The Evolution of the Summer Blockbuster

Today, big-budget movies are as much a summer tradition as BBQs and beach flings. But things weren’t always this way. Much like Hollywood itself—and its surgically-enhanced denizens—the “summer blockbuster” is a manmade phenomenon. And one that occurred accidentally at that, with the release of Jaws in the summer of 1975 (though some may prefer the word “serendipitously” to “accidentally”).

In the nearly 40 years since, each summer an onslaught of big-budget movies make their debut, each one hoping to be the next great success story. But as The Lone Ranger reminds us, even a film that is tailor-made for mass consumption can’t be guaranteed an audience. “If you build it, they will come,” may have been true for Kevin Costner and his Field of Dreams, but it's only wishful thinking on the part of studio executives.

With the summer movie season now in full swing, and Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim ready to see what kind of mega-robot magic it can work on the box office this weekend, we’re going all the way back to 1975 to retrace The Evolution of the Summer Blockbuster.

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In the summer of 1975, there was a feeding frenzy at the box office. It went by the name of Jaws. Steven Spielberg’s brilliant adaptation of Peter Benchley’s best-selling novel about a great white shark intent on turning picturesque little Amity Island into chum. The film, which grossed about $450 million worldwide, wasn’t the first true “blockbuster” film, but it did clue studio heads into a rather simple concept: with vacations and holidays, most people find themselves with a little spare time in the summer. And what better way to spend it than in a movie theater? (Particularly an air-conditioned one.)

Of course, the unprecedented success of the film—which had people waiting in lines around the block to see it a second and third time—was a surprise to everyone. Particularly Spielberg and the executives at Universal, who felt the film was doomed considering its troubled production, which saw shooting go 100 days over schedule and the budget skyrocket from $4 million to $9 million by the time the film wrapped. When he was refused a reshoot on the scene in which Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) discovers the body of Ben Gardner underwater, Spielberg spent $3,000 of his own money to make it happen. The gambles paid off.

For better or worse, Spielberg’s little-movie-that-could forced studios to rethink their creative direction. The “New Hollywood” era in which Jaws was made was a place where the director was king and thus allowed to make many a counter-cultural statement (as evidenced by films like Bonnie & Clyde, The Graduate, Easy Rider and Harold and Maude). Jaws brought the “business” back into show business, and served as an inspiration to every big-budget, heavily advertised summer movie that would follow.

Remember those Star Wars action figures you played with as a kid? Or the Despicable Me sheet set you bought your kid last weekend? You’ve got George Lucas to thank for both of them.

The man who unleashed Jar Jar Binks onto the world may have only been 33 years old when he shot Stars Wars, but he was already thinking about the future. In a move that likely still has studio heads slapping their foreheads on the regular, Lucas agreed to take a pay cut for writing and directing the franchise’s 1977 debut in exchange for control over its merchandising rights. Every action figure, T-shirt, trading card, and lunchbox—it all belongs to Georgie Boy. This fun little infographic estimates that the franchise has sold about $12 billion in toys. You could buy a lot of lightsabers with that.

Unfortunately for would-be future merchandising magnates, Lucas’ brilliant business deal was the first and last of its kind. Hollywood studios now have full departments and teams dedicated to milking every last dollar out of movie-related merchandise.

Having each revolutionized the film industry and made a fortune in the process, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas made a move in 1981 that was totally appropriate for The Decade of Greed: They joined forces. While on vacation together in Hawaii, the close friends conceived the character of Indiana Jones, who first appeared in 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The dynamic duo decided that Spielberg would direct and Lucas would produce, which turned out to be yet another groundbreaking moment, as Lucas was able to convince Paramount to finance the film’s entire $20 million budget but let him retain ownership of 40 percent of the film and collect half of the profits once it hit a specific threshold. Money.

The film ended up as the highest grossing film of 1981, lassoing up $389 million worldwide, and spawned three more features and one TV show (The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles) over the next 27 years. A fifth installment in the film franchise has also been rumored.

