The rise of the Blockbuster era occurred during the 1970s and ended around 2014. During this era, films became bigger and less personal from directors. This is due to studios prioritizing high-budget spectacles that were CGI heavy, along with films that were more fast paced.

With studios prioritizing high-budget films, they took creative control away from directors and favored brand driven content that can be marketed globally. With the success of “Star Wars” (1977) it demonstrated that films can create products for their films. Creating these products or merchandise such as toys, video games, and clothes drove sales. This was essential to their business revenue model.

Since massive marketing budgets now favor the “tentpole” model, which is where a single or huge hit is expected to make up for their flops. This left little room in the mainstream for smaller personal storytelling.

The loss of movie stars as cultural icons led to a focus on massive franchises such as sequels and reboots over original stories. This was used to pull audiences away from home media and into theaters.

With studios understanding the popularity of films such as “Star Wars,” “Alien,” and “Batman.” They used these films to be repurposed for profits, which shifted artistic and standalone films to creating worlds.

Superhero movies dominated this era, it was due to a shift toward high-budget and intellectual property driven blockbusters. This led to the creation of interconnected cinematic universes. The MCU was one of these shared universes. This fostered dedicated and returning audiences that turned movies into interconnected episodes that expanded beyond one film. With superheroes becoming dominant figures in popular culture, this led to the representation of hope and offered a universal/cross-cultural appeal. This was ideal for global box office dominance.

During the Blockbuster era, CGI pivoted niche 2D effects from the 70s and 80s to photo reality 3D such as the films “Terminator 2” (1991) and “Jurassic Park” (1993). This transitioned from complementary tool to the primary spectacle, which allowed filmmakers to create immersive virtual worlds and creatures. This refined action filmmaking through films like “Avatar” (2009).

The Blockbuster era ultimately altered economics, production, and culture of cinema. This shifted the focus from artistic driven filmmaking to massive “event” films. This created a lasting blueprint for studios, which created a business model of prioritizing franchises over original one off films. Studios began to concentrate their high-budget releases in the summer months such as the established Fourth of July weekend.