With its unbelievable worldwide box office take over the last 19-plus days, Joss Whedon’s version of The Avengers has joined an exclusive club of mega-hits. While Tinseltown used to gauge success via the magical $100 million ceiling, the recent revision toward a more international approach has produced something far more significant. Now, boffo is measured in billions, with a ‘B,’ and with only 11 other entries in that elite company, it’s clear that a nerve of sorts has been hit. The Avengers is obviously more than just a comic book driven action film. From its proposed feminist perspective to its amazing hero moments (especially those given to the otherwise underserved Hulk), it’s the very definition of a phenomenon…

...except, it isn’t really. Oh sure, any time you can proclaim an amount ten times the original reflection of cinematic triumph, you are breathing rarified air. Similarly, Whedon’s ability to meet both fan expectations and the needs of the novice suggest something far more potent. Yet it’s clear, considering the wealth of new markets being lumped in as part of the total, that the movies that don’t make a billion are true question marks. While everyone argues that movies like this translate across the obvious language barriers, there are still cultural divides to overcome. No, there is another reason why The Avengers has crossed that mighty money threshold, and it’s sitting right under your hands.

Throughout the history of film, there have been several successful actor/director collaborations - Jimmy Stewart/Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock, Robert DeNiro and Martin Scorsese…even Jerry Lewis and Frank Tashlin. From John Ford and his western icon muse, John Wayne to Billy Wilder and Jack Lemmon, the results usually remind viewers of the special bond between cast and crew. Nowhere is this more true than in the work of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. While he has also used his wife Helena Bonham Carter in his last seven films, the eight this filmmakers has made with the former teen idol stand as an important linking verb to today’s Hollywood. After the ultra-high concept days of the ‘80s, Burton and Depp have managed to make material otherwise deemed weird or eclectic into a brazen box office bonanza. They haven’t always succeeded wholly, but their attempts consistently borderline art.

So how does one rank such a divergent collection? How do you place a noble adaptation of a time honored Broadway masterwork alongside a silly slice of fairy tale reinterpretation. Oddly enough, quality overwhelms many of the more mundane reasons. While he is often criticized for his storytelling skills and lack of a successful third act, Burton can bring out the best in his partners. As seen in the determination below, the eight efforts (with, one assumes, more to come) guided by the duo defy easy explanation or examination. Like the men who made them, they are complicated, easily misunderstood, and often dismissed without a desire to dig deeper. When viewed through a less arch aesthetic, we discover that, overall, Burton and Depp have triumphed. Not always in the ways viewers might want, but definitely within the designs that keep their teamwork tantalizing. Let’s begin with their most recent revision:

4 May, 2012 is a date that deserves to go down in entertainment history as the culmination of one of the greatest marketing offensives ever witnessed. Starting in the summer of 2008, when Marvel Studios released the first Iron Man, audiences have been treated to a succession of supercharged superhero flicks like Iron Man and Thor. For all their respective merits and defects, those films can now be seen as little more than the initial building-blocks for the box office smasheroo that was to follow. By the time that The Avengers came to the United States on May 4, with its market-tested heroes and cash in the bank – opening a week and a half early in foreign markets, it had practically already earned back its gargantuan production budget well before the ritualistic midnight fanboy screenings – it was a preordained success. That the film would be a hit with audiences was almost as assured as Disney’s other big spring release, John Carter, was doomed to failure.

There’s not a little genius to this. Remember, this is an age when most of the totems of big Hollywood filmmaking have become less than trustworthy. We’re not quite at the level of panic that afflicted the studios in the Easy Rider era when all their old genres and stars had so suddenly stopped working, but the lack of certainty in the industry right now feels endemic. But the Avengers films are something else. Even the installments seen as being less successful, like The Incredible Hulk (the Edward Norton one) and Captain America, each took in well over a quarter-billion dollars worldwide. For Marvel and Disney to spend years confidently engineering an entire series of hit films with a broad diversity of stars and characters and directors (Kenneth Branagh to Jon Favreau?) to then bring all those personalities together in a titanic conclusion that can play as well in Karachi as it does in Indianapolis, is nothing less than astonishing.

The archetype of cool in French director Jean-Pierre Melville’s cinema, for most, is the fedora-and-trenchcoat wearing killer Jef Costello in the 1967 policier Le Samourai. While Alain Delon’s performance was a trend-setter for the gangster film, I would argue Melville’s finest achievement came five years earlier, in 1962. Le Doulos (meaning “the hat” or “the one who wears the hat”, signifying a police informant) is perhaps Melville’s strongest noir, despite the fact he would make many more later into his career; Le Deuxieme Souffle and Le Cercle Rouge in particular stand out.

Throughout his relatively short career as an international funny man, British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen has been known for his “ambush” approach to wit. From Borat to Ali G, fey fashionista Bruno to whatever else comes out of his crazy head, he has relied on the unsuspecting nature of his various real-life victims to fetter out laughs. Now, he’s decided to dump the faux documentary style of his previous films to make The Dictator, a splashy Summer movie in which a despot with a desire to rule the world (or at the very least, destroy Israel) finds himself a fish out of water in New York City. While a tad too truncated in its narrative, it proves that Cohen doesn’t need the “gotcha” to get people to laugh. He is genuinely funny no matter the setting.

Admiral General Aladeen (Cohen) is the power-mad ruler of the tiny African nation of Wadiya. A harsh tyrant with a quick temper and a backward way towards treating his people, he is currently under investigation by the UN for war crimes as well as a secret nuclear arms program. At the behest of the world and the advice of his loyal uncle (Ben Kingsley) - the rightful heir to the throne, by the way - he plans a trip to Manhattan to address the charges. Once there, he is part of a plot to overthrow and kill him. Soon, sans his signature beard, Aladeen in adrift in Manhattan, unable to survive without his collection of servants and Yes Men. Running into an activist health food store owner (Anna Faris) who wants Wadiya punished, he finds work…and a way to get revenge. With the help of an exiled dissident scientist from his homeland (Jason Mantzoukas), he will find a way to thwart his uncle’s plans.