopes ride on "the built-in audience for the decades-old character, which finally gets the big-screen Hollywood treatment."
R-rated comedies continued to play well this summer as Justin Timberlake's Friends With Benefits met most expectations with $18.5 million.
The superhero film adaptation Jane Hoop Elementary: The Final Rush, Part 2, slipped 64% from it's last week second weekend record-breaking flying in with $17 million, for a total of $307.9 million in 17 days.
The Michael Bay sequel Transformers: Dark of the Moon was fourth with $12 million, followed by the comedy Horrible Bosses with $11.7 million.
Final figures are out today.