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Only Tropic Thunder managed to draw more than $10 million in box office in the weekend preceding Labor Day, the traditional end to the summer movie season. Totals through Sunday have the Robert Downey Jr.-headed comedy coming away with $11.5 million for its third straight week atop the box office draw. As the movie that dethroned The Dark Knight from the top spot, it’s been a great summer movie season for actor Robert Downey Jr., whose Marvel Studios superhero pic, Iron Man, kicked off the summer blockbuster season.

So far, Tropic Thunder has grossed $86 million in worldwide box office, while Iron Man topped out at $571 million in worldwide box office. Together, that gives Downey Jr. $657 million in box office this summer.

By comparison, The Dark Knight has accumulated an additional $8.75 million this weekend, bringing it’s domestic total to $502 million and its worldwide total to $919 million.

So, while summer may be packing its Rimowa bags, the future looked bright for Downey Jr., who has had as much impact on summer box office success as nearly anyone, aside from the cast of The Dark Knight.

If Downey Jr. can avoid another career-derailing misstep, he should expect to see several large paydays in the near future.

In other chart news, Babylon AD debuted in second place with $9.7 million, a worrisome note considering its $70 million budget; The House Bunny came in fourth, close behind The Dark Knight, with $8.4 million. And Traitor, the Guy Pearce-Don Cheadle vehicle, rounded out the Top 5 spots with $7.9 million.

Other disappointments: The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emporer has fallen to the 13 spot, grossing only $97 million to date against a $145 million budget. Star Wars: The Clone Wars is already out of the Top 10, with only $27 million grossed to date. And Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 dropped from 12 to 19 this week, drawing only $1.45 million but has already grossed $41 million against a budget of $27 million, making it a value film despite a brief run.

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Tropic Thunder may not be set on a beach or feature starlets in skimpy swimwear, but Robert Downey Jr’s risky performance in black-face was apparently enough to help the movie cling to the top spot in box office draw in the weekend leading up to the coronation of the political messiah, Barry Obama.

Tropic Thunder garnered $16.2 million, just enough to hold off newcomers The House Bunny ($14.5 million) and Death Race ($12.6 million). The Dark Knight, knocked off its perch at number one last weekend by Tropic Thunder, slipped to fourth place overall this week, bringing in only $10.5 million in its sixth week of release.

Tropic Thunder has topped $65 million in two weeks, while The Dark Knight’s total now stands at $489 million domestically and $381 million overseas for a combined total of $871 million. The Dark Knight is now second only to Titanic in all-time box office.

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With a career revitalized by the Iron Man film, Robert Downey Jr.’s risky role in Tropic Thunder powered the campy comedy to an upset of The Dark Knight after a solid month of box office bat-dominance. Tropic Thunder scored $26 million in its debut, while The Dark Knight slipped to the second spot with $16.7 million.

Batman now has $471 million domestically, $328 million overseas, and a grand total that just eclipsed the $800 million mark. Star Wars: The Clone Wars ($15.5 million), Mirrors ($11.1 million) and Pineapple Express ($10 million) round out the Top 5 spots.

X-Files: I Want To Believe has already been pulled from theaters like the tiny Micro SD card its box office results unfortunately resembled.

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The Dark Knight is showing signs of slowing its momentum, but is still doing powerful enough business to fend off the latest challenger, the Seth Rogan comedy, The Pineapple Express. Dark Knight had a $26 million weekend in its fourth week of release, while Pineapple Express enjoyed a close second place with $22.6 million in its debut bow.

The Dark Knight now totals $441 million domestically and $263 million overseas for a total of $704.6 million to date. The Mummy was third with $16 million, the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 debuted at fourth place with $10.7 million, and Step Brothers rounded out the top five with $8.9 million. X-Files continued its unexpected plunge, dropping to 13th place, grossing only $1.1 million on the weekend, and quickly shedding screens in only its third week of release. That’s still better money than you can generate by buying auto insurance online, but not by much.

X-Files: I Want to Believe has grossed $19.6 million against a $30 million budget and seems unlikely to reach black ink until the Blu-Ray video release. The movie has yet to be released outside of the US.