Of the 10 highest-grossing films of all time, Lucas and Spielberg made seven of them (Raiders of the Ark comes in last place—think about that). While Lucas has made few returns to the director’s chair over the years, four of his Star Wars installments occupy spots on the list (with his 1977 original at number one). Spielberg has continued to define the summer movie landscape—as well as winter, spring and fall—in the decades since, with movies like E.T. and Jurassic Park (which hold the number two and nine spots, respectively).

Yes, we’re going to talk about Steven Spielberg again. Because it was at his insistence, following a public outcry over the violence in a couple of his PG-rated movies (including Poltergeist, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Gremlins), that the MPAA instituted the PG-13 rating.

The change turned out to be a boon to the industry, as it created a brand-new moviegoing audience: teenagers. Previously banned from R-rated films and disinterested in PG movies that seemed too childish for their fickle pubescent tastes, the PG-13 rating was a bulls-eye for bored teens on summer vacation whose parents were more than willing to shell out money for them to see a movie, and who were likely to see a movie they really liked multiple times.

John Milius’ Red Dawn—about a Soviet invasion on U.S. soil that forces teens to become soldiers—was the first film to be released with the PG-13 rating. While not a bona fide summer blockbuster, it managed to take in close to $40 million, almost 10 times its original budget, and became the year’s 20th highest grossing film.

Action has always been a part of the Hollywood formula (you know the old “Lights! Camera! Action!” command). But if ever there were a golden age for action movies, it would have to be the 1980s. In what other decade would musclemen with limited oratory skills (Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, obviously) come to redefine the term “leading man?”

In the wake of family-friendly actioners like the Indiana Jones films, a spate of R-rated action films began arriving in the mid-1980s. They dealt with adult-oriented issues like the Vietnam War (Rambo: First Blood Part II), murderous cults (Cobra), mafia takedowns (Raw Deal), jungle commandos (Predator), cyborg cops (RoboCop), crazy cops (Die Hard), and maniac cops (Maniac Cop)—all of which seemed ripe for the warm-weather watching.

These made-for-mass-consumption flicks were conceived from the get-go to be the studio’s summer tent poles, painting themselves as “blockbusters” whether audiences showed up or not. It’s this wave of shoot-‘em-up films that diluted the “blockbuster” designation, turning it from a verified financial achievement into almost a genre unto itself.

Superheroes have long been fodder for filmmakers, with one easily able to argue that Christopher Reeves’ first turn as Superman remains one of the best superhero films of all time—and certainly the best of the Superman restarts. (Nice try, Man of Steel.) But it was Tim Burton’s decidedly darker take on Batman in 1989 that sparked a renewed interest in capes and tights. The film’s $411 million worldwide box office take didn’t hurt interest in other comic book heroes who could make the leap to the big screen, The Rocketeer, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Phantom among them.

Burton parted ways with the Caped Crusader after just two outings, passing the reins to Joel Schumacher, who made the franchise's lowest-grossingfilm: Batman & Robin. Criticized for being campy (and not in a good way) Schumacher’s cinematic disaster signaled an end to the run on superhero movies. At least for the moment.

In the same year that Back to the Future Part II, Batman, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade topped the box office, a new wave of indie film directors began to make their presence known. Movies like Steven Soderbergh’s sex, lies, and videotape and Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing weren’t bringing in box office receipts to rival Steven Spielberg, but they were gaining enough buzz both on the film festival circuit and by word-of-mouth to bring in some serious ROI. Sex, lies, and videotape had a $1 million budget and a $24.7 million run at the box office, while Do the Right Thing made more than six times its original $6 million budget.

The box office success of Soderbergh and Lee announced the duo as rising stars in the industry and highlighted the dearth of personal, character-driven films at the box office. Their films opened the door for a flood of new filmmakers (Kevin Smith, Michael Moore, Quentin Tarantino, and Richard Linklater are just a few names you'll recognize) intent on channeling the spirit of the indie voices who had come before them, from John Cassavetes to Jean-Luc Godard.

