Fifty years ago, a little movie about a big fish changed how Americans go to the movies. Steven Spielberg’s Jaws premiered on June 20, 1975, becoming the first feature film to break $225 million in domestic returns and inadvertently creating the summer blockbuster phenomenon. 

Thomas Leitch, Unidel Andrew B. Kirkpatrick, Jr. Chair in Writing, has taught film studies at the  University of Delaware for more than 40 years. As he prepares to retire from UD, we asked him to reflect on the impact Jaws has had on movie-making and what audiences today look for when they go to the movies.  

Did Steven Spielberg know he was about to change the movie industry forever?

Jaws was not originally either designed or marketed as a ‘summer blockbuster.’ It was marketed like The Poseidon Adventure or The Towering Inferno, iconic 70s disaster films. 

But it did such a big box office that it changed the way studios think. Studio heads figured they could finance virtually all of their projects for the year with one huge summer movie. It wasn’t intended to, but Jaws created the pattern for movies that followed, like Star Wars in 1977 and Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981.  So that’s what started it, and now here we are.

Is it true that COVID killed the blockbuster?

Maybe. One thing my wife and I used to enjoy about going to the movies was that we could do it spontaneously. Now that theaters have reserved seating, it’s harder to do that. I don’t know which came first, this change or the pandemic, but the movie-going experience is definitely different now than it was five years ago.  

My current students stream a lot more than they go to theaters, and they stream more TV than feature films. That being said, some students definitely understand the concept of the summer blockbuster, just as some of them understand that movies used to be made in black-and-white without dedicated soundtracks. But lots of my students think of summer blockbusters as “the movies,” because that’s what they watch.

The movie industry has morphed before, when the studio system broke up in the 1950s, with Jaws in 1975, and today’s franchises. I don’t know what it will look like in 10 years, but I’m sure it will morph again. 

How do you explain the 2023 “Barbenheimer” phenomenon?

People these days seek a more interactive relationship with screens than I ever did. If a TV show or movie doesn’t catch their attention immediately, they change it. And I’m convinced that smaller screens have made movies as much of a sound experience as a visual experience.

Who would have thought that Barbie and Oppenheimer would go together? They were the most unlikely couple, but it supports this idea of interactivity. It wasn’t just about the movies themselves, it was about the event of going to those movies. 

Hitchcock famously said that the moviegoing experience isn’t complete until you have the icebox talk. What he