Now the fun begins. The Avengers has broken box office records in its opening weekend, taking in more than half a billion and counting. But now that the fan boys and girls have flocked to the theatres, and the hype has started to subside just a little bit, maybe we can we assess the summer’s biggest movie on its merits.

Is The Avengers a cornucopia of unparalleled Hulkified, Iron Manic superhero goodness? Or it is nothing more than two hours and 22 minutes of overhyped, incoherent I-want-my-fifteen bucks back suckitude? Cast your vote here:

My colleague Mark Hughes thought it was the best pure super hero movie of all time:

The Avengers Sucks. And It Doesn’t Matter
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Why “The Avengers” Is So Good–And How An Old Timer Steals the Show
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‘The Avengers’ Assembles Best Pure ‘Superhero’ Movie Of All Time
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The Avengers is a great movie in many regards, and is a great movie overall. But it’s important to point out that it is also the best film of its genre, because some of us recognize that it’s a genre with many great entries of significant artistic value….Home run, Mr. Whedon and Marvel. Home freakin’ run.

Fellow Forbers Roger Friedman agreed:

But the special effect are super- and the 3D really seems to mean something. You really feel like you’re in a comic book. And again, the writing — for this sort of thing–is snappy and fun. Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man gets to quip a lot–asking Thor, “Is this Shakespeare in the Park?” as the super heroes agonize over their lot in life.

Me? I thought it sucked.

I’m not a cinesnob, or I wasn’t last night. I’m not comparing The Avengersto The Diving Bell and the Butterfly or even No Country for Old Men. I’m comparing it to my favorite summer popcorn movies: Iron Man. The Dark Knight. X-Men. Star Trek…And even by those modest watch/laugh/cheer/forget standards, The Avengers was a major disappointment.

AO Scott from the New York Times agreed with me.

The secret of “The Avengers” is that it is a snappy little dialogue comedy dressed up as something else, that something else being a giant A.T.M. for Marvel and its new studio overlords, the Walt Disney Company…. in keeping with the imperatives of global franchise entertainment, the big shootout in “The Avengers” must be enormous, of a scale and duration that obliterates everything else. A hole opens in the sky, disgorging metallic warriors on Jet Skis and big snakey things that inflict serious digital damage on the Manhattan skyline. Before that there are similarly overdone combat sequences. None of them matches, in cinematic wit or visceral surprise, a sucker punch landed by the Hulk on Thor’s lantern jaw…

Samuel L. Jackson, aka Nick Fury, tweeted his disagreement.

“#Avengers fans,NY Times critic AO Scott needs a new job! Let’s help him find one! One he can ACTUALLY do!

Does any of this matter? The box office performance of the roundly-reviled Transformers series would suggest no. But The Avengers producers brought the talented Joss Whedon on board to write and direct, so clearly they were hoping for a movie that would appeal to more than comic book fans and 12-year-old boys in search of ever larger explosions. After an opening weekend that guaranteed a series of sequels, the critical reception and the word of mouth could have a real impact on the shape and tone of that next Avengers movie.