The best and worst summers at the movies
For every 1982 (Star Trek II, E.T.) there's a 2010 (Prince Of Persia, The Last Airbender), so let's look back at the best and worst summer movie line-ups
Film Features Purple Rain
What we think of today as summer blockbuster movies arguably began in 1975 with Jaws. Opening with a broader-than-usual theatrical distribution nationwide, based on a bestseller, marketed with a very simple hook, and directed by an unusually skilled young man named Steven Spielberg, it was a massive hit and merchandising phenomenon. When Star Wars followed a similar pattern two years later, the trend really began. By 1989, when Tim Burton’s Batman became a product marketing machine, summer had become solidified as the season of the sequel, the superhero, and the sci-fi.
Nowadays, movie studios seem to regard “summer” as an all-year-long phenomenon, no longer confining expensive special-effects movies to the period between May and August that sends out-of-school teens to theaters in greater numbers. There’s still something about the summer that feels right for them, though. Barbie and Oppenheimer, to cite the latest phenomenons, feel right at home in July.
Which summers were the blockbuster best? The answer may depend upon your age, but we’ve combed through every one since 1975 and picked the best, the worst, and we even gave out a few honorable mentions.
87 Comments
We are clearly missing 1994 from this list.Speed, Wolf, The Lion King, Forrest Gump, True Lies, The Mask, Clear and Present Danger. Extend the summer season from May to September, and you can also add The Crow, Maverick, Quiz Show and The Shawshank Redemption.If you include Cannes, you can even add Pulp Fiction.Best summer for movies ever. I rest my case.
Car 54 Where are you, I Love Trouble, Getting Even with Dad, Exit to Eden, Double Dragon, and Pauly Shore all disagree with you. Oh, and the non Ralph Macchio Karate Kid to boot. There was a lot of garbage in 94. And I’m not even brining up Forrest Gump.
You could find any year that had similar dreck below the hits. Look at the full list of what came out in the AV Club’s beloved 1984:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_in_filmLike it or not today, Forest Gump made a killing that summer and was very well received at the time.
It’s still one of my favorite movies.
Not like Pauly Shore 🙂
Oof, Xanadu on that last slide. A great soundtrack. The amazing Olivia Newton-John at the height of her powers. Gene Kelly’s final film role. Yet a truly awful movie.The “How Did This Get Made” folks brought up a good point when they covered it on the show – Kira is a muse alright, but she’s a business muse – she successfully got two different people – Sonny and Danny – to abandon their creative dreams so they could settle down and start a business.
As a kid with a crush on Olivia Newton-John I did not care how bad the movie was.
Xanadu works if seen for what it is, a whisper-thin whimsical story serving as a vehicle for big song numbers. It’s basically Dames or Gold Diggers of 1933 but with updated music.
1996 was a banger. What the fuck are you on about?
Surprised we didn’t get a 1999 – Best / 2000 – Worst in there.
“Any time anyone complains that today’s blockbusters are soulless, samey, hollow effects movies, force them to sit through the unholy trinity of Twister, Mission: Impossible, and Independence Day.”Excuse me?? Every one of those three movies is a fucking BLAST and have 600% more creative soul than nearly any action/disaster movie released in the past 10 years.
I mean… clearly the person or AI writing this article hates fun. I agree with all of those as being a blast!
Thanks for making this comment because I was about to come in here and start a scene. Also what is with the major Kevin Feige dick riding in the summary “…represent the mindless junk that existed before Kevin Feige started actually caring a bit about story.” do they not think movies had stories before marvel movies
While we’re piling on, the “DAE THE EIGHTIES?!?” referred nostalgia-wank this article is going for was played out before covid.
Also, if they’re going to compare Black Widow favourably to Twister, Mission Impossible and Independence Day, they probably shouldn’t then include it on the slide where they talk about how shitty 2021 was for movies. Sends off kind of a mixed message there, AV Club.
I was in a theater in the Bronx NYC and it was packed for Independence Day and when Randy Quaid blew up that 1st ship the fucking theater went crazy! It was a fun dumb movie. Not everything needs to be Lawrence of Arabia! These writers on this site are ass.
This! How dare they insult the greatest American Hero of our generation!RIP Russel Casse
The original writer is completely wrong. One of the greatest experiences was observing the kids (9 and 12) who were watching the Mission: Impossible most famous scene. They were barely breathing, feeling the tension and literally clapped when he managed to escape.Actually, that was one of the best bluckbuster summers of the 90´s.
