(Shane insisted we use that title)

Marvel’s The Avengers is still flying high at the box office, claiming the top spot for a third straight week and smashing all challengers into a fine pulp. This week, it seems, it didn’t have to work very hard.

Rotten buzz and superheroic competition sunk Universal’s “Battleship” over the weekend. Costing over $300 million to make and market, Peter Berg’s “Battleship” managed to sell about $25.4 million in tickets in its first weekend in North American theaters – a second-place finish behind “Marvel’s The Avengers” (Disney), which took in an estimated $55 million for a three-week domestic total of $457 million.

While it’s been a year of incredible blockbuster successes (Hunger Games, Avengers), it’s also been a year of embarrassing flops. Battleship joins John Carter as an expensive film that has not only stumbled, but faceplanted and rolled straight off a cliff in its domestic opening. At least John Carter can claim horrific marketing as part of its problem, though it was still a mediocre film. Battleship was marketed heavily to court the summer popcorn crowd. Unfortunately, moviegoers decided that they would rather see the eye-popping and well-written Avengers for a second or third time rather than another critically panned film based off of a Hasbro product.