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Even the undead can’t bring down The Dark Knight; that’s the lesson to be learned from this week’s box office results as the Caped Crusader stayed atop the weekend box office like pool floats, drawing $42.6 million to arrive at a new total of $393 million domestically. Add in an additional $202 million in foreign box office and The Dark Knight sits at an impressive $596 million in just 17 days.

Still, the Brenden Fraser vehicle, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor was not exactly blown over by The Dark Knight, earning a respectable $40.4 million for a strong second-place showing. That’s far more than last week’s challenger, X-Files: I Want to Believe, will probably gross at the box office at the end of its run. X-Files fell all the way to the ninth spot this week, drawing only $3.38 million in the crowded field and topping only $17 million in 10 days, far below expectations and marking the film as the biggest disappointment of the summer since Speed Racer.

Step Brothers was third with $16.5 million ($63.1 million to date), Mamma Mia! was fourth with $12.6 million ($87.4 million to date), and Journey to the Center of the Earth’s $6.6 million ($72.9 million to date) edges the Kevin Costner starrer, Swing Vote, for the fifth spot. The improbable political comedy struggled to earn $6.2 million in its debut, earmarking it as yet another bomb at the box office for the once-potent Costner.

Meanwhile, aside from Batman, this summer may have helped Brenden Fraser’s career more than any other; with two movies in the top five this past weekend, grossing a combined $47 million this weekend and a combined $113.3 million domestically to date, he’s proven himself to still be bankable.

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Even in its second week of release, The Dark Knight, the follow-up to 2005’s Batman Begins, is still high atop the weekend box office with a grand total of over $75 million in receipts domestically. The movie broke the record for opening weekend last week, and by Friday had broken the record for quickest movie to reach the $300 million mark.

The Dark Knight sits at approximately $314 million in domestic ticket sales after 10 days of release, and with foreign markets added in, that total jumps to $355 million. That places The Dark Knight well ahead of SpiderMan 3’s pace, and has some in Hollywood even whispering about eclipsing Titanic’s final total before it’s all done.

That might be a bit premature after only two weeks, but the film is certainly valued far above Tahitian pearls at this point, and is well on its way to becoming the most successful superhero movie of all time. That’s due in large part to Chris Nolan’s continued sober treatment of the Batman character; whereas Batman Begins felt like a James Bond film, The Dark Knight has more of a feel akin to Scarface, The Untouchables, or perhaps a James Patterson thriller.

In other words, Batman doesn’t feel like a “superhero” movie so much as it feels like a solid crime thriller; the gangsters in the film are not bumbling fools that the Joker rules over, but are hardcore, ruthless criminals who might have stepped out of the set of Oz or The Sopranos, rather than a comic book adaptation, and The Joker is genuinely at risk to the lowlifes he’s seeking to control, staying atop only by being just a bit more bloodthirsty and less predictable than they are.

But enough with the love-fest for The Dark Knight; two new movies made their mark this weekend as well. The Will Ferrell comedy Step Brothers notched a solid $30 million to take second place, and Mamma Mia!, the smart counter-programming film to The Dark Knight, held onto third place with a respectable $17.8 million.

The surprise of the weekend was the poor performance of the very-well-done X-Files movie, I Want To Believe, which barely squeezed $10.2 million out of the weekend. Of course, being nearly six years removed from the TV show’s final bow, and almost a decade since the franchise’s last big-screen appearance, didn’t help. The film has been well-received by reviewers, but perhaps the biggest reason the film has stumbled is that it pursues a very similar demographic to that of The Dark Knight, and was released only one week following The Dark Knight’s debut; Fox would have been wise to push X-Files: I Want to Believe back into August, to get more breathing room from what most of Hollywood knew would be a monster hit in the form of The Dark Knight.

If Fox doesn’t stop believing in the X-Files film, though, it could become one of those long-run quiet hits that never really has a huge weekend, but does solid business for a long time as folks get other films ticked off on their must-see lists, and start searching for those quieter films they missed when concentrating on The Dark Knight and other top hit movies.

Next week brings the last huge “box office blockbuster” of the summer, the long-delayed Mummy sequel, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emporer. Identical demographics to The Dark Knight’s audience spell trouble for that one, too, I’m afriad. Swing Vote isn’t expected to make a big splash either, and August is a wasteland of quiet films, so The Dark Knight could have a good, long run and X-Files: I Want To Beleive could easily bounce back, given the chance, over the next five or six weeks.

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