LOS ANGELES — Studio executives hope they’ve trained their audience well as the season of summer blockbusters arrives.

From May through mid-August, Hollywood will bank on the idea that there is at least one movie every week — and sometimes two — that you simply must see.

Summer features such box-office staples as Will Smith, Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller and Jack Black, and brings back beloved characters such as Indiana Jones, Batman, Speed Racer, Carrie and her “Sex and the City” gal pals, the “Narnia” kids, the Incredible Hulk and two very different agent couples: paranormal troupers Mulder and Scully and comic spies Maxwell Smart and Agent 99.

A look at the lineup:

TODAY: Heavy hitters like “Spider-Man” and “Superman” are established big-screen figures, but the comic-book world has a deep bench.

Robert Downey Jr. takes the lead in “Iron Man,” playing a wealthy inventor who lacks superpowers but does have a nifty high-tech suit of armor that really leaves an impression when he gives villains a knuckle sandwich.

Gwyneth Paltrow, Terrence Howard and Jeff Bridges co-star in the tale based on the Marvel Comics hero, a man with a subversive sense of humor who starts off as “not the most likable fellow,” said director Jon Favreau.

With “Iron Man” less familiar to audiences than Supe or Spidey, it took an actor of Downey’s status to ease some worries Favreau had.

“My biggest concern was that it would slide into some B-hero wheeled out by Marvel, that this movie would be a poor man’s ‘Spider-Man,”’ Favreau said. “Hiring Robert, the challenge shifted from whether it was going to be good or bad to how far we were going to push things and bend the genre.”

MAY 9: Andy and Larry Wachowski turned virtual reality on its head with “The Matrix.” Now they follow their R-rated franchise with the family-friendly adventure “Speed Racer,” an adaptation of the animated show starring Emile Hirsch as the kid roaring along the roadways, Christina Ricci as his helicopter-flying girlfriend and Matthew Fox as mystery man Racer X.

A fan of “Speed Racer” growing up, Hirsch said he wanted in as soon as he heard the Wachowski brothers were writing and directing.

“Seeing ‘The Matrix’ for the first time when I was 13 to this day is one of my most memorable experiences ever in a movie theater,” Hirsch said. “I already loved the show, and for guys of that kind of caliber to get involved with it could only be something special.”

MAY 16: Things sure can change in 1,300 years, as Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy Pevensie learn when they go over the rainbow again in “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian,” the second installment in the fantasy franchise based on C.S. Lewis’ books.

Only a short time has passed for the siblings in England, but centuries have gone by in Narnia, which now is under the bootheel of the tyrannical Telmarines and mean King Miraz. The Pevensies encounter a new ally — Caspian (Ben Barnes), the rightful heir to Narnia’s throne — and are reacquainted with old buddy Aslan the lion, again voiced by Liam Neeson.

The three years since the first movie, “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” have resulted in huge digital advancements in how director Andrew Adamson could depict computer-generated creatures such as Aslan.