by Michael Lyons
Some movies change how we go to the movies. One such movie was released in the summer of 1989.
This is the second part of a three-part article that looks back at three significant summer movie seasons, all celebrating anniversaries this year. Last week was the summer movie season of 1994, thirty years later. This week, it's a time travel back to the summer movie season 1989, as it celebrates 35 years.
In the eighties, summer movie seasons roared through our lives like a never-ending freight train of Fridays that carried one blockbuster movie after another. The summers of the 1980s saw some of the biggest movies of all time, including two of the original Star Wars films, as well as E.T. and Back to the Future.
The last summer of the '80s was like a grand finale to all of this, bringing mammoth movies that packed theaters and generated pre-release excitement that everyone, even the most casual moviegoer, was talking about.
And it all kicked off, as summer movie seasons used to, on Memorial Day weekend, with the return of that icon of '80s summer movie blockbusters, Indiana Jones.
The collaborative magic of those two box-office wizards, who had both brought a sense of wonder back to movies - George Lucas and Steven Spielberg - coupled with that everlasting movie star - Harrison Ford, had gifted us with Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981 and its sequel, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in 1984.
The whip-cracking archeologist soon became a pop culture persona of the highest order and a movie hero on the Mount Rushmore of action movies. With this, it's safe to say that the third installment, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, had been eagerly awaited. The addition of the original James Bond himself, Sean Connery, playing Indy's father in the film, only added to the furor of every film fanatic.
Added to this was the news that this would be the last Indiana Jones installment (if we only knew...); it's no wonder that Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade broke the record for the biggest Memorial Day Weekend box office, which it held until The Flintstones in 1994.
However, Indy's box-office record was short-lived, as it was "scared off" by another sequel to another major 80s summer movie, Ghostbusters II, which bowed in theaters less than a month later.
Director Ivan Reitman's 1984 spirited comedy starring Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramos, and Ernie Hudson ignited popularity with fans patiently waiting for the Ghostbusters to return. Return they did, in a sequel that zoomed into theaters like the Echo-1 with its sirens blaring (the ghost in the film's logo was even re-branded in an eye-catching pose with "two" fingers held up).
Many viewed the sequel as a disappointment, as it was met with generally negative reviews. So much so that it took twenty-eight years for a "reboot" and thirty-two years for a true sequel (which allowed for another this year and the potential for a new franchise). Despite this, Ghostbusters II blasted all other box-office competition, including Last Crusade, setting another box-office record.
But that record would only stand for a week when the movie mentioned above that changed how we go to the movies was released...
...Batman.
You couldn't escape Batman. That indelible Bat-signal logo, now so iconic, was everywhere you looked. In early 1989, a quick teaser trailer debuted in theaters, with the first glimpse of Michael Keaton (such divisive casting at the time) as Batman, Jack Nicholson (such perfect casting) as Joker, and Tim Burton's take on the mythic comic.
It became "Batman summer."
Through their promotion, Warner Bros and producers Jon Peters and Peter Guber turned Batman into more than a movie; it was an event! If you missed out on Batman that summer, you felt you were missing out.
And it changed the moviegoing experience. This "event movie" became the model in Hollywood for the next decade, especially when it came to summer movies (Jurassic Park, The Lion King, and Independence Day, just to name a few), and it all started with Batman.
Summer of '89 was also the summer of surprise hits, and the biggest of these was Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Disney returned to its Dean Jones-Fred MacMurray-live-action roots with the story of a scientist (Rick Moranis) who accidentally miniaturizes his kids.
Even though opening the same day as Batman, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids found its audience, scored big at the box office, and is fondly remembered by the generation who ventured out to theaters to see it that summer.
The films that filled out the line-up alongside these box-office hits were equally impressive films that could have filled a summer themselves. They included the more dramatic, Oscar-season-worthy Dead Poets Society starring Robin Williams; William Shatner's directorial debut with Star Trek V: The Final Frontier; Spike Lee's brilliant and still oh-so-relevant Do The Right Thing.
Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, with Joe Pesci in tow, returned for Lethal Weapon 2; things were dead at the beach in Weekend at Bernie’s; Bond was back, in the form of Timothy Dalton in License to Kill; everyone wanted to "have what she's having" with Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal in When Harry Met Sally.
The summer of 1989 closed out with two powerful dramas - Michael J. Fox and Sean Penn in director Brian De Palma's Casualties of War and the directorial debut of Steven Soderbergh with Sex, Lies and Videotape.
What a summer at the movies, closing out a decade that served as a “golden age” of summer movies. For so many, 1989 was the summer at the movies. Just looking back on this line-up brings back waves of warm-weather-infused excitement for a nostalgia-laden summer movie season from 35 years ago.
And, there's still one more summer movie season to look at that features many of the stars of summer 1989, along with creatures you shouldn't feed after midnight, a kid learning to wax on and wax off, a rock star from Minneapolis, and more. The summer movie season of 1984...
...which is where we are headed next week for part three of Hot, Hazy, and Hollywood.
My new book, Magic Moments: Stories, Lessons & Memories from a Twenty-Year Career at Walt Disney World is now available at Amazon!
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