Blockbusters.

While the summer adventure movies Jaws (1975) and Star Wars (1977) had seemed state-of-the-art in the 1970s, the screen spectaculars of the 1980s made them look like student films. The record-shattering profits of those two movies had created an insatiable demand by producers for even bigger successes. As box-office profits went through the roof, budgets went out the window. At the same time the demographic profile of the American movie audience was shifting increasingly to male teenage viewers. As a result American audiences were bombarded every summer with more and more slick special effects, juvenile comedies, futuristic fantasies, macho action adventures, rock-star soundtracks, and high-tech horror. Despite protests from the critics every big hit seemed to be followed by a parade of increasingly less original sequels. From the trend-setting science fiction of The Empire Strikes Back in 1980 through the spectacular comic-book spin-off Batman...