What makes a movie a summer blockbuster is more than the season in which it’s released.
To maximize audiences, these films generally aim to earn PG-13 ratings. They’re frequently violent, but not upsetting. There might be romance, but there is rarely sex. The proceedings often have a giddy, triumphal whiff of absurdity: Think Will Smith punching out an alien in “Independence Day,” or the Rebel Alliance’s improbable victories over the Empire in the “Star Wars” movies.
And though they’re rarely explicitly political, the best of these summer movies fuel endless debates by offering ideas and characters that provide fodder for many possible positions.
Summer movies are meant to provide an escape, an excuse to spend at least two hours in the frigid air of a multiplex and be transported somewhere else in the process. And oh, could we stand to be taken away from our circumstances — which in between the pandemic, the attack on the Capitol and ongoing social division, resemble all the bad parts of a blockbuster — for a while.
Given the cruel absurdities of the pandemic year, I’m looking forward to a version of ridiculousness that feels joyful, rather than terrifying. I expect to find that in the June 25 release of “F9,” the latest installment in the increasingly gleefully ludicrous “Fast and Furious” franchise. The trailers for that movie promise that the filmmakers won’t jump a luxury vehicle between skyscrapers in Abu Dhabi, as they famously did in “Furious 7,” but will send one to outer space.
After a year in which sweatpants were ascendant, I can’t wait to luxuriate in the fashion-world drama of Disney’s live-action “Cruella” movie, which bows over the Memorial Day weekend and features Emma Stone as a brilliant but deranged aspiring couturier.
And as people who spent months in isolation reenter the world once they’ve been inoculated against the coronavirus, maybe the joyful portrait of community life in “In the Heights,” due out in June, can provide a jolt of inspiration and courage.
None of these movies can solve our deeper social maladies, of course — that’s asking too much of cinema, and too little of ourselves and our leaders.
But imagination can at least provide momentary relief. The existence of a stand-alone “Black Widow” movie won’t make up for the toll the pandemic has taken on working moms. But it will still be fun to see Scarlett Johansson in full action-star mode. “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” can’t reverse the anti-Asian violence that has scarred so many communities in recent months. But it can provide a blast of fun and an opportunity for representation at a time when Asians and Asian Americans still lack images of themselves on the big screen.
There’s also something to be said for the return of communal cultural experiences. During the pandemic, many people had access to significant movies released through streaming services. But the studios’ decisions to hold back blockbusters until theaters were open and audiences felt comfortable returning to them also meant there were few major movie events in 2020. That means fewer opportunities to acquire shared cultural references and fewer chances to acknowledge that, while we might not agree on the need for masking or the pace of school reopenings, it’s definitely cool to see Captain America wielding Thor’s hammer.
To be clear: I’m not one of those moviegoers turned off by the sober, arty movies that often dominate the Oscars. “Sound of Metal,” “Nomadland” and “Minari,” all testaments to the power of kindness and decency, buoyed me through a difficult year.
And popcorn movies can express big ideas and big feelings, too. Zack Snyder’s “Army of the Dead,” which arrived in theaters last weekend and debuts on Netflix on Friday, is both a rollicking zombie splatterfest and a wrenching meditation on parental love and loss inspired by the 2017 suicide of Snyder’s daughter Autumn.
But a moment such as this one demands both introspection and revitalization. The best of this year’s Oscar contenders offered the former; the catharsis great blockbusters provide can be Hollywood’s contribution to the latter. Escapism isn’t always about hiding from reality. It can be an important tool in imagining a new world off-screen as well as on it.
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May 18, 2021 at 10:30PM
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All hail the return of summer movies! After the year we’ve had, we deserve them. - The Washington Post
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