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Silly “Speed Racer,” success is for “Iron Man”.

The first real movie match-up of the summer has come and gone, and the easy winner was Marvel’s superhero adaptation, which flew high in its second week. While most considered the prospect of newcomer “Speed Racer” eclipsing “Iron Man” an outside chance, few expected that the gap between the two would be so large.

“Iron Man” banked another $50.5 million in its second weekend, easily maintaining the top position and eclipsing “Horton Hears a Who” as the top-grosser of the year so far. The film’s current total is $177.1 million, and while competition should erode the man of metal in the coming weeks, studio executives at Paramount have plenty of reason to light up cigars in celebration.

Warner Bros. pricey “Speed Racer”, on the other hand, crashed and burned in second place with $20.2 million, making it a hard pill to swallow for studios.

The studio wasn’t the only one finding it hard to swallow. Critics gave the film- the shiniest ever made- terrible reviews, which bodes ominously for its future, especially when the acclaimed “Iron Man” is playing next door.

Expectations were high for the action extravaganza, which is about a young racecar driver with the career-limiting moniker Speed Racer. Some analysts expected the film would make more than 50% more than it actually did. Deutsche Bank said the results were “a disappointment for such an expensive film,” though it added that the costs were split with fellow studio Village Roadshow. “With poor tracking, we would not be surprised if it had already been partially written off,” the firm wrote. The film’s budget was estimated at $120 million, which doesn’t include the tens of millions spent on advertising.

Elsewhere, Fox’s comedy “What Happens in Vegas” pulled in a solid $20 million debut, nearly edging out the racer for the silver. But given Vegas’s substantially lower budget (about $35 million), this is one bet that Fox will be glad it placed.

The top 10 films made $115.4 million, up a healthy 24% from the $93.4 made in the equivalent week a year ago, when the emo “Spider-Man 3″ was swinging into its second weekend.

Despite the premium in this past weekend, last week’s comparison bruising has edged the year-to-date total down 0.3% from 2007. There is hope for for this to swing to a positive next weekend, however, as Walt Disney gets its game on with the highly-anticipated “Prince Caspian”. The Dow component is releasing the film in ultra-wide distribution with a huge advertising blitz, leaving no doubt that the crown-less again shall be king.

There’s a scene in the unimpeachably brilliant film “The Mummy Returns” when legionnaire Brendan Fraser is trying to outrun the rising sun in order to prevent the death of his little boy. As he nears safety, the speed of light (which is no slouch, speed-wise) begins to catch up with him. It gets closer and closer until he finally leaps into safety.

The North American box office is, in its own way, exactly at the moment before Fraser leaps to safety. After weeks and weeks of 2008 returns that bested their year-ago equivalent, recent weakness have prompted the edge over last year to narrow. Soon, 2007 will overtake the current year, which may be unable to widen its premium before leaping to safety. What was for a while a solid 14% lead over last year has narrowed to a much smaller 4.3%.

One could point to this past weekend as the culprit for when the year-to-date results lost a lot of ground. The top 10 films made $85.2 million, down a steep 24.5% from the $112.9 million made in the equivalent week of 2007. This weekend makes nearly eight consecutive weekends that were lower than their 2007 counterpart. (The current year beat 2007 two weeks ago, but only by 0.6%.)

The top film over the weekend was the card-counting drama “21,” which let the chips fall where they may and was dealt $23.7 million in its first hand. Though there were spades of critics who didn’t heart the film and tried to club it to death, the film should continue to get diamonds from the audience for a while and could even go double-for-nothing next week.

The two other new films this weekend didn’t perform as strongly. MGM’s spoof comedy “Superhero Movie” was defeated by the arch-nemesis of audience indifference, and arrived in third place with a less-than-heroic $9.5 million. Meanwhile, Paramount’s Iraq War drama “Stop-Loss” pulled in $4.5 million in its first battle, good enough for eighth place. The results for Stop-Loss are incredibly surprising, since in the past year, the only movies about war in the Middle East that have performed badly have been “In the Valley of Elah,” “Lions for Lambs,” “Rendition,” “Redacted,” and to a lesser extent, “Charlie Wilson’s War.”

Fox’s “Horton Hears a Who,” which was the top film two weeks running, was edged to second place in its third weekend. The film made $17.4 million, giving it a solid $117.3 million total. Deutsche Bank called the results healthy “even for a family film.”

Next week sees the release of Fox’s kid adventure “Nim’s Island,” Universal’s football comedy “Leatherheads” and Dreamwork’s horror film “The Ruins.” Given the way box office results have been going, ruins won’t be the only scary thing next week.

