However, the old Hollywood power source — star wattage — continued to dim. Audiences still turned out for Johnny Depp in the Pirates series, but stars otherwise failed to draw crowds.

Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks flamed out “Larry Crowne.” Jim Carrey, who almost seems to be adopting a creepy public persona of late, flopped in “Mr. Popper’s Penguins.” Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig fell off their box-office horses in “Cowboys & Aliens.” The careers of Kevin James (“Zookeeper”) and Ryan Reynolds (“Green Lantern”) also cooled off.

Three movie companies managed to breathe life into aging or moribund franchises or seed new ones — Hollywood’s equivalent of home runs. Marvel Studios, a division of Disney, already has sequels to “Thor” and “Captain America” in the works, while Sony’s movie studio has moved a follow-up to “The Smurfs,” which came out of nowhere to sell over $132 million in tickets in North America (and is closing in on $400 million worldwide).

Efforts by 20th Century Fox, owned by the News Corporation, to restart its “X-Men” and “Planet of the Apes” franchises were particularly impressive. Fox took creative risks with “X-Men: First Class” and “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” and it was rewarded with hits that will spawn sequels.

“The lesson for us is that different and original is always hard and always a risk but has great upside,” said Tom Rothman, co-chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment. “While both of those films had genetic material in common with their original franchises, both were very, very original pieces.” Notably, “First Class” and “Rise” received some of the summer’s best reviews.

Though the United States remains the world’s largest movie market, one of the summer’s lessons centers on the growing importance of overseas ticket sales, particularly in Russia and China. Several films — including “Stranger Tides,” “Kung Fu Panda 2” from DreamWorks Animation, and Disney-Pixar’s “Cars 2” — disappointed at home, but generated big returns internationally.