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The History of Cinema Part VI:
The Age of the Blockbuster
Why settle for one vast, unthinkable fortune when you can have three or four?
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By Daniel Neman
In the world of the movies, May 25, 1977, was the day everything changed.
That was the day that George Lucas’ Star Wars opened. The reaction to the film was so immediate, so immense, so profound that it forever altered the way audiences watched movies and filmmakers made them. It even changed the reason movies were made.
As it happens, Star Wars is an excellent film, with immensely likable characters, deliciously evil villains and a charming, action-filled story of ragtag underdogs standing up to a brutal, repressive and dauntingly powerful regime. The stereotyped characters were written with such freshness that they seemed new, and the script deftly blended wide-eyed romance and witty cynicism. Its reliance on state-of-the-art special effects, generations beyond anything that came before it, gave audiences something they had never seen. And its use of Dolby stereo gave them something they had never heard.
Audiences were awestruck, particularly young audiences. Teenagers and young adults went to see it again and again and again. And again. Where other movies were typically seen and enjoyed just once, Star Wars became the first movie to have people bragging about how many times they had seen it. All those repeated viewings and all that hype was bound to have an extraordinary impact on the box office.
Shot on a budget of $11 million, Star Wars quickly became the highest-grossing movie of all time, up to that point. Its initial release earned more than $300 million in the United States alone and another $300 million around the world. The financial reward was unprecedented. Only Jaws had ever even come close to filling a studio’s coffers – not to mention a producer’s – with so much money.
The lesson was clear. There were fortunes to be made in Hollywood – vast, unthinkable fortunes. The movies had always been immensely profitable for the people on the top of their game, but no one had realized just how much money could be made, and from just a single film. All of a sudden, everyone in the movies wanted to make one big film, one huge film, and they could live in the sort of luxury known only to royalty.
The Era of the Blockbuster was born.
VISIONS OF IMMENSE PAYDAYS
In Hollywood, imitation is not necessarily a form of flattery; it is just a way to try to get the same results. With visions of immense paydays dancing in their heads, filmmakers began copying the Star Wars formula, making movies with nonstop action, pounding music and a reliance on special effects. Often, the formula worked. But the best and most satisfying pictures of the time were the ones that showed the characters behind the action and featured crisp and memorable dialogue.
In other words, a lot of the best movies of the Blockbuster Era were made by Steven Spielberg. His Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), released just six months after Star Wars, was a winning mix of science fiction, the supernatural and just a hint of religious overtones for those who are looking for them. The story of disparate characters who had seen a UFO and found themselves ineluctably drawn to a remote spot was spiced up with a subplot of a worldwide government coverup and enough special effects to please the staunchest Star Wars fan.
But most important, it was made with the sense of wonder that would become Spielberg’s trademark. For years, the filmmaker’s best work was shot as if through the eyes of a child, seeing the world for the first time.
His E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) actually used children in depicting this sense of wonder; only children, it seems, can understand the goodness and innocence of a sweet little alien that has crashed onto this earth. The religious overtones were a bit more obvious this time, but they were largely overlooked by the crowds of people in the theater who were moved by the touching story of suburban kids and their magical friend eluding the same sort  of government officials that were found in Close Encounters. It was a huge hit, Spielberg’s biggest, and still ranks as one of the top box office films of all time.
Even so, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) was more fun. Inspired by the old movie serials with their exotic locales and their never-ending fights, chase scenes and climaxes, Raiders achieved a perfect balance of tones: It was tongue-in-cheek, but exciting at the same time. The audience knew the story was ridiculous, but we thrilled to the action just the same.
pielberg’s movies had their imitators, but none was as successful at re-creating the spirit of Raiders as Romancing the Stone (1984). Director Robert Zemeckis, who often had Spielberg as his producer, launched this improbable story of action, romance, and danger in South America, and it too found the right balance between tight action and a winking, ironic tone – it was not meant to be taken seriously. With a humorous script by Diane Thomas (which took the unusual point of view of the woman’s character), the movie also generated a delightful, opposites-attracting chemistry between stars Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas.
They were not as successful with their sequel, Jewel of the Nile (1985). For if the Blockbuster Era was known for anything, it was a willingness to repeat the same formula, with the same characters and the same actors, until audiences finally got tired of it. That is another one of the lessons of Star Wars: A big enough movie now brings with it an expectation of sequels. Rather than attempting anything creative or new, filmmakers instinctively reach for the easy money found essentially in remaking their own pictures. Why settle for one vast, unthinkable fortune when you can have three or four?
 And so Zemeckis made the brilliant, rollicking Back to the Future in 1985. It’s a time-travel fantasy, with Michael J. Fox climbing into a supercharged DeLorean and accidentally finding himself back in time with his parents as they are teenagers. Along with the eminently enjoyable performances by Fox and Christopher Lloyd as a mad scientist, the movie was also notable for its exquisite craftsmanship. Life in the present, 1985, is seen to be influenced by life in 1955; but after Fox’s character visits 1955, his actions then clearly change the realities of 1985.
SEQUELS NOT SO MUCH FUN
The film was an enormous amount of fun and also enormously popular, so Zemeckis decided to ruin it by making the adequate Back to the Future Part II (1989) and the somewhat less than adequate Back to the Future Part III (1990).
During this time, audiences became used to watching sequels of diminishing returns. Ghostbusters (1984) had an intriguing premise and a wonderfully talented cast of comedic actors. Ghostbusters II (1989) had the same premise, the same writers and director, and the same actors. But it did not do nearly the same business of the original, and those who saw it generally regretted doing so.
Beverly Hills Cop (1984) and Lethal Weapon (1987) followed the same trajectory. Neither one started out as a blockbuster – they are entirely character-driven – but both were big enough hits to generate a trail of increasingly worthless sequels. The two original movies were perhaps the best examples of the era’s other great genre, the buddy-cop picture, in which a wild, unpredictable and highly effective cop (Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop and Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon) is paired with a smart but uptight officer (Judge Reinhold, Danny Glover). Among much comedy, the partnership makes them all better policemen, especially the uptight ones. >106
A FEW STOOD ALONE
Of course, not every great movie of the late ‘70s through the early ‘90s was made with a formula in mind or was intended to kick off a string of sequels. Rain Man (1988) was a fascinating story of two adult brothers, one emotionally immature and the other immature because of autism; the movie introduced autism to much of the nation. As in the buddy-cop pictures, the two learn important lessons from each other, though only one is capable of understanding what he has learned. Both Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman are excellent in their roles; Hoffman won the Oscar.
And Hoffman was nearly as good in the effervescent Tootsie (1982), a lighter look at an equally serious topic. The subject is women’s rights, and Hoffman stars as an unemployed actor who finds work on a soap opera by pretending to be a woman. He finds success, albeit in drag, but he is subjected to the discrimination and paternalism that plagued women of the day.
Many of Martin Scorsese’s best films were made during this time, too, including what is arguably his finest work, Goodfellas (1990). Gangster films have been a staple ever since there have been gangsters, but few have dissected the life and sociology of organized crime like this picture. In Scorsese’s sure hands, we see both the appeal of life in the Mob and the horror.
Blockbusters and would-be blockbusters continued to be made throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s and are still made today. But in 1993, Spielberg made another huge picture, Jurassic Park. That movie went beyond the special effects pioneered by Star Wars – large parts of it did not actually exist in the physical world, they were rendered entirely on computers.
And once again, everything changed.
NEXT ISSUE: Part VII, The Final Installment: Movies go digital.
Dan Neman, food editor of The Blade in Toledo, Ohio, is a former movie reviewer for the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
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