Another summer has come to an end, which means we've now seen most of the year's big-budget films (with some notable exceptions that are being held for winter, like "Thor: The Dark World", "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire" and "The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug").  Some of the blockbusters in the past few months were spectacular...and some were spectacularly awful.  Here's the list of the Top 10 highest-grossing films of the summer, complete with their RottenTomatoes scores.  (For those unfamiliar with RT, they are a film review aggregator -- they collect every review written about a certain movie, assign each review a "Fresh" or "Rotten" label, and then find the average number of "Fresh" reviews for the film, assigning it that percentage as a means of quickly judging the quality of a film.)

Without further ado, your winners for Summer 2013:

1. Iron Man 3 - $409 million - 78%
2. Despicable Me 2 - $356 million - 76%
3. Man Of Steel - $291 million - 56%
4. Monsters University - $264 million - 78%
5. Fast & Furious 6 - $239 million - 69%
6. Star Trek Into Darkness - $228 million - 87%
7. World War Z - $201 million - 67%
8. The Heat - $157 million - 65%
9. The Great Gatsby - $145 million - 49%
10. The Conjuring - $134 million - 86%

Here are some important things to take away from this list:

1. 2013 was the highest-grossing summer EVER...

Summer 2013 set a new all-time box office record for Hollywood with $4.76 billion in ticket sales.  This number is up 11% from last summer and up 8% from the previous record holder (2011, with $4.4 billion).  Sure, some of that increase can be accounted for through inflation and the increasing number of films being released in 3D and/or IMAX, but it was still undeniably a healthy summer for Hollywood.  583 million tickets were sold, the most since 2007.

2. ...but it was also chock-full of big blockbuster bombs.

This season saw a surprising number of films perform opposite predictions -- several big-budget blockbusters flopped while some low-budget indies grossed far outside expectations.  Notably absent from the Top 10 list are several actors who are usually listed among Hollywood's most bankable stars:  Johnny Deep in "The Lone Ranger"; Will Smith in "After Earth"; Ryan Reynolds in "R.I.P.D."; Channing Tatum in "White House Down"; Matt Damon in "Elysium".  Then take "The Conjuring", a little horror movie that cost a scant $20 million that is currently at a worldwide gross of $244 million.  It recouped its entire budget in its opening weekend alone, a rare feat that no costly blockbuster came close to matching this summer.  Hollywood, take note: it's no longer enough to just slap a big name on a movie if the movie itself is terrible.

3. Franchises still rule the world.

All six of the Top Six films are franchise entries.  Four are sequels ("Iron Man 3", "Despicable Me 2", "Fast & Furious 6" and "Star Trek Into Darkness").  One is a prequel ("Monsters University").  One is a reboot ("Man Of Steel").  Of the remaining four films, two are book adaptations ("World War Z" and "The Great Gatsby") and one is based on real-life case files ("The Conjuring").  The only wholly original film on the entire list is the Sandra Bullock/Melissa McCarthy cop comedy "The Heat".

4. No one can beat "The Avengers".

Although this summer had higher box office receipts across the board than Summer 2012, no single film could come close to matching the $623 million that last summer's highest grossing film raked in.  That was "Marvel's The Avengers", which singlehandedly walked away with a huge 14.5% of the season's total gross.  ("Iron Man 3" so far has only 8.9% of 2013's cash).  In fact, this summer's #1 movie couldn't even match last summer's #2 movie, "The Dark Knight Rises", which took home $448 million.

5. Hollywood is barely passing grade school.

The critical success of the highest grossing films this summer ranges from 87% ("Into Darkness") to 49% ("Gatsby").  The average of the ten films' Rotten Tomatoes scores is 71%.  For comparison, last summer had both higher-rated films ("The Avengers" with 92%) and lower-rated films ("Ice Age: Continental Drift" with 37%), and averaged out to an almost identical 70%.  But one percentage point up from last year isn't much to brag about -- if Hollywood was in grade school, it would currently be earning a solid C-.  Time to step up your game, Tinseltown.

What grade would you give Summer 2013?  Better or worse than 2012?  Tweet us @StageBuddy to let us know what you think!