Yeah, that’s definitely the WTF takeaway from this list. How DARE those movies be well-crafted escapist fun? Also, Trainspotting deserves a lot better than “slight redemption.”
I assume it was because this was an American site , and Trainspotting (and its soundtrack) didnt make as much of a cultural impact as it did in Europe /Ireland and Britain.
It was pretty damn impactful here too. Sadly, regarding Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire was merely a blip on an otherwise uninterrupted downward trajectory.
Yea I think that was meant to trigger us all because nobody thinks this. They’ll be begging for Eternals or Black Widow long before Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt drive into the first storm.I mean…………… No?
I dunno, the attraction seems to hinge on a certain amount of nostalgia. I remember thinking it was kinda average a lot of the time back when it came out.
I would rather watch all three than The Eternals.
The person who wrote this list is in it for the money, no the science.
Seriously, was the writer even alive in 1996 because this list feels like it was written from the perspective of someone who has no idea what life was like before any of these movies came out. I remember everyone being super-hyped for Independence Day and cheering a few times near the end in the theater. There were lines wrapped around every movie theater across America when it came out and people loved it. Independence Day was THE quintessential summer blockbuster movie at the time. Twister and Mission Impossible were just great fun to watch at the theater that summer too.
Yeah, i dont get it either. Whoever is writing these, needs somebody else to write them. Also, the article was bouncing all over the place.And, why throw Paw Patrol in there? It’s a kids movie. It’s so far away from all the others in this list as far as target audience. It was an unnecessary jab.
Yeah Luke Y Thompson can fuck right off forever. Telling me I’ll be begging for Eternals is a punchable offense.
As someone who was alive and cognizant of the world around him in 1996, I distinctly remember a chief criticism of Mission: Impossible was that it was OVERplotted for a summer spy adventure movie. But, you know, thank god Kevin Feige was able to wrest storytelling away from peddlers of “mindless junk” such as David Koepp and Robert freaking Towne (I mean, say what you will about Koepp, but I don’t think “mindless” is near the top of the list you could crit him with).
I legitimately think the author may have confused M:I with M:I 2. It’s been too long to remember either very well, but I seem to recall M:I 2 having at least 2 twists related to the Facemaker. Even as a kid I thought it was lazy writing lol. Especially when you consider Woo was fresh off Face/Off when he made M:I 2.
Yeah.. the first Mission Impossible kinda got incoherent by the end.
Though Koepp has Indy 4 on his resume so… yeah.
I saw all of those in the movie theater at the time. Independence Day was probably the weakest of the bunch, but all were fun to watch on the big screen with a bucket of popcorn.
I came here to say the same thing. MI and ID where solid blockbusters, and twister was ridiculous and kind of amazing for it’s absurdity. Lonestar, Trainspotting are great movies and the rock also is ridiculous fun. enough to belong on the best list…
Yeah Independence Day was great. I gotta agree on Twister though. I didn’t care about a single thing that was happening on the screen.
MY GOD…THE VICE PRESIDENT…THE JOINT CHIEFS
I’m not a fan of Twister but ID4 and the original MI are both great
ok, while I do agree a little that ID4 and Twister didn’t age all that well, I disagree with the notion that they had no soul or vision. You can see that there was some inspiration and visual spark. The remark about MI is simply idiotic. That movie was a fresh breath of air in the action movie of Die Hard clones (which also could be quite good on their own). And then they cite The Rock (imho the most overrated 90s movie) as positive counterexample? Ludicrous.
I can only think AV Club writes such things to attract comments.
Yeah what the fuck. 1996 was an awesome cinema year and those three movies are all excellent.
Independence Day is just pure, ridiculous fun. Twister is good, but ultimately a bit forgettable. Mission Impossible 1 is honestly one of the most disappointing movies I’ve ever seen, and to this day I can’t stand the franchise because of the bad taste that first movie left in my mouth. So here is an entirely subjective rant that no on asked for.
Look, Mission Impossible is a perfectly competent James Bond-style superspy movie, but that formula has nothing to do with how the Mission Impossible TV series worked, where the premise was that a team of spies, each with a single specialty, had to work together to complete missions that would be (wait for it) impossible for any of them alone. The fun is in seeing the different parts of the plan come together, like a heist film but with spies. The movie seems to have a serious problem with this concept, given that it kills off the entire team in the first ten minutes and then has Tom Cruise’s character complete all the missions on his own (while Jim Phelps, the main character of the TV show, turns out to be a treasonous murderer in this movie and dies in disgrace, a twist that just feels mean-spirited.)I just remember being a young teen who had loved watching syndicated reruns of the old TV show, and walking out of the theater just LIVID at that movie. And it’s not a bad movie, honestly. I can appreciate that it’s well-made and has a lot of memorable setpieces, and Cruise is great in it. But it’s so hostile to the original premise of the franchise that I just find myself unable to enjoy it or any of the sequels.
