A blockbuster started out as a movie that had met with enormous success at the box office. Furthermore, such movies had a reputation for providing so much entertainment in such a short period of time that people would want to see them again and again, which was further fueled by the conversations that such movies would inspire among said individuals. In time, the movie studios’ pursuit of blockbusters resulted in their gradual transformation into something like a genre in their own right, which can be distinguished by the enormous sums poured into their production and promotion as well as the designation of the masses rather than a particular segment of the population as their intended audience. This is in contrast to movies made on low budgets but are nonetheless commercial successes, which are often called sleeper hits rather than blockbusters.
How Did Blockbuster Earn Its Current Meaning?
The term “blockbuster” comes from the blockbuster bomb, which was as its name states, possessed sufficient power to blow up entire streets. However, it is interesting to note that they were also used to blow the roofs off of buildings so that incendiary bombs would have a much easier time reaching the building interiors to achieve maximum effect. Regardless, blockbuster bombs saw extensive use in the Second World War, which resulted in their introduction to pop culture, with an excellent example being their inclusion in the famous Bugs Bunny cartoon called Falling Hare.
By the 1970s, blockbuster was one of a number of terms that could be used to describe a movie that had met with enormous success at the box office, with other examples ranging from “spectacular” to “super-grosser.” It was not until Jaws that the true blockbuster had come into existence.
Jaws was an incredible success from both a critical and a commercial perspective, which was all the more noticeable because that success had come at the end of a prolonged slump in Hollywood. As a result, the movie had an enormous influence on movie studios, thus shaping the movies that would follow it. For example, Jaws showed Hollywood what its movies could be earning, which resulted in the movie studios’ pursuit of the same level of success by pushing out high-cost, high-tech movies.
Furthermore, Jaws established the modern model of a national release in numerous movie theaters backed by extensive promotion efforts, whereas its predecessors tended to spread from market to market at a much slower pace through reviews as well as the power of word-of-mouth. Finally, Jaws established summer as the time when movie studios would release what they were expecting to be their biggest successes, which was interesting because the season used to be a time when movie studios would dump what they were expecting to be their poorest performers. Summed up, it is clear that Jaws as well as the other blockbusters that followed it laid the foundations for the current state of the movie industry as a whole.
Since that time, the blockbuster hasn’t just reshaped the movie industry around it but also spread into the other entertainment industries. As a result, it is not uncommon to hear blockbuster used to describe media that range from best-selling novels to the most popular TV shows and video games, which in a way, shows the sheer influence that it has been able to exert over the decades.
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