When Paramount initially announced last year that they would be moving G.I. Joe: Retaliation -- the sequel to 2009's sort-of hit The Rise of Cobra (which earned $150 million domestically, but cost close to $200 million to make and market) -- from its mid-summer berth to the following March, the common assumption was that the studio was running from an impending flop. In hindsight though, the move qualifies as a stroke of genius. Facing a packed line-up of back-to-back blockbusters that included The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises, Retaliation was in danger of getting lost in the summer shuffle. But now at the end of March -- with A Good Day to Die Hard in the rearview and Iron Man 3 over a month away -- it has the big-budget action movie sequel playing field to itself. So the movie's financial success is seemingly assured. It's creative success? Well... that's a different story. Before you too join the ranks of the millions of moviegoers screaming "Yo, Joe!" this weekend, here are five things to know about Retaliation.

It's been almost a decade since the One Ring was cast into the fires of Mount Doom, rescuing Middle-earth from the scourge of Sauron. In the wake of that triumph, Aragon reclaimed his throne, Frodo sailed off to the Grey Havens and Sam returned home to his wife and daughter with an earnest, "Well, I'm back." As for Peter Jackson -- the unlikely filmmaker who brought J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy epic The Lord of the Rings to life onscreen in a trio of much-loved blockbusters -- he's gone from being a New Zealand-based cult favorite to a reigning master of Hollywood spectacle, alongside directors like James Cameron and Steven Spielberg.

Let's start off by answering the biggest question first: yes, Skyfall really is as great as you've been hearing. The 23rd entry in the venerable James Bond franchise isn't just the best studio blockbuster of the year -- featuring a better story than The Avengers, fewer logic gaps than The Dark Knight Rises and rip-roaring action sequences that easily outclass pretenders like The Hunger Games and Battleship -- it also ranks in the top five (hell, maybe even the top three) Bond adventures that have come along in 007's now 50-year big-screen history. In a fall that's packed with awards-friendly prestige pictures, Skyfall is reminder that a smart, beautifully-crafted and, in general, kick-ass action movie can be as worthy of serious acclaim and respect as any historical biopic or weighty drama. With that out of the way, time to get to some of your other burning queries:

Another October, another Paranormal Activity sequel. Having already ended the reign of the previous premiere Halloween horror franchise (those infernal Saw movies), Paranormal Activity is now the scary movie season's big kahuna -- the film that other studios go out of their way to avoid competing against. Which is why Paranormal Activity 4 is flooding the multiplex unopposed two weeks before the trick-or-treating and/or costume party debauchery begins. Since, as always, the details of the movie have been kept shrouded in secrecy, here are four things you should know about this fourth chapter before you head off to the theater. See you back here -- same spooky time, same spooky channel -- in October 2013 for Paranormal Activity 5.

With Halloween on the horizon, horror movies are crawling out of the woodwork to seize on the public appetite for all things spooky. Last week, the excellent anthology V/H/S opened in limited theatrical release following a run on VOD, while next Friday brings the return of the powerhouse Paranormal Activity franchise, now in its fourth edition. Before that well-known brand name clogs up multiplex screens in a week's time, three lesser-known horror titles open today to get a jump on the competition. One of them is actually spooky, while the only scary thing about the other two is that someone thought they were worth making.

Dumped into American theaters in January 2009, few people expected the French-produced action movie Taken to do much business on these shores, even with a noted star like Liam Neeson in the lead role. But not only did the film become a hit, it was a massive hit, almost doubling its international gross over the course of its domestic theatrical run. It also gave Neeson a whole new career as a bankable action star, paving the way for such movies as The A-Team, Unknown and The Grey (well, one out of three ain't bad). A sequel was unnecessary, but also inevitable and this time around, Taken 2 is getting the prime October berth and major ad campaign that befits a big Hollywood (by way of Europe) blockbuster. So the release recipe is a bit different, but the movie itself turns out to be exactly the same.

The Bourne Legacy belongs to that class of franchise installments that's a combination of a sequel and a reboot. Other examples of this peculiar subgenre -- which is still in need of a name, by the way; requels, maybe? Seqboots? Let's get our top linguists on it -- include those post-Peter Sellers Pink Panther comedies, the Van Damme free Kickboxer movies and the immortal The Rage: Carrie 2. Although all these films are technically sequels in that they take place in the same world and chronologically occur after the events of their predecessors, the fact that they follow all-new characters and storylines provides the sense that they're starting the series over from scratch. It's an awkward, tricky act to pull off and none of these movies have done it successfully... including, I'm sorry to say, The Bourne Legacy.

At the end of Christopher Nolan's first Batman adventure, Batman Begins, Gotham cop (and future commissioner) James Gordon warned his new masked vigilante pal about the potential for "escalation" amongst the city's criminal element in the wake of the costumed crime-fighter's arrival. In the moment, that scene existed to set the stage for the arrival of more challenging villains like the Joker, whose flair for anarchy would baffle and befuddle Batman through the course of The Dark Knight. But in hindsight, that scene was really Nolan's warning to us the audience that he was planning on escalating the franchise, not to mention the entire comic book movie genre, far beyond its expected conventions.

The Dark Knight was the initial shot across the bow and now here comes Nolan's third and supposed final chapter, The Dark Knight Rises, which pushes the director's specific vision to its breaking point. With its super-sized three-hour runtime, expansive storytelling and enormous action set-pieces (many of which were filmed in the IMAX format, which is the ideal way to see the movie), Rises is the fulfillment of that seven-year old pledge from Nolan to moviegoers. When the title card finally appears onscreen at the end of the movie, it's his equivalent of dropping the mic and walking offstage. (WARNING: Spoilers Will Rise Beyond This Point)

According to the trailers for The Amazing Spider-Man -- Sony's attempt to reboot their lucrative Spider-Man franchise in the wake of their high-profile split with the series' original director Sam Raimi -- this new take on the iconic Marvel Comics hero is supposed to explore heretofore untold secrets about who the teenage wall-crawler is and how he came to be. As it turns out, the movie's biggest secret is that it's the exact same origin story you already know from Raimi's 2002 original (not to mention the five decades worth of comics), just played in a slightly different key. But if they told you that in the ads, there's probably little chance that anyone would fork over good money to see what's essentially a remake of a ten-year old movie. And they'd be right.

Before Prometheus arrives in theaters tomorrow, let's celebrate the anniversaries of the last two films in the original Alien cycle.