Yeah, those comments stuck out to me – especially about the original Mission: Impossible film, acting like it was just another mindless, disposable blockbuster when it really was not at all.
I’m in Oklahoma, so we ALL went to see Twister and loved it.I saw Mission: Impossible while waiting for Independence Day to start (they didn’t start new releases until the evening on release day at my local theater). I was bored out of my skull during M:I, but LOVED ID.
I have been waiting since the 90s for someone to bring up the simple fact that Independence Day is one of the worst movies period.
I still think 1999 should be on the list, even given The Matrix was an April (March 31) release as t hat played long into the Summer.You had that, The Mummy, The Phantom Menace, Austin Powers 2, Run Lola Run, Tarzan, the South Park movie, American Pie, Blair Witch, Eyes Wide Shut, The Iron Giant, and The Sixth Sense…That doesn’t even include the also-rans Big Daddy, Wild Wild West, Summer of Sam, Arlington Road, Deep Blue Sea, Mystery Men, The Thomas Crown Affair, etc…
As a kid in the early 1980s summer movies were a blast and there was so so many good movies (and some bad ones).
Blade Runner was considered a flop that summer, Only the nerdy (not a good thing in 1982) si fi people were into it. It gained popularity on cable. Budget$28,000,000 (estimated)Gross US & Canada$32,914,489Opening weekend US & Canada$6,150,002 Jun 27, 1982Gross worldwide$41,707,342
Yeah, people watch INDEPENDENCE DAY every 4th of July because it’s a soulless hollow blockbuster….
I think it takes heat for inspiring all the insipid disaster films that came after it, none of which had casts that could begin to replicate the charm and charisma of ID’s. Others basically said “oh, you blew up some buildings? Well we’re going to reverse the polarity of the world and kill EVERYONE! Bwahaha!”
Yeah, there were a lot of those disaster movies in the second half of the 1990s, and most of them thoroughly sucked.
Not only that, but there were TWO competing sets of disaster movies with remarkably similar premises in the late 90s: Armageddon and Deep Impact, and Dante’s Peak and Volcano. Not only THAT, but each of those pairs also had contemporary made-for-TV ripoffs: Asteroid and Volcano: Fire on the Mountain, respectively.
The fun start to an otherwise awful run by Roland Emmerich, the man who decided that protracted mass death was going to be super entertaining!
The Dark Knight is a piece of shit.
Happy to see Outland get a minor shout-out here. Just a great space western, with Connery kicking ass.
The choices this AI makes are really odd. It needs to be recalibrated.I’m going to go with 2012 as the worst summer movie season in recent memory. Battleship, Total Recall, Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, Andrew Garfield’s wiped from memory Spiderman, Snow White and the Huntsman, Brave, and a bunch of terrible sequels: Bourne Legacy, Expendables 2, Madagascar 3, Ice Age 2. The bright-ish spot was The Dark Knight Rises, but that movie is pretty much forgotten these days. YMMV on Prometheus, personally I think it kinda sucked.
HOW DO YOU NOT HAVE 1997 ON THIS LIST!?!
Am I detecting Other Guys slander? Because that might be Adam McKay’s best movie.
Forgetting about There’s Something About Mary, Mulan, The Mask of Zorro, and Blade, really hurt your 1998 case. However you feel about Armageddon, it WAS popular, and I’ve found Deep Impact has aged nicely as one of the better disaster movies in the genre. There was also a delightful Parent Trap remake that is a personal favorite in our family. And when you begrudgingly have to acknowledge Saving Private Ryan, it’s a tacit admission that actually, the Summer of 98 was great.
Worst: 2023. “Barbenheimer” doesn’t make up for a summer where virtually everything is underperforming. Best: 1994. The Lion King, Forrest Gump, and Speed, is a hell of a trifecta. And it’s also got stuff like True Lies, The Crow, and The Mask which are right up my alley.
They did the same thing for 2010. They listed a bunch of lackluster movies and then at the bottom listed (as redemption) what were arguably the biggest movies of that year that most people watched: Toy Story 3, Despicable Me and Inception. Also, I agree, summer of 98 was pretty great.
