Proving once again the incredible popularity of the Marvel Universe, Captain Marvel got off to a rousing start this weekend, the first bona fide blockbuster of 2019. The superhero origin story collected over $450 million worldwide, including $153 million domestic.

When comparing Captain Marvel to other origin stories in the MCU, it’s hard not to be impressed. Even among other solo titles of so-called lesser known heroes, this debut is double what Ant-Man and the Wasp made back in July, and is also well above others like Doctor Strange and even Spider-Man: Homecoming, which is even more impressive considering Captain hasn’t had any appearances in past films. This also sets the stage quite well for Avengers: Endgame, set to hit theaters in just under two months. It would be difficult to argue that the success of Black Panther and that characters subsequent role in Infinity War didn’t help the latter by drawing in an audience that may not have seen it otherwise. If the same can happen for Captain Marvel, it certainly seems as though there’s a real chance at an opening that could push towards $300 million – though we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves just yet.

Without any meaningful competition next weekend, Captain Marvel doesn’t have anything to worry about until it loses many of its IMAX and Premium screens to Us on the 22nd, which may prove to be a bigger juggernaut than expected, as it has been receiving a huge wave of buzz after it premiered at SXSW.

Elsewhere, there wasn’t much going on. The so-called #AlitaChallenge designed to protest the release of Captain Marvel for political reasons was, unsurprisingly, a bust, as the sci-fi title was down a harsh 56% with just $3.2 million. The release of Captain Marvel is yet another perfect example of how so-called ‘controversies’ related to blockbuster titles like this tend to be overexaggerated in the grand scheme of things; chances are, half the audience for Marvel hadn’t heard about or simply didn’t care about the comments that star Brie Larson had made, stating she wished for more diversity in the press tour leading up to the films release. If moviegoers are interested in a title, politics are likely not going to stop them, as evidenced by how many people came out to see the film this weekend.

As expected, the rest of the box office was fairly quiet; second place belonged to How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, which was down 51% for a running tally of $119 million. With $435 million worldwide, The Hidden World will likely surpass the original Dragon, but should close with less than 2 at $621 million.

A Madea Family Funeral didn’t fall quite as hard as it was looking based on early Friday estimates, though its 56% dip was far from impressive; with $45 million after ten days, Funeral will end up around the middle of the Madea franchise by the end of its run.

In the limited release market, Apollo 11 expanded outside the IMAX market into 405 locations, but unfortunately ended up dropping about 19% for a soft $3.2K per theater average. Unsurprisingly, much of the interest in the title was seeing it in IMAX, and seeing how those are now all being used for Captain Marvel, this kind of drop was more or less inevitable. Elsewhere, Gloria Bell got off to an impressive start in limited release, as it opened in 5 locations with a $30K per theater average. Climax, on the other hand, burned out much faster than expected; despite averaging $25K from 5 venues last weekend, the dance thriller made just $110K from 30 locations this weekend, for a disappointing $3.9K average.

Next weekend will see the wide releases of Captive State, Wonder Park and Five Feet Apart, though none of them will likely do much business compared to Captain Marvel.