One of the best things about summer has always been the release of the year's great blockbusters. For decades, Hollywood has been in the habit of releasing its slow, deliberately paced works of art in the downtime between summer and Christmas. The larger family films have been coming at the end of the year. During the summer, however, all bets are off. Big budgets, massive explosions, action heroes who restart dead suns by punching them-all of it's on the table for a few glorious months between May and August.
August is, of course, the end of the season. It's the time to pack away the camping gear, close the pool, and get the kids ready for the new school year. It's also a time for retrospection. Every success and failure of the summer blockbuster season is reviewed by studio executives for insight into what the ever-fickle audience is buying. Every last ticket that was sold during the summer is tantamount to a vote in favor of a particular movie, and the decisions audiences have made by the end of August will shape the decisions the studios make when they're planning the next year's smash-hit season.
Here are some of the hits that spent August 2013 lighting up the box office. The more successful of them will doubtless be followed by other, similar films, so these hits can be taken as hints about what the 2014 summer season and beyond will offer.
"The Great Gatsby," as literature, is far too well known to need exposition. As a film, however, it has certain features that make it distinct. The 2013 film, starring Leonardo DiCaprio in the role he's apparently been training for all his life, unintentionally puts a unique twist on the old story. Fitzgerald's novel seems to have been intended as a kind of modern version of "Les Miserables." The story of a wealthy man who runs over a poor child, and of what happens then, is intended to showcase the tremendous injustice in a society that values one kind of person more than another. In the film, however, what might be called the spirit of the age has made the story about the hardship this misfortune has placedon Gatsby.In years to come, it's possible that the film version of "The Great Gatsby" will again be studied as a signpost of the culture that created it.
Science fiction is always a productive well to dip into for an ambitious filmmaker. The genre rewards risk takers and visionaries, which is why "Star Trek Into Darkness" was so warmly received. This is the second film since the franchise reboot in 2009, and the consensus seems to be that J.J. Abrams has hit the mark yet again.
No summer movie season would be complete without a massive "Fast and Furious" sequel. This August, "Fast and Furious 6" hit theaters like a whirlwind: it came on fast and left everybody spinning. The "Fast and Furious" franchise has never aimed at the art-house demographic, but this installment did manage to include a human element to its plot that had been noticeably lacking in earlier films.
"Man of Steel" occupies the obligatory superhero turf for the summer of 2013. He's Superman, and hardly anything can reduce his impact onscreen. For upwards of seventy-five years, Superman has been saving the world. In 2013, Henry Cavill delivered an impassioned-almost pained-performance that saved the franchise.
If it's zombies that are needed, " World War Z " has them. Told from the perspective of the survivors and veterans of the Great Zombie War, "World War Z" does what fantasy, science fiction, and even horror are supposed to do-hold a mirror up to present-day society. It's a rare action film that manages to make bureaucratic sloth into a driving force for the drama, but this movie makes the inaction as compelling as the action. It's a neat trick, and the filmmakers have executed it well. A typical viewer will be angrier at Congress for ignoring the zombie uprising than one could ever be at the zombies themselves, who are, after all, just being themselves.
For a certain period of time in the mid-'90s, movie studios were contractually obligated to pay Will Smith pretty much every time they released a movie. His particular specialty was in headlining huge, action-packed blockbusters that made summer the real holiday season for movie fans. In 2013, a little of the old magic is back with a pair of Will Smith films. "After Earth" starred Smith opposite his son Jayden and has been well received, even if it was a bit overshadowed by the rerelease of "Independence Day," this time in glorious 3-D.
Each of these films has done its part to make August the hottest month of the year for movies. Thanks to their success, moviegoers can expect more of the same in years to come.
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