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

By Luke Y. Thompson  |  August 21, 2023 | 12:00pm
Film Features Purple Rain
The best and worst summers at the movies
Clockwise from upper left: Superman II (Warner Bros.), Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan (Paramount), Gremlins (Warner Bros.), The Last Airbender (Paramount), Twister (Warner Bros.), Prince of Persia: The Sands Of Time (Disney) Graphic: AVClub

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.

Best: 1979
Apocalypse Now (1979) Official Trailer - Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall Drama Movie HD

It’s not typically lionized as one of the great movie summers, but 1979—which capped arguably the best decade ever for movies—included two all-timers: and . Francis Ford Coppola made his masterpiece, and Ridley Scott made his name, in movies inspired by Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart Of Darkness. In both, a doomed crew heads out beyond civilization on a dangerous mission to make things more convenient for the powers-that-be; Coppola lays his madness at the feet of the military, while Scott blames a faceless corporation. In the end, one protagonist survives, but with no sense they’ve made the larger world any better for their efforts. Subsequent summers wouldn’t hear of such bummers, but in the aftermath of Vietnam, our biggest entertainments were still coming to terms with the war.Also released in the summer of 1979: , , , , and .

Best: 1981
Superman II (1980) Official Trailer #1 - Christopher Reeve, Gene Hackman

1982 gets all the glory, but its preceding year was no slouch. in its day was as anticipated a sequel as , and though the years since have revealed how compromised Richard Donner’s intentions were, Christopher Reeve’s second turn in the cape would often be held up as a shining example of doing it right … at least until perfected the template decades later. Indiana Jones made his debut in , Disney went pretty dark with , the Muppets made their best movie with , and John Landis delivered the horror-comedy masterpiece , which would inspire Michael Jackson to make a certain lycanthrope-themed music video.Also released in the summer of 1981: , , , , , and .

Best: 1982
Conan the Barbarian (1982) Trailer | Arnold Schwarzenegger | James Earl Jones

It’s frequently called the “greatest geek year ever,” most recently by a TV miniseries of that name. And its major summer releases certainly make a strong case: , , , , and were among the big hits. Meanwhile, (a.k.a. Mad Max II) and created new sci-fi aesthetics that would define their respective subgenres of post-apocalypse action and dystopian megalopolis. Even movies that weren’t hits at the time have lived on and spawned imitators, from John Carpenter’s eldritch horrors in to the nascent CGI of .Also released in the summer of 1982: , , , and, proving no summer is perfect, we also got .

Best: 1984
Gremlins (1984) Official Trailer #1 - Horror Comedy

You can thank 1984 for the PG-13 rating that nearly every respectable blockbuster has nowadays. Though the first movie to be released officially certified with it was , it was Steven Spielberg, as director of , and producer of , who horrified parents with microwaved monsters and a heart-ripping sacrifice in big-budget fantasy films ostensibly for kids. Thus was born the need for a rating between PG and R; the subsequent perception of the director as a softie and sentimentalist had yet to take.Also released in the summer of 1984: , , , , , , , , , and

Best: 1988
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers

A year before Batman would burst onto screens, Hollywood still made original blockbusters, with (based on a book but VERY loosely), , and among the season’s biggest hits. , George Lucas’ attempt to do for fantasy what Star Wars had done for sci-fi, didn’t fare as well with Ron Howard at the helm, but it has only grown in esteem ever since.Martin Scorsese’s brought some viewers out to theaters to picket its alleged blasphemy, while TV comedy star Bruce Willis blew away expectations in the template-setting action epic , and made the Western cool among teens again. Ironically, the much-hyped Memorial Day movie showdown between and has mostly been forgotten.Also released in the summer of 1988: , , and .

Best: 2008
The Dark Knight (2008) Official Trailer #1 - Christopher Nolan Movie HD

In 2008, cinema still loved superheroes, but the “cinematic universe” concept hadn’t been developed for them yet. Hence we could get not just a great DC movie—maybe the greatest—in Christopher Nolan’s , but also a good Marvel movie at long last with , and a completely original superhero in Peter Berg’s . You could arguably throw in an animated one too, as kicked off the most successful DreamWorks animated franchise since . Though it didn’t spawn sequels, Pixar’s earned the company some of its best reviews ever, concealing an anti-consumerist eco-message behind a tear-jerking tale of two adorable robots in love.Less noticed at the time was the first Star Wars feature film since the prequels, and the only one released by Warner Bros.—. Mostly mocked when it came out, the film’s teenage girl protagonist would turn out to be a pretty big deal, even as her slangy catchphrases annoyed some of the fans. That character, Ahsoka Tano, is now beloved and has her very own live-action show. That summer, though, female audiences proved more into and the movie. Male-skewing comedies scored big too, with Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly playing , Seth Rogen getting high AF in , and Adam Sandler going weirder than usual in .Also released in the summer of 2008: , , and .

