Charlie Goose

I can't disagree with a single movie listed so far, so I'm going with a very personal choice:

ALLIGATOR

In my opinion, second only to Jaws in the marauding animal genre. It has action, blood, laughs, and Robert Effing Forster at his badass best. My friends and I went to see it a couple of times, and even wrote our own fan fiction comic books about it. A good chunk of the summer of 1980 was spent on the hunt for and battling with unusually large imaginary alligators. It's one of my favorite movies from my youth and responsible for a lot of great memories, exactly what a summer movie should do.

Paul_SD

I don't mean to sound condescending (or maybe I just can't help it) but I feel sad for a whole generation that grew up thinking movies like this were the epitome of what a summer blockbuster is/should be. This is one reason I'm not feeling it for Prometheus at this point. I was there for Alien (and Aliens). I absolutely knew I was seeing something special at the time.
Prometheus, otoh, seems calculated for the several generations of people who weren't around when this stuff actually was new and unique. I get the feeling people are going to go nuts for it, regardless of whether it's truly good or not (see: Batman '89) because this is their chance to finally get a taste of what a classic property's original experiences must have been like.

But one of the big thing about Jaws, Star Wars, and even Raiders and Alien(besides the high inherent quality of them)- these movies got hyped by word of mouth more than anything else. There was a sense of discovery with them. They might get a blurb on the cover of time, but most non-geeks went to see them because the normal friends they knew went and came back raving about them. And because movies back then were intended to make their money in actual release, they were truly 'summer movies' since they stayed in the theater all summer long.

Blockbusters now seem so pre-digested that by the time they actually get into the the theater, the actual act of buying a ticket and watching them seems like rote follow through. One of the most telling comments about Avengers (a film I did enjoy) that I heard multiple times, was that it was finally a blockbuster that didn't suck or wasn't a let-down(!?). How and why on earth could something that was a let-down ever become a blockbuster in the first place? The answer is Batman changed things almost as radically as SW did 12 years earlier. Starting with Batman, you didn't have to be a crowd pleaser to make a ton of money.

Jules Winfield

I don't think you're being condescending. It is pretty sad. My ten year old self didn't realize it but I was totally being brainwashed into thinking that Batman is going to be the best movie ever. And as a result, my view of summer blockbusters is what it is. Ultimately, I am more satisfied with Jaws and Raiders than The Mummy and Independence Day but whenever I see a certain amount of explosions, yelling and one liners in a trailer, I automatically think "It must be summer." Hopefully, more summer movies this year will deliver like The Avengers but so far, not yet.