2023 may have some underperformance at the box office – but Indiana Jones, Mission Impossible and the Transformers movies were pretty good – all improvements over the previous entry in their franchises. Heck took the 13 y/o to Grand Turismo and that was far better than I expected. Not an amazing flick but good summer fun and good car footage. I’d rate 2023 pretty good on quality – even if weak at the box office. Middle of the road as summer movie years go to me.
1989 was fantastic too:Batman, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Ghostbusters 2, The Abyss, Lethal Weapon 2, Parenthood, Field of Dreams, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Star Trek V, Road House.
And UHF! (Which naturally sank like a stone in the midst of all the big blockbusters.)
I mean this does raise the question of whether we’re talking in terms of quality or box office performance. The list itself kinda goes back and forth, objectively 1996 was pretty huge but I guess if you didn’t like those movies that’s nothing.
Honestly, I hated Armageddon when it came out but it’s really increased in my estimation when I’ve revisited it. The movie’s fucking insane and incredibly poorly written but goddamn is it entertaining.
Trying to term “Rocky Horror Picture Show” as a summer 1975 movie is stretching that concept further than Frank N. Furter’s leather panties.Sure, it premiered in England in one theatre on August 14th, but the the film’s American release in late September was a complete disaster. The film didn’t find it’s audience until well into 1976 when it made it’s way to midnight showings in NYC.
Who wrote this list, a 20 year old who grew up on Marvel movies?
Exactly.
Yes, I’m sure of it.
I find it odd that for 1984 the highest grossing movie of the year (Ghostbusters) is just casually mentioned in also released that year section.
The AVClub has a long history of shitting on Ghostbusters
Unless its the Paul Feig remake.
1981 also had the original Clash of the Titans — hello!
proving no summer is perfect, we also got Megaforce.Sir, I will fight you.That movie was like GI Joe, MASK, etc. come to life for young kids like me!
Where the HELL is 1989? JFC: Batman, Lethal Weapon 2, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Ghostbusters II (ehh), The Abyss, Star Trek V (double ehh), Parenthood, Field of Dreams, Do The Right Thing, When Harry Met Sally, Dead Poets Society, Turner & Hooch, UHF, Roadhouse, Karate Kid Part III (triple ehh). And those are just the ones I saw.
“…finally a good Marvel movie at long last with ‘Iron Man.’” Wow. And you write for a movie site? The first movie made “by Marvel” was Iron Man. Prior to Iron Man were great movies with Marvel characters Blade, the X-Men, and someone called Spider-Man. Maybe a little more due diligence next time.
Bulworth, a misguided attempt to mock political correctness—or wokeness, in today’s parlance—that’s best left forgotten.I just flashed back to going to see Godzilla with my Dad and passing the poster for Bulworth, which freaked me the hell out as a kid. That’s it, that’s the story.Godzilla sucked.
I hadn’t even opened the article and thought “man, 1979 was a great one”…and for the exact two reasons you mention. Kudos.
But 1982 was just a ridiculous banger of a summer movie year. So good.
This article sucks.
How fucking dare you leave Tropic Thunder out of 2008?
Did you even watch Bullworth? Because besides the fact that Warren Beatty directed and stars in it you literally got everything else about the movie wrong.
People have already correctly defended Mission: Impossible and Independence Day (and jumped on the ridiculous Kevin Feige comments) in this piece, so I’ll leave those alone and just ask, in what world is Bulworth, a comedy criticizing how far to the right mainstream democrats have moved (in 1998!), mocking political correctness?
Is The Suicide Squad lumped in with “familiar leftovers”? I think it’s a very good product.
Holy shit, did this list just completely blow over 1989? The year the defined the blockbuster?
“They’ll be begging for Eternals ” No one , NO ONE , has ever begged for The Eternals , the MCU movie best described as “..oh right they made that”Also Twister was actually pretty dumb fun , and generally well liked .
“They’ll be begging for Eternals”.see , thats the weird , pretty much incorrect take thats always added in to create engagement (i.e. comments) …which ..well it worked dammit ..Kudos .
Bulworth, a misguided attempt to mock political correctness—or wokeness, in today’s parlanceNot here to defend that movie which was certainly flawed but it was definitely not trying to mock political correctness, ffs. Quite the opposite.
I’m sorry but:Jaws rip-offs The Deep
What the hell are you talking about? How in the world would anyone with any form of review/ranking consider the Deep a Jaws ripoff? Have you even seen the movie or is it because it has Robert Shaw on a boat that confused you?