As I suspected, “Thor” was strong enough in its second weekend to stay at the top of the box-office chart, dropping just 48% to gross $34.5 million, besting the still-rather-impressive $24.4 million earned by “Bridesmaids”.

There are no losers here, though. “Bridesmaids” looks to be a similar word-of-mouth survivor; I expect it’ll do decent business next weekend, too, when people need an alternative to the “Pirates of the Caribbean” fourquel.

Incidentally, does anyone really think that one’s going to be as huge as Disney seems to believe? I was under the impression that the earlier sequels had taken the franchise to “Matrix”-scale levels of loathing among the general public. (And I say this as someone who really enjoyed “Dead Man’s Chest”.)

Ah, well. If you’re gonna roll the dice, you might as well roll ’em with an established property …