Blockbuster Summer movies - where have they gone?

[Brian G Turner]

So, am reading Arnold Schwarzenegger's autobiography, Total Recall, and he's been talking about his big break with Conan the Barbarian, which came out in the summer of 1982, along with the following titles:

Bladerunner
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Tron
The Thing
ET: The Extra Terrestrial
and, of course, Conan the Barbarian

There are some pretty major classics in there, and a couple that may not have aged well but were ground-breaking for their time.

I look at the film releases from the past couple of years and am left scratching my head in trying to identify a more recent "Blockbuster Summer".

Is it because online streaming has forced production companies to change tack and downsize cinema releases? Is it simply due to growing up with a different frame of reference to modern audiences?

Or is there another reason why we don't seem to get such big and classic films? Were the 1980's simply a golden age of speculative fiction on the silver screen?

 

[AlexH]

I think the blockbuster sci-fi and fantasy films are so much more expensive to make these days, and they're far from guaranteed to make that money back. There are not as many risks in big-budget speculative cinema unless you're someone like Christopher Nolan, which is why there are so many sequels. Even excellent low budget films don't seem to have wide appeal (with the occasional exception, such as Pan's Labyrinth and Moon, but even those took a while get noticed).

"Were the 1980's simply a golden age of speculative fiction on the silver screen?"

Possibly! You quote 1982, but did that happen to be a one-off golden year for speculative fiction? Star Wars was only released in 1977, so there was still a big appetite and budget for similar films. That was bound to tail off, so I might argue it's not a fair comparison to today.

I'd argue these blockbuster summer films still exist, but they tend to be part of a long-running franchise or disappointing safer options such as Disney's live-action remakes. Last summer was pretty big, for example (off the top of my head):

Avengers: Endgame
Spider-Man: Far From Home
The Lion King
Toy Story 4

There were a few horror films I remember not being interested in.

Then outside of what could be called speculative were other huge releases such as Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. A lot of films suitable for children have been replaced by samey CGI films, so you don't get the creativity of something like E.T. perhaps. Then there are the romance and musical genre films that seem to have made a comeback in recent summers.

Other big budget spec, such as Gravity, Inception and Avatar (sequels incoming!) do seem to be more thinly spread. This year we would've had some big ones, including Wonder Woman, Black Widow, Morbius and Tenet (still due in July). So mostly long running franchises or Christopher Nolan!

 

[CriticalCarrot]

It's because the modern day cinemagoer isn't looking for originality, they want what they've already established as something they like and hollywood has picked up on that. If audiences start to go see more original films then we'll start to get that, it's all up to the audience really.

 

[Vince W]

Looking at that list those films they all rank in my top twenty favourite films of all time. The thing that unifies them in my mind is that they were all highly original for the time with, mainly, excellent stories told well. This is an element that has been displaced by relentless CGI effects and explosions. If a screenwriter gets stuck with plot or dialogue they go 'hey, lets add a flashy effect there and let the FX boffins worry about it'.

For the 10 year-old boy viewer these new films are aimed at it's a very profitable way to make films to the tune of billions. I have seen many of these new films, but the telling point is that I couldn't be arsed to ever watch them over. The idea of sitting through Solo, Avengers or Ready Player One over again fills me with dread.

I will happily watch any of those 1982 films ad infinity and have nearly done so. Until audiences develop an attention span that is willing to let a story unfold in its own time I'm afraid the age of the classic blockbuster is well and truly over.

 

[Elckerlyc]

I notice these trends in nowadays movies:
1. Original (but most likely failed remake), sequel1, sequel2, sequel3, prequel1, sequel1 of prequel1 ad infinitum.
2. Competing Film-Company comes with a series of movies that are a clone of above mentioned monstrosity.
3. Movies are primarily aimed at a youngish public, with little story, much action, lots of stunning CGI (that basically make no sense.)
4. (I'm sure I had a 4th point, somewhere...)

I haven't been to a cinema for years, simply because few movies entice me too. Perhaps I might have, had I been a fan of superheroes or Mutant X stuff, which I am clearly not.
I wish Film-companies would move on to new or other genres and dare take risks again.

 

[BAYLOR]

To me , summer movie time was a time for Science Fiction Fantasy , Horror and Adventures films and, with actually good writing with likable characters. For me, this period lasted from from the mid 1970's to the mid 1980's then , Hollywood executives ruined it all. Going to the movies started to become less and less appealing . Yes , there were good films here and there but , not enough of them. Hollywood summer movie season got swallowed up by the empty film franchise blockbusters with neither coherent stories nor compelling and likable characters. And, we got the dismal remakes, reboots and reimagined classics that weren't improved by the reimagining . A few years ago, I all but stopped going to the movies.

 

[Justin Swanton]

I suspect that part of the reason for the tailing off of SF classics is the fact that science has finally caught up with science fiction. Forty years ago there was a huge optimism over space travel: we were going to colonise the solar system and then the stars. Academics spent time and money designing massive space colonies that look ludicrous today. You could almost take Star Wars seriously. It was a time when ignorance was bliss.

That's gone now. We all get terribly excited when Musk sends three men to the ISS - something that we've known how to do for decades - and at a price only somewhat lower than that charged by the Russians using their old tech. Space travel has been in the doldrums for decades, not because of lack of enthusiasm, but because we can't take it any further. Spaceships, like commercial airliners, can get only so good.