Well, that was nice. Short, but sweet. The American box office’s brief one-week reprise from being beaten by last year’s results ended over the weekend despite the added benefit of the Easter holiday. The top 10 films made $94.7 million, compared with the $116.3 million made in the same weekend last year. The results were also down 9.7% from the $104.7 million made over 2007’s Easter weekend.

Though 2008 started off strongly, and is still up 5.6% over last year the year-to-date period in 2007, recent weakness (and strength last year) has made for difficult comparisons of late. With the popular summer season not boasting the same amount of must-seeness as 2007, prepare yourself to hear about lower results essentially from here on out.

For two weeks running, the top film over the weekend was Fox’s “Horton Hears a Who”, which lost 44.2% of its audience and hearing to make $25.1 million. The children’s comedy has made $86.5 million total.

The weekend’s three new releases took places two through four with generally solid debuts. Second place went to Lions Gate Film’s “Meet the Browns”, which banked $20 million in relatively limited release (2,006 theaters compared to Horton’s 3,961). Cowen and Co. analysts, who monitor Lions Gate, said” Browns” would likely beat the $40 million total Cowen forecast the film to make. “We expect the [filmmaker] Tyler Perry franchise to continue to be a revenue and profit driver for Lions Gate in the future,” Cowen said, noting that two new Tyler Perry films were scheduled to be released in the company’s 2009 fiscal year.

The weekend’s third-place finisher was Fox’s “Shutter,” a horror film about a smudged camera lens. The film focused on developing $10.7 million over the weekend, meaning that with Horton’s take, News Corp. has little to be, ahem, negative about. (This is what is known as a tripod of puns.)

Flashing into fourth place was Paramount’s “Drillbit Taylor”, which made $10.2 million despite a generous marketing campaign. The relatively weak showing of the film could possibly be related to audiences thinking it was a Bob Vila biopic, or perhaps bullies across the country simply intimidated audiences away from seeing the film, which is about students hiring a bodyguard to protect them from a schoolyard brute.

Next week sees the release of war drama “Stop-Loss,” crime drama “21″ and spoof “Superhero Movie.” In other words, buckle up, because things aren’t going to get easy any time soon.

With all the talk of turmoil in the credit and housing markets, it’s sometimes forgotten that major problems are prevalent in other segments of the economy. In the U.S. box office, where the country exports a whopping 78% of its one-liners, weekly results have fallen behind the year-ago period for a fifth consecutive week.

The top 10 films made $87.1 million for the weekend, down a troubling 35.8% from the $135.7 million last year. Of course, much of this can be credited to strength last year rather than weakness this year, as total 2008 results in total are still running comfortable ahead of 2007 by more than 10%.

Last year saw the period action film “300″ debut with an enormous $70.9 million take. That kind of tally is rarely seen outside the summer and winter holiday seasons, making any new release this year pale by comparison. Thus, the winner of this year’s pale award was Warner Bros.’s “10,000 B.C.,” which arrived in first place with $35.7 million, or about half of 300’s debut.

The film, an action-adventure set at the dawn of humanity, was beset with terrible reviews, negative audience word-of-mouth and a fierce boycott by the Geico cavemen characters. With such strikes against it, the film probably won’t have much time before it goes extinct like the mighty saber-toothed tiger, which in the film is defeated by early humans squirting it with a giant stone water bottle.

The second-place winner over the weekend was “College Road Trip,” a comedy produced by Disney unit Buena Vista. The film made $14 million, benefiting from the family-friendly G-rating and active fan base of star Raven-Symone. The weekend’s third new film, Lions Gate’s “The Bank Job,” came in fifth place, stealing $5.7 million. The relatively weaker results aren’t very surprising considering that the film was released in almost 2,000 fewer theaters than 10,000 B.C.

Among the holdovers, last week’s top film “Semi-Pro” lost a hefty 61.9% of its audience, dropping to fourth place with a $5.8 million gross in its second weekend. The New Line release has scored a lame $24.7 million total. Even “Vantage Point,” which has been out for a week longer than Semi-Pro, made more money this weekend, coming in third place with $7.5 million. The film has made an impressive $51.7 million for Sony Pictures.

The string of disappointing weeks may end next week, as Fox’s family comedy “Horton Hears a Who” opens. Fox has saturated available every ad space with publicity for the film, which prompts the question of whether anyone hasn’t heard what Horton hears.