Nineteen Eighty-Nine and the Way the Summer Box Office Used to Be

Recently I remembered here the year 1989 at the box office--both the hype that surrounded it, and the ways in which that year did anticipate the box office as we now know it (in particular, how superhero movies and animated family films, not very big genres prior to that point, would come to dominate the theaters).

Still, it seems worth noting that alongside those anticipations--whose significance is far clearer in hindsight than it was at the time--looking at the year's, and even the summer's, roster of hits reminds us of how different (in some ways, more diverse) "the movies" used to be. Certainly the summer season saw plenty of action movies, which that year were the biggest moneymakers (with Batman, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and Lethal Weapon 2 raking it in). However, they dominated it less completely than they do now. The top hits of that summer, after all, also included Turner & Hooch, When Harry Met Sally, Parenthood and Dead Poet's Society--comedy, romance, dramedy, even drama oriented to people who were at least nominally adults selling a lot of tickets.

What a different cinematic world that was than the one we live in now.