Worst: 1996
Twister (1996) - Original Trailer

Any time anyone complains that today’s blockbusters are soulless, samey, hollow effects movies, force them to sit through the unholy trinity of , , and . They’ll be begging for or Black Widow long before Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt drive into the first storm. Remembered mainly for their respective trailer-friendly moments: a flying cow, Tom Cruise on wires, and the White House exploding—these three truly represent the mindless junk that existed before Kevin Feige started actually caring a bit about story. Insulting to one’s intelligence and with a tenuous grasp at best on science and technology, all three build up to admittedly impressive set pieces with really long stretches of dullness, and in the case of Mission: Impossible, a fandom-betraying plot twist the movie has to show twice to make sure you get it. With , later that same summer, Michael Bay showed them all how it’s done.Elsewhere, Shaquille O’Neal starred as , and the monumentally unfunny filmmaking duo of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer kicked off a decade-plus string of laugh-free parody movies with , directed by Friedberg’s dad.Also released in the summer of 1996 were the semi-redemptive and .

Worst: 1998
Ben Affleck Mocks Armageddon

A summer of disaster movies in every sense of the word, this was the year we got dueling asteroid flicks, as Mimi Leder’s went up against Michael Bay’s . One was a more sensitive, philosophical take that killed off its leads; the other was bombastic, ridiculous destruction that also featured Ben Affleck attempting to wax lyrical about Animal Crackers while an awful Aerosmith song played. When either movie gets mentioned today, it’s usually ironic, or as a celebration of Affleck’s DVD commentary mocking his own work. Then came Roland Emmerich’s , a movie in which a creature that neither looked nor acted much like Godzilla encountered Matthew Broderick and then disappeared for an hour before meeting a King Kong-like fate, shot by airplanes on the Brooklyn Bridge. Toho, the studio that released the original in 1954, hated it so much they had the real Godzilla take out the impostor in record time in a subsequent film. Elsewhere, Warren Beatty returned to the director’s chair for the first time since with Bulworth, a misguided attempt to mock political correctness—or wokeness, in today’s parlance—that’s best left forgotten.Also released in the summer of 1998 that proved beach season wasn’t a total write-off: and .

Worst: 2010
PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME MOVIE TRAILER

Anyone remember that time they cast Jake Gyllenhaal as the ? No, really, that was 2010's big Memorial Day movie, and one of the few that summer that wasn’t a sequel or remake, though it was a video-game movie, with all that implies. The rest of the season was filled with the likes of Tim Burton’s , , , , , , M. Night Shyamalan’s , , , , , and .On the plus side, also released in the summer of 2010 were , , and .

Worst: 2021
PAW Patrol: The Movie (2021) - Official Trailer - Paramount Pictures

One might think the first year of the COVID pandemic would have been the worst, but among the tiny handful of releases, the ratio of quality entries was strong in 2020, with the likes of , , , , and .2021, on the other hand, was a year of secondary sequels and reboots: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and offered familiar leftovers which didn’t exactly cry out to be seen on the big screen at the risk of one’s health. Also released in the summer of 2021: David Lowery’s and M. Night Shyamalan’s , which both stood out as directorial visions really trying to shake things up.

Honorable Mention: 1975
One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing (1975) Trailer

No article on movie summers is complete without mentioning 1975, since it started the whole seasonal shebang with . (Although 1973's also helped lay the pipe for the beach season blockbuster).Otherwise, the summer was a mixed bag that—on the plus side—gave us Robert Altman’s , Woody Allen’s , and . But it also had many tedious sequels, including , , and . Meanwhile, Disney, years before becoming a dependable seasonal powerhouse, offered up and the somewhat racist . (Although that missing dinosaur did end up in Star Wars as the Krayt dragon skeleton on Tatooine, so it wasn’t a loss for everyone.)A true mixed bag of a summer, but, as Humphrey Bogart didn’t quite tell Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, “we’ll always have Jaws.”

Honorable Mention: 1977
Sorcerer 1977 trailer HD remaster

If Jaws lit the fuse for the summer blockbuster, Star Wars sent it into the stratosphere. Had nothing else been released that summer, the beach season of 1977 would have at least been awarded Honorable Mention. Before Star Wars became , it kicked off a six-movie trend of owning Memorial Day; one that continued until Disney bought Lucasfilm and decided December worked better. Star Wars crowded out William Friedkin’s at the time, though that has since been re-appraised, and paid tribute to in an episode of The Mandalorian. , also that summer, remains arguably the definitive Roger Moore James Bond film.Also released in the summer of 1977, the Jaws rip-offs  and , plus a trifecta of bad sequels, , , and .

 
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