Science fiction in consequence has seen a growing separation between hard SF and Science Fantasy, and the hard SF tales - which interest us the most since they are the most real - are necessarily limited in storyline scope: Moon, Gravity, The Martian, Apollo 13, Interstellar, Europa Report. You can't do epic space extravaganzas that might actually happen someday*. And as the science continues to throw cold water over the idealism the storylines will be come even more limited. Or we just settle for magic. Come to think of it, we have.

*The Expanse does try but it can't do without a generous dose of fantasy.

 

[Ori Vandewalle]

Star Wars was only released in 1977, so there was still a big appetite and budget for similar films. That was bound to tail off, so I might argue it's not a fair comparison to today.

This is my thought. Summer blockbusters kinda sorta started with Star Wars and if we're trending away from that now, it's no surprise because... that's what happens with trends.

 

[Rodders]

I think the rise of the Franchise has kind of ruined the summer blockbuster. Most movies these days are lazy and formulaic.

I think the rise in the quality of T.V. has also eroded our love of cinema. Why spend £50 to see a movie when there is so much choice at home.

 

[AlexH]

I think the rise of the Franchise has kind of ruined the summer blockbuster. Most movies these days are lazy and formulaic.

I think the rise in the quality of T.V. has also eroded our love of cinema. Why spend £50 to see a movie when there is so much choice at home.

I disagree with the generalisation of "most movies," unless you are just referring to the summer blockbusters, which we still do get sometimes. E.g. Edge of Tomorrow, Inception and Mad Max: Fury Road.

 

[BAYLOR]

I think the rise of the Franchise has kind of ruined the summer blockbuster. Most movies these days are lazy and formulaic.

I think the rise in the quality of T.V. has also eroded our love of cinema. Why spend £50 to see a movie when there is so much choice at home.

The tv show Max Headroom predicted the demise of Cinema.

 

[Overread]

I think we've lost a generation of film makers who knew how to pace a film and plot to fit into a cinema timescale. Or at least how to do that enough that when it got cut down for the cinema, it wasn't outright destroyed. There are a few exceptions - such as Aliens 3 and Sergio Leone (who hated having his films cut down to size).

In their place we've got films that almost always seem to try and bite off way more than they can chew, with the result being that once they've cut huge amounts of content, what we get left with is a rush. They fill it with CGI and explosions and a very rushed plot that leaves very little room for the story or character development. We see this a lot with the Marvel films, heck one of the Superman films tried to squeeze the original three films down into a single film, with the predictable result that the whole storyline wound up terribly rushed.


At the same time TV is really rising up. We've shed the shackles of the weekly formula demand and with the rise in streaming services and CGI we've entered a time where there is far more potential for more studios and smaller studios to produce quite good quality productions. With the likes of Witcher, Game of Thrones, etc... we are seeing formula based story writing taking a side step to long story arcs. Something that has taken a very long time to penetrate the TV market.

Corona has also shot the film industry a hard blow for the cinemas. Why have directors shackled to 120mins max film duration and the whole system shackled to overpriced popcorn when you can stream your film direct to your audience. Streaming doesn't need t worry about bums on seats per day in the same way as a cinema does. We've yet to really see this hit, but we might one day start to see a rise in 3 or 4 hour films. Films where the nature of streaming means that you can take a break whenever you want, but where there's far less limits on the timescale. Why worry about time when its streamed - you can use far more of the footage you shoot and produce leading to far less waste. This would be fantastic for fantasy and scifi films where often as not, there's far more background and world building that is desirable to have - esp if you step off the beaten path of common tropes.


As a note many of those earlier top films from the 80s had quite a strong formula approach, but it was more structural. It's like the Pixar style of showing a happy situation; introducing strife and loss then a challenge to be overcome with a general positive conclusion.

 

[Foxbat]

At the same time TV is really rising up. We've shed the shackles of the weekly formula demand and with the rise in streaming services and CGI we've entered a time where there is far more potential for more studios and smaller studios to produce quite good quality productions. With the likes of Witcher, Game of Thrones, etc... we are seeing formula based story writing taking a side step to long story arcs. Something that has taken a very long time to penetrate the TV market.

I agree. It's also been helped by the rise of streaming, big tellys, a plethora of food delivery services and some cinema stalwarts shifting across to Netflix and the like. No need to go outside anymore.

 

[Vince W]

I agree. It's also been helped by the rise of streaming, big tellys, a plethora of food delivery services and some cinema stalwarts shifting across to Netflix and the like. No need to go outside anymore.

What is this out-side of which you speak?

 

[Elckerlyc]

Outer-space, maybe.

 

[BAYLOR]

This is my thought. Summer blockbusters kinda sorta started with Star Wars and if we're trending away from that now, it's no surprise because... that's what happens with trends.

Film executive ans their meddling wasps ruined the summer movie.

 

[Narkalui]

This here rant is supposed to be about Phantom Menace but I think you can interpret it as a rant about the decline of modern cinema:

 

[BAYLOR]

Films have become big screen 2 hour informercials which companies now use to sell products that most people can't really afford pr don't really want.