Deadline estimates that the returns from Friday’s showing of “The Avengers” will be somewhere between $70-74 million*, and after seeing it, I can understand all the hype because it’s the best time I had in the movies in quite awhile.

It’s fun, action-packed, has some terrific visuals though most importantly, it has characters that it’s easy to care about.

And it’s very funny (in a good way), which is probably what the makers of the two Fantastic Four features were trying to do, though much less successfully.

“The Avengers” is everything that a summer movie should be.

Then there’s the added bonus of having unspool a culmination of  a childhood dream because I grew up reading their adventures, and always wondered what a movie of their exploits would be like.

There are various subplots bandied about, some more successfully than others (and there’s a scene with Loki and an old man who refuses to kneel that’s deserved much more subtlety than it was given) though when things begin to gel, it’s remarkable.

I caught the 2D version and was blown away, so the next time I see it it will be in 3D.

As I posted before, sit though the credits.

* Make that +$80 million, as of this morning.