June is nearly here, and we’re really in the thick of summer blockbuster season. “Pirates Of The Caribbean: Diminishing Returns” opened this past weekend, “Wonder Woman” is coming up, Tom Cruise battles “The Mummy” after that, then “Cars 3,” “Transformers: The Last Knight,” “Baby Driver,” “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” “War For The Planet Of The Apes,” “Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets,” “Dunkirk” and “Atomic Blonde” are all on deck without a quiet week to be found.
It can be sort of exhausting, the sheer density of it, but we’d be lying if we didn’t find something exciting about it too. We all remember that feeling as kids: school being out, long lazy summer days, waiting days and weeks for opening day for that movie you’d been dreaming about. Most of the time, the film wouldn’t quite be as good as you’d hope, but sometimes? Sometimes it exceeded your wildest hopes, providing a sensory thrill ride that you’d remember for the rest of your life.
READ MORE: The 20 Best Summer Blockbusters Ever
With Memorial Day in the rearview mirror and summer fully underway, it seemed like a good time to celebrate the blockbuster, so we’ve gathered together a list of our 50 best summer blockbusters of all time. On one hand, the rules were clear: it had to be released between the start of May and the end of August in the U.S., and it had to be a big, event-type movie, which meant no surprise sleeper comedies or counter-programming horrors. But even then, you know a summer blockbuster when you see it, so we occasionally ruled out a movie that might seem to fit the criteria but didn’t just sit right (“Saving Private Ryan” or “The Truman Show,” for example).
Oh, and we kept it to one movie per franchise, just to keep some level of diversity (with allowances for rebooted versions of characters, or interlocking franchises). Agree with our picks? Disagree? You can let us know what you think in the comments.
50. “The Thomas Crown Affair” (1999)
The kind of sophisticated summer entertainment for grown-ups that’s too hard to find these days (our closest equivalent now is “Now You See Me,” which has a similar heist-movie set-up but is unfeasibly stupid), John McTiernan’s remake of the Steve McQueen/Faye Dunaway fave actually improves on the original thanks to the sizzling chemistry between Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo, a featherlight touch (driven by Bill Conti’s jazzy score) and a number of cracking suspense sequences. A Paul Verhoeven-directed sequel never materialized, and it’s one of the few cases where we’re actually sad about a sequel never coming to pass.
49. “Batman Returns” (1992)
If Tim Burton’s “Batman” to some extent invented the modern blockbuster — a superhero film, endless fast-food and toy tie-ins, an inescapable marketing monolith — then Burton’s follow-up “Batman Returns” was the movie that made the blockbuster weird. Literally beginning with Pee-Wee Herman dumping a baby down a sewer, it’s darker than the original, but also funnier, kinkier (thanks to Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman), and more satisfying. Michael Keaton’s Batman remains underserved, but the villains and their toys are so much fun that it doesn’t matter too much.
48. “Crimson Tide” (1995)
The Bruckheimer/Simpson brand of rousing actioner was a huge box-office force in the mid-’90s, with mega-hits like “Bad Boys,” “The Rock,” “Con Air” and “Armageddon.” But the best of the bunch was Tony Scott’s “Crimson Tide,” a sort of Tom Clancy’s “Mutiny On The Bounty” that sees submarine captain Gene Hackman and second-in-command Denzel Washington come to loggerheads over a muddled order for a nuclear strike. It’s breathlessly tense stuff with a pleasingly characterful feel (aided by a script polish, famously, from Quentin Tarantino), that provides more fireworks just by pitting two screen titans against each other than when Michael Bay dropped a bunch of asteroids on the Earth.
47. “Superman II” (1980)
It’s not the best of the Christopher Reeve “Superman” films — that honor probably goes with the original, but its Christmas release means it’s not eligible here — but for all its difficult production and compromised nature, which saw Richard Lester brought on for extensive reshoots of what Richard Donner had done before he fell out with producers, it remains a genuinely great take on the character. Pitting our extraterrestrial immigrant hero against General Zod (Terence Stamp) and his two Kryptonian criminal chums, it’s overstuffed and manically plotted, but also lighter on its feet, and generally more fun than its predecessor, if not quite as charming. Thirty-seven years on, it’s still the last really good Superman movie, sadly.
