In March 2012, “The Hunger Games” had the third-biggest opening weekend ever at $152.5 million, behind only the final chapter of “Harry Potter” ($169m) and “The Dark Knight” ($158m).

A year and a half later, its sequel, “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire,” has opened $10 million bigger—$161 million—giving it ... the fourth-best opening weekend ever, behind “The Avengers” ($207m), “Iron Man 3” ($174m), and the final “Harry Potter.”

So it goes in the battle for opening weekends. You do better and fall behind. A metaphor for our age.

Even so, impressive. Girls rule, etc. Hollywood, take note.

Right. It has. Wrongly, probably.

“Delivery Man,” the poorly reviewed remake of the charming French-Canadian comedy “Starbuck,” was the only other film to open wide this weekend, and it grossed just $8.2 million in 3,036 theaters. Katniss made that in the time it took me to write this paragraph.

Most everything else fell off: “Thor” by 61% (for $14m and second place), “The Best Man Holiday” by 58% (for $12m and third place), “Free Birds” by 34% (for $5.3m and fifth place).

The few quality films huddle together further down:

8.  “Gravity”: $3.3m
9.  “12 Years a Slave”: $2.8m
10. “Dallas Buyers Club”: $2.7m
16. “The Book Thief”: $605K
17. “All is Lost”: $390K
18. “Nebraska”: $350K
21. “Blue is the Warmest Color”: $193K

Of these, “Gravity” has made big bucks ($245m and counting domestic), “12 Years” isn’t doing poorly ($29m and counting), and none of the rest have grossed more than $5 million.

So we know what’s still not catching fire.

Heil, I mean hail the conquering hero.