Vox recently ran an article by announcing the death of the summer movie season. It’s an insightful read. The summer movie season has been dying for years. Tom Cruise had his first non-holiday movie release in decades with Oblivion in 2013, and continued the trend with Jack Reacher: Never Go Back in October of 2016. Captain America: The Winter Soldier in early April of 2014 was perhaps the first real indicator of summer’s demise, although The Fast and the Furious movies have long been summer movies playing in the April playground. But movies started moving up the traditional Memorial Day weekend opening around the time of The Phantom Menace in 1999, which opened almost a week earlier than the previous Star Wars films. Spider-Man in 2002 moved its opening day all the way up to the first Friday of May and is arguably responsible for launching Marvel’s long-term success. Logan was the first X-Men movie to be released outside of summer, in the hit-or-miss middle of March. But the final nail in the coffin wasn’t April’s Avengers: Infinity War, nor was it summer king Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One that dropped in March. It was Black Panther, which demolished the box office with a traditional summer movie in the middle of wintry February.
But while it was created in the 70s, the 80s are the heyday of the summer movie season, each new year bringing a fresh and unexpected surprise, interspersed with the occasional sequel: The Empire Strikes Back in 1980; Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981; E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial in 1982; Return of the Jedi in 1983; Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, as well as Gremlins, in 1984; Back to the Future in 1985; and Top Gun in 1986. These films were all earth-shaking hits and are now widely regarded as classics. 1987 was the first year that decade that summer did not produce a standout hit, with summer sequel Beverly Hills Cop II placing 3rd at the annual box-office, behind holiday hit Three Men and a Baby and fall thriller Fatal Attraction. 1988 came back strong with Die Hard, though that film’s R-rated hardcore action violence meant a more limited audience. Who Framed Roger Rabbit? still kept the family summer hits coming, and Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice was an offbeat surprise that endures still.
Arguably, the summer movie season, at least in its 80s form, has been on the wane since Burton’s own Batman in 1989. It’s impossible to overstate the overwhelming expectation that movie imbued in every corner of the country that year, from the controversial casting of Michael Keaton the previous year to the first trailer that had audiences cheering. Not since Star Wars was expectation so high. Batman closed the book on the Spielbergian 80s summer and ushered in an era of darker themed summer movies. Batman also presaged the comic-book renaissance we’re currently riding. It’s worth noting that the 2nd and 3rd place winners in 1989 were sequels to Indiana Jones and Lethal Weapon, respectively.
After Batman, summer season morphed from the organic wave that started with Star Wars into the obligatory blockbuster dump that defined the 90s. So many movies struggled so hard to hit the memorable heights of of the 80s and, though they were certainly profitable, they failed to capture the public’s near-ubiquitous goodwill of that decade. Even the Batman and Die Hard sequels were imbued with a cynicism and knowing sadism. While the Indiana Jones movies upped the ante on violence (and certainly can’t escape accusations of passive racism), they still felt like family-friendly movies, even as they were responsible for creating the PG-13 rating that many believe has diluted both the PG and R-rated movie pool.
The 90s spawned an endless wave of Die Hard knock-offs that also led summer movies into a decade of R-rated violence: Terminator 2, Lethal Weapon 3, Speed, True Lies, Die Hard with a Vengeance, The Rock, Air Force One, Face/Off. That’s not to say there weren’t also family-oriented hits at this time, but even Spielberg’s own Jurassic Park, while a classic in its own right, can’t stand up to Jaws or his 80s hits. And while we got the classic movie-of-the-week Independence Day, which tried to be both Star Wars and Top Gun, it paled in comparison to both. By the time 1999 came around, The Phantom Menace may have been the financial king, but it was the most divisive Star Wars movie up to that point, and the out-of-left-field The Matrix straddled the line between hardcore R-rated action and serious sci-fi. Its influences in graphic novels led the comic boom the following year with X-Men. The rest of 1999’s top summer hits were an eclectic mix of movies we’re not likely to see again for some time: The Sixth Sense, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Tarzan, Big Daddy, The Mummy, and a little indie movie called The Blair Witch Project.
It’s simply not possible to compare the hits of the 80s to the hits of today. Marvel has managed to craft a formula for blockbuster success that transcends the calendar. Its shared universe is something other studios, including rival DC, have failed to emulate. Even Star Wars no longer commands the summer, having been shunted to Christmas, but still a high-profile holiday season. We’ll have to see if Solo: A Star Wars Story can regain the summer blockbuster’s former glory, opening in its ancestors’ now quaint Memorial Day weekend spot.
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