With talk on here about Top Gun Maverick being the perfect summer blockbuster, I got to thinking about what I'd consider the perfect summer movie. While TGM is a damn good one, it's not among the first I'd come up with. I'm going to consider the movies of a certain portion of my youth, so ....
1. Star Wars (1977) - I'd been to the movies many times in my young life before this one came. And truth be told, the advertisements I saw for it made it seems stupid. I mean, seriously dumb. And I was the target audience. But who is going to say "no, I'm good" when their Dad asks if they want to go to the movies? That happened one June Sunday in 1977, and when we got home, I set out to build a bunch of X-Wings and TIE Fighters out of every piece of scrap cardboard I could find around the house. What's not to love about this movie? You have heroes and villains, robots, a princess, weird creatures, and futuristic tech that supposedly existed a long time ago.
This movie, in essence, made me believe in movies. This was the beginning of a very long part of my life, starting in the summer before 5th grade and ending the summer before my youngest child was born (she is now 16), where Star Wars was a big part of my life. Yes, there were many years with no new Star Wars movies, but that didn't stop me from envisioning what any new Star Wars movies might look like. The summers of 1980 and 1983 were basically tied to the Star Wars movies that came out those years. Admittedly, the summers of 1999, 2002, and 2005 were not quite the same, but that was not because I didn't enjoy those prequel movies (I did), but because I was now an adult with kids and a wife and could not geek out like I did as a kid/teen.
2. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) - the tag line on the poster that I have hanging in my movie room says it all: From the Creators of Star Wars and Jaws ... That's a hard stop. You already have me sold. Plus it's Han freaking Solo, er, Harrison Ford in the starring role. Here we have a 30s serial style adventure movie set against the backdrop of pre-WWII North Africa, with Nazis as the villains. Indiana Jones is a guy that could be just about anyone, you identify with him. You feel like this is a guy you know. So he's imminently relatable as a character. Ford nails this role with his mannerisms, facial expressions, etc. When he's holding on to the hood ornament, and it's breaking off in his hand, the look on his face is exactly what you'd expect. Now it's a given that you're going to root for this guy - he's going against the hated Nazis, after all.
3. Jaws (1975) - perhaps including Jaws is a bit of a cheat for me in that I was 8 when it came out, and my parents deemed that not old enough to see it when it came out. I don't even remember how old I was when I finally got to watch it, probably caught it on HBO at some point, maybe 1978? But having seen this one many, many times, I can clearly call this one of the greatest summer movies ever made. To me, this is a guy's movie. You have a trio of guys going fishing, for lack of a better term (well, Roy Scheider does tell his wife to tell the kids that he's going fishing, so the term fits). The whole thing just flows so well. The night scene where the guys are telling their stories to Robert Shaw's monologue about the USS Indianapolis, to the barrels, and of course the big ass shark. What's not to like?
1. Star Wars (1977) - I'd been to the movies many times in my young life before this one came. And truth be told, the advertisements I saw for it made it seems stupid. I mean, seriously dumb. And I was the target audience. But who is going to say "no, I'm good" when their Dad asks if they want to go to the movies? That happened one June Sunday in 1977, and when we got home, I set out to build a bunch of X-Wings and TIE Fighters out of every piece of scrap cardboard I could find around the house. What's not to love about this movie? You have heroes and villains, robots, a princess, weird creatures, and futuristic tech that supposedly existed a long time ago.
This movie, in essence, made me believe in movies. This was the beginning of a very long part of my life, starting in the summer before 5th grade and ending the summer before my youngest child was born (she is now 16), where Star Wars was a big part of my life. Yes, there were many years with no new Star Wars movies, but that didn't stop me from envisioning what any new Star Wars movies might look like. The summers of 1980 and 1983 were basically tied to the Star Wars movies that came out those years. Admittedly, the summers of 1999, 2002, and 2005 were not quite the same, but that was not because I didn't enjoy those prequel movies (I did), but because I was now an adult with kids and a wife and could not geek out like I did as a kid/teen.
2. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) - the tag line on the poster that I have hanging in my movie room says it all: From the Creators of Star Wars and Jaws ... That's a hard stop. You already have me sold. Plus it's Han freaking Solo, er, Harrison Ford in the starring role. Here we have a 30s serial style adventure movie set against the backdrop of pre-WWII North Africa, with Nazis as the villains. Indiana Jones is a guy that could be just about anyone, you identify with him. You feel like this is a guy you know. So he's imminently relatable as a character. Ford nails this role with his mannerisms, facial expressions, etc. When he's holding on to the hood ornament, and it's breaking off in his hand, the look on his face is exactly what you'd expect. Now it's a given that you're going to root for this guy - he's going against the hated Nazis, after all.
3. Jaws (1975) - perhaps including Jaws is a bit of a cheat for me in that I was 8 when it came out, and my parents deemed that not old enough to see it when it came out. I don't even remember how old I was when I finally got to watch it, probably caught it on HBO at some point, maybe 1978? But having seen this one many, many times, I can clearly call this one of the greatest summer movies ever made. To me, this is a guy's movie. You have a trio of guys going fishing, for lack of a better term (well, Roy Scheider does tell his wife to tell the kids that he's going fishing, so the term fits). The whole thing just flows so well. The night scene where the guys are telling their stories to Robert Shaw's monologue about the USS Indianapolis, to the barrels, and of course the big ass shark. What's not to like?