46. “Guardians Of The Galaxy” (2014)
There’s a certain uniformity of vision to the Marvel movies — a jocular tone, a similar visual aesthetic, a sense that it needs to lock in as a part of the macro-plan. “Guardians Of The Galaxy” replicates that tone, certainly, but it’s one of the best MCU movies because it’s also firmly a James Gunn film. With a bright color palette, an instantly iconic and much-replicated ’80s AM-radio soundtrack, and a big, sincere heart that made it the most emotional superhero movie in a while, it became the biggest franchise-starter in the mega-series because it deviated from the formula, not because it adhered to it.
45. “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation” (2015)
The second film aside (and even that has some typically balletic John Woo action sequences), we have such a soft spot for the “Mission: Impossible” franchise, a strangely auteur-driven spy series that finds exciting new ways to approach a remarkably similar formula (masks, moles, dangling Tom Cruise off something tall) every time. Brian De Palma’s original and Brad Bird’s ‘Ghost Protocol‘ (the latter not a summer release) both stake a claim to be the best in the series, but for us, it’s Christopher McQuarrie’s fifth movie, a playful Hitchcockian joy full of cracking set pieces that gets to the heart of what makes the series so enduring, while adding something new to the mix (notably Rebecca Ferguson’s female lead and Sean Harris’ sinister villain).
44. “Face/Off” (1997)
John Woo’s decade or so in Hollywood had mixed success — some fun movies (“Hard Target,” maybe “Broken Arrow”), some not so fun (most of the other ones). But his absolute, uncompromised success came with “Face/Off,” which took a ludicrous high-concept premise — FBI agent John Travolta and terrorist Nicolas Cage swap faces — and brought on both the best American translation of Woo’s particular bag of tricks (dual pistols, slo-mo, a bucket of doves), and strange quirks of its own (Travolta’s queasy incestuous fixation on his daughter, weirdo character turns from Thomas Jane, Nick Cassavetes and Alessandro Nivola, sci-fi overtones like the magnetic-boots prison). It delivers on the spectacle front in a big way, but it’s the strange texture that lingers.
43. “Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban” (2004)
Most of the “Harry Potter” movies are pretty good, after Chris Columbus’ first couple at least. But while there are a few other contenders (David Yates’ stirring franchise-closer in particular), the best entry is easily Alfonso Cuarón’s third in the series. The Mexican helmer has the advantage of having J.K. Rowling’s best plot, which sees Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) seemingly threatened by Sirius Black (Gary Oldman), but he also has a feeling for coming-of-age and a visual eye lacking from earlier Potter pics. And no moment is more satisfying in the franchise than the rousing time-travel ending.
42. “Collateral” (2004)
We might be stretching the definition of blockbuster a little here — “Collateral” maybe didn’t feel like an event in the way some of these others did. But it was nevertheless released in the summer, made a ton of money, and is great, so we’re happy to include it here. The most minimalist, tense and purely commercial film of Michael Mann’s career, his take on the story of the LA cabbie (Jamie Foxx) and the hitman who forces him to drive him around for a night, it’s a truly great Los Angeles movie (with Mann starting to experiment digitally to striking effect), sleek and suspenseful, and driven by a truly sinister performance by Tom Cruise that’s easily one of his best.
41. “Toy Story 3” (2010)
The decision to open “Toy Story 3” at the height of summer rather than the Thanksgiving release dates of its two predecessors certainly didn’t hurt the accounts: the film became a mammoth hit, and the first Pixar movie to cross a billion dollars. Even if you, like us, find Lee Unkrich’s third entry, which sees Woody & the gang ending up at daycare, to be the least brilliant of the trilogy, it’s still pretty damn brilliant, a dazzlingly entertaining and deeply moving picture that grapples impressively with mortality. Also: Mr. Pricklepants.