They may not be able to stop themselves from eating glue, but kids sure do know how to drive up an animated film’s box office revenue. And without a school day to distract them during the summer, 90 minutes in a cinema can be just the thing an exhasuted parent needs.

Walt Disney, of course, has long been the king of animated movies. And while many of Disney's oldest films remain beloved by adults today, the 1990s were a particularly profitable—and prolific—time for the Mouse House, with annual box office behemoths that appealed to the young and old alike. In 1994, following huge box office numbers for The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin, the studio shifted its release strategy from November to June and ended up with its biggest animated hit: The Lion King.

In 2012, Disney went back to its November release schedule for Wreck-It-Ralph, perhaps only to make room on this summer’s schedule for Pixar’s Monsters University, which Disney released on June 21st (and has so far brought in $406 million).

Remember that story we told you about Joel Schumacher killing the comic book movie with Batman & Robin? Yeah, well the moratorium lasted just a few years—exactly enough time for studio execs and their hired helmers to figure out what went wrong with comic book adaptations. The answer? They went too silly. Enter: Bryan Singer, Guillermo del Toro, Sam Raimi, Ang Lee, David Goyer and, of course Christopher Nolan. A half-dozen of Hollywood’s most seriously creative directors who—one by one—redefined what it meant to adapt a graphic novel.

The new and improved wave of superhero movies came with the new millennium, with the X-Men, Spider-Man, Blade, Hulk and Hellboy all getting decidedly darker makeovers. (OK, so Spider-Man was still campy, but only in that Evil Dead sort of way that made Raimi a name director in the first place.) The most striking example of the new direction comic books were taking on the big screen came in 2005 with Batman Begins, directed by Nolan and co-written with Goyer. The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises followed, each to amazing financial and critical success (the latter being unusual for a comic book movie).

Like any successful idea, there have already been multiple attempts to replicate the exploration of the dichotomy of man versus superhero, first with Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man and this summer with Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel. Unfortunately, neither film has come close to touching the originality of what Nolan and Goyer created.

Much like your favorite television show reappearing in the same month each year, studios have made an annual event out of the latest installment of their most popular franchises. Four of the eight Harry Potter films (the world’s highest grossing film franchise) were summer affairs, as well as all of the Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean, Spider-Man, and Nolan-directed Batman movies.

The point? Don’t be surprised when Pirates of the Caribbean: Part 32 is the biggest hit of 2050.

Earlier this year, Steven Soderbergh delivered a speech on "The State of Cinema" at the San Francisco International Film Festival that quickly went viral. He made a number of insightful comments about the future of film (you can see the entire video here) and didn't hide his feeling about the business of blockbusters:

"Coming from someone who sees a whole lot of films, I can say that from personal experience, it is easier for me to justify paying $12 dollars to see an indie film that I know needs the box office earnings than a brainless, special effects-ridden, artless piece of blockbuster processed junk," he told the crowd. "And then we have filmmakers that seem to be in the business just for the money alone—look at the Twilight franchise. That's a series of teen books that could have been made watchable, at the very least, if in the right hands, but all that happened was someone sat down one day and went, 'Hmm, I could make millions on this without lifting a finger.' So they hired crappy actors, crappy filmmakers and produced a piece of shit that tweens and teens naively gobbled up. Films like that are, in my opinion, ruining the industry. That's not cinema, that's bullshit."

What does it all mean? When we look to the future of summer blockbusters—or film as a whole—what do we see? There's no one simple answer. It's pretty clear that big budgets, lots of special effects, dudes who can fly, and multiple entries within a single film franchise won't be disappearing any time soon. But the evolution will continue.

There will be hits like Star Wars and misses like The Lone Ranger. But as long as there are cinemas with seats to be filled, studio executives will continue to try and crack the code that turns a disastrous production like Jaws into a billion-dollar franchise. Unless someone tries to reboot Jaws; then there will be anarchy.