1) 1994
If you look at the top grossing films in the US for 1994, you would be forgiven for thinking that this was a rather above average summer blockbuster season. You have Speed, The Lion King, True Lies, The Mask and, ugh, Forrest Gump released during the summer. However, this is a time before day and date releases with the US, and the UK summer season was a very different picture. This is the summer of The Flintstones and Police Academy: Mission to Moscow. And bloody Wet Wet Wet.
Nowadays the UK summer season closely matches that of the US, so we start in April and end in August. In 1994, we start in July with the release of Beverly Hills Cop 3 and end in August with the release of The Mask. So what did we have for those missing months?
Now, I've struggled to find a reliable website for UK box office figures earlier than 2000 so I'm working here from my memory and a rather dubious list from Wikipedia but I've managed to piece together this picture. We start in May with Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, a leftover from the US spring season. We then have the big movie of the summer in the UK, Four Weddings and a Funeral, which is also a leftover from the spring. Now Wikipedia doesn't list Four Weddings as a number one movie, which is one of the reasons I doubt its accuracy, so apparently the big movies leading up to July are; Naked Gun 33 1/3; A Business Affair (?); Dangerous Game; The Air Up There; Police Academy: Mission to Moscow and Shopping. Not a single one of those could be considered a summer movie as we understand it.
Anyway, the schools break up and we all go see Beverly Hills Cop 3 until Maverick turns up for a week but, then finally, The Flintstones! From Steven Spielrock! And because I'm a Scot and we return to school in the third week of August, thats it. True Lies is released in that final weekend, The Mask the week after. Speed is released on the 30th September, The Lion King and Forrest Bloody Gump on the 7th October.
1994 feels like a particularly bad summer season largely because the big summer movies were held over until after the summer and the ones that were released close to their US dates were largely rubbish or average. There was one gem of a movie released in July that wouldn't look out of place in todays summer market though. A dark comic book adaptation called The Crow.
Highpoint: The Crow
Lowpoint: Police Academy: Mission to Moscow
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2) 1998
Things steadily improved over the next couple of years. We only had to wait a few weeks for the blockbusters now, and the CGI revolution meant that it was actually worth making the trip to the cinema to see them on the big screen. 1996 and 1997 had been bumper years, so expectations were high for 1998. The season kicked off in May with the average Deep Impact, we then had The Wedding Singer (a leftover) and the complete misfire Six Days and Seven Nights. Then finally came the most anticipated movie of 1998, the one that had, unusually for the time, advertised itself a year earlier with the tag-line 'Size Does Matter' - the awful Godzilla. We then had Lost in Space, followed by Armageddon with The X Files sneaking in at the end of August.
Like 1994 however, this doesn't tell the whole story, as there were a few summer movies in the US that didn't reach our shores until the summer was over and would have greatly enhanced the reputation of this season. Saving Private Ryan, The Truman Show and There's Something About Mary where all held back. Even the pretty poor Lethal Weapon 4 didn't come out until September despite it being a perfect summer movie.
My own movie highlight of the summer came one baking hot day in Edinburgh when I finally got to see The Exorcist on the big screen, re-released in Scotland in the summer while the rest of the UK had to wait until Halloween.
UPDATED: I forgot to mention that other big summer release, The Avengers, which says it all really.
Highpoint: Um, Armageddon?
Lowpoint: Godzilla
3) 2000
By 2000 we were getting pretty much the same summer season as the United States, its just that the films weren't anything to get excited about. Gladiator kicks off the summer in grand style, and while I enjoyed it immensely at the time, it hasn't really stood up on repeated viewings. The rest of the summer was one long wait for the one film I was actually excited about seeing: X-Men. So I waited. The awful Mission: Impossible 2 walked by through a flock of doves, flicking its Timotei hair. The Perfect Storm sailed by for a couple of hours until that impressive wave from the trailer washed it from memory. Gone in Sixty Seconds went by in what felt like 30 seconds. The Patriot was just shit. I actually went to see Titan AE because of the trailer that was attached to The Phantom Menace, and I only just remembered that I did.
When X-Men finally arrived it was obvious that this was something different. The potential that X-Men displayed was obvious - the superheroes had arrived.
Highpoint: X-Men
Lowpoint: Mission: Impossible 2
4) 2001
Part of the fun of the summer movie season is anticipation. Its about getting excited about forthcoming movies, letting yourself be teased by the studios until the day you find out whether they were being sincere or a sack of shit. There was almost nothing to get excited about in 2001. At a push, I was incredibly curious to see Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes, because he hadn't really put a foot wrong up to this point. Otherwise, there was nothing I was excited to see but they still somehow managed to massively disappoint.
The season kicks off with The Mummy Returns and its awful, incomplete CGI effects. This is followed by Pearl Harbour which my girlfriend still hasn't forgiven me for taking her to. Evolution tries to do comedy/sci-fi but satisfies as neither. Shrek is probably the one film that didn't disappoint but that is because it was saving its kick in the balls for further down the line. Tomb Raider was completely forgettable, the only thing I remember is that it had Geordie from Our Friends in the North in it (better known these days as Daniel Craig). Jurassic Park 3 was better than The Lost World but I was never enamoured of that franchise anyway. And finally, the one hope for the summer, the bizarro Planet of the Apes which satisfies neither as a Tim Burton film or as a reboot of the simian franchise.
Highpoint: Shrek
Lowpoint: Pearl Harbour
5) 2006
2006 is another year where the quality of all the major offerings fell way short of the land marked 'quality'. Mission: Impossible 3 was another entry in that interminable franchise. X Men: The Last Stand managed to match the quality levels of Batman & Robin. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest emphasised the weaknesses of the first film and negated its strengths. Superman Returns made the bizarre choice of trying to be an alternative Superman 3 (the single best thing about the movie was the opening credits sequence). My brain kept struggling to find the conceptual gear required to watch Cars comfortably. I haven't seen The Da Vinci Code and The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, as I have begun to exert a degree of quality control in what I watch (my version of growing up).
Highpoint: Superman Returns
Lowpoint: X-Men The Last Stand
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