Jaws, the OG summer blockbuster, is showing for the next week in theaters for its 50th anniversary. You do not want to miss this groundbreaking film on the big screen! Here in Kearney, NE, it’s showing at our community run The World Theatre through Thursday, Sept. 4. Tickets at The World are only $5, with popcorn and soda $1-$3. All your favorite movie candy is also only $3. So you can bring the whole family!
Monday through Thursday there will be free admission for various groups:
- Monday, 9/1, Teachers are free
- Tuesday, 9/2, Students are free
- Wednesday, 9/3, First responders are free
- Thursday, 9/4, Veterans are free.
Here’s the backstory on this groundbreaking movie and the long-running influence it’s had on our movies.
Director Steven Spielberg is generally credited with creating the blockbuster era with the release of his 1975 summer hit Jaws. It was the first movie to gross more than $200 million, and it set the stage for the big summer movies. Prior to Jaws, it was believed that a movie had to be released during the Christmas season to be a major success. Jaws had a number of things going for it: it was directed by one of the most popular directors of the late twentieth century, it featured a compelling musical score by John Williams, and it was based on a best-selling novel by Peter Benchley.
Jaws was accompanied by a giant television advertising campaign that began three days before the movie’s release. But the marketing of the movie had started two years earlier with an announcement that the movie rights had been acquired and speculation about the stars. Journalists were taken to the production site in record numbers to keep the stories flowing. The movie’s release was scheduled to occur within six months of the publication of the paperback book, and the book’s cover included a tie-in to the movie. As the release date for the movie approached, copies of the paperback were sent out to waiters, cab drivers, and other ordinary people to build word of mouth. Finally, the movie was given a summer release date to capitalize on the beach and swimming season.
The Jaws campaign was designed to get people to the movie and talk about it. If the talk had been negative, all the advertising in the world could not have saved the movie. But with everyone talking up the movie, Jaws took off. The success of Jaws started a tradition of larger-than-life summer movies that continued with the Star Wars trilogies, the Indiana Jones series, Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, and the Pirates of the Caribbean series. There is an argument to be made that we have moved out of the blockbuster era and into the franchise era. That is, it’s not enough for an individual movie to stand out in its own right—it needs to be part of a complex, consistent universe containing multiple movies, such as the eleven (so far) Star Wars movies, more than thirty-three Marvel Cinematic Universe movies (with many more in production), and the fifteen DC Extended Universe films (with a reboot of the series in the works).
These movies come with a built-in market of fans waiting to see them. Paul Bettany, the British actor who plays Vision in the Avengers movies, says the series is so successful because the films are made by and for fans. “[The people at Marvel] really love those characters,” he said. “Their love for these stories is really infectious and you become really invested, and there’s a lot of invested people beyond the financials of it all. . . . This movie is made by geeks. They love them, they feel it when they’re talking about it.”