by Michael Lyons
Summer Movie Season.
Those three words ignite such excitement in movie fans. And, in the days before streaming, when we waited eagerly for movies to come to movie theaters and not television screens, the excitement of the summer movie season was, dare I say, greater...and better.
Yes, I dare to say it because it's true.
This will be part one of a three-part article that looks back at three significant summer movie seasons, each one part of a golden age, of sorts, from times when audiences lined up around the block just for the chance to get a ticket to a movie, to an era when movies were treated like events.
Each one of the summer movie seasons to be discussed is celebrating an anniversary this year. We begin here in part one, with the 30th anniversary of the summer movie season of 1994:
You thought "Barbenheimer" was something? Imagine "Barbenheimer" almost every weekend at the box office, particularly during the summer. That's what movies were like in the 1990s, when movie studio's promotional departments kicked into high gear, hyping their films to the point that they were less like movies and more like events.
This was especially true during the summer of 1994. And, that summer kicked off with a movie whose promotion truly...rocked. The Flintstones, a long-delayed live-action version of Hanna-Barbera’s popular animated sitcom, landed in theaters for Memorial Day Weekend to start the summer movie season.
However, the hype began an entire summer before, with a specially produced teaser trailer for The Flintstones shown in front of 1993's summer behemoth, Jurassic Park. This made perfect sense since "Steven Spielrock," who was directing Jurassic Park, was also producing The Flintstones.
The Flintstones didn't just arrive in theaters; it landed with the same colossal sound of Fred pounding on the door and yelling, "Wiiiiillllmaaaaa!" You couldn't escape marketing for the film. From endless commercials on TV to toys that redesigned the characters to look more like John Goodman, Rick Moranis, and the rest of the actors in the film, to the "BC-52's" new version of the familiar title song played on top 40 radio stations and McDonald's, re-named "RocDonald's," carrying themed food and Happy Meal toys, The Flintstones got to the point that, as a moviegoer, you felt as if you had to see the movie; otherwise you'd be left out.
All of this swirling Bedrock brew-ha-ha worked, and The Flintstones was the much-anticipated blockbuster that "Univershell" pictures had been hoping for, and it became the sixth highest-grossing film of the year.
Several weeks after The Flintstones came a summer movie that, while not initially an event, soon became one through positive review and word of mouth - Speed.
From an era when a number of movies were attempting to ape the "Die Hard model," Jan de Bont (a cinematographer on a number of movies, including, ironically, Die Hard) made his directing debut with this gripping action movie.
A bus is rigged by a terrorist (Dennis Hopper) to explode if it goes under 50 miles an hour and hurtles by at the accelerated pace of the bus. Keanu Reeves became an action icon, Sandra Bullock's star was quickly on the rise, and suddenly, Speed became the movie everyone wanted to replicate.
However, Speed wasn't the biggest movie of the summer. That honor goes to Disney's animated feature, The Lion King. Now iconic and part of our pop-culture lexicon (along with a Broadway musical and CGI re-make), when The Lion King debuted, it rocketed Disney's growth at their studio and the animation renaissance into the stratosphere.
Following The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin, The Lion King was a wish fulfillment for Walt Disney himself - that animation is another form of storytelling that all ages can embrace.
And The Lion King was embraced, indeed. It was the number-one movie of the year, and for a time, it was the highest-grossing animated film of all time.
The Lion King's release was at such event status that in the months and weeks before it came out, there was more than buzz around it; there was genuine excitement. Disney even treated it like an event, opening the film at Radio City Musical Hall in New York and the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles as "The Lion King Summer Spectacular," where the film played for ten days before coming to area theaters, along with a stage show featuring the Disney characters.
And don't forget the toys, Burger King promo, TV specials, and Top 40 hit songs that swept throughout the world like winds across the Savanna.
Then, just several weeks after the King was crowned ruler of the box office, another film came out to steal our pop-culture heart.
Just after the July 4th weekend, an unassuming character with a story that crossed most of our 20th-century history by blending dynamic CGI effects came to theaters.
Forrest Gump, from director Robert Zemeckis, with a career-defining performance from Tom Hanks, not only ignited the box office but also touched our hearts, won every major award, and like so many films during 1994, settled comfortably in our zeitgeist, where it still lives.
It was such a close race at the box office over Independence Day weekend that after the weekend was over, Entertainment Weekly had an animated graphic that staged a horse race between the Forrest Gump and Lion King posters. Forrest won the weekend by a nose.
The summer of '94 also saw a big-screen version of the TV show Maverick, with Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster, and James Garner; The Crow, which sadly starred Brandon Lee in his final role; Eddie Murphy back in sequel mode for Beverly Hills Cop III; Billy Crystal in the same mode for City Slickers II: The Search for Curly's Gold, and Jack Nicholson turning into a Wolf.
Long before Yellowstone, Kevin Costner went for western epic with Wyatt Earp; Alec Baldwin was The Shadow; Disney brought live-action fantasy family fare with Angels in the Outfield; John Grisham's bestseller The Client came to the screen, and Arnold Schwarzenegger reunited with James Cameron for True Lies.
We were wowed by computer animation and Jim Carrey in The Mask; Harrison Ford played Jack Ryan in Clear and Present Danger; The Little Rascals returned, and summer closed out with Oliver Stone's devisive Natural Born Killers.
And so, thirty summers ago in 1994, we flocked to theaters to see mammoth movies and smaller stories in a summer filled with pure popcorn and Oscar hopefuls. It was a time when going to the movie theater was still an event.
That event-fueled experience began five years before, during a summer of adventuring archeologists, spirit chasers, and a dark knight. The summer of 1989...
...which is where we are headed for part two of Hot, Hazy, and Hollywood, next week.
Looking for summer reading? My new book, Magic Moments: Stories, Lessons and Memories from a Twenty-Year Career at Walt Disney World is now available! Click here to purchase!
Check back all summer for new articles and podcasts at my website: Words From Lyons!
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