ABSTRACT
Many commentators give the impression that blockbusters are particular to or peculiarly characteristic of New Hollywood cinema – of Hollywood since the advent of Jaws (1975), Superman (1978), Star Trek–The Motion Picture (1979), and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) in the mid- to late 1970s and early 1980s. 1 They also give the impression that New Hollywood blockbusters consist almost solely, from a generic point of view, of action-adventure, science-fiction, and disaster films. This chapter seeks among other things to qualify these impressions by locating the New Hollywood blockbuster within a series of historical contexts, both aesthetic and industrial. In doing so, attention will be drawn to the continuities – as well as the discontinuities – between pre- and post-1970s Hollywood cinema, and to some of the films and trends in the New Hollywood blockbuster tradition that run counter to prevailing generic accounts. In this way I hope not only to contest a number of current orthodoxies, but also to lay out the terms for a multidimensional definition of the blockbuster, a definition that encompasses films made before the 1970s as well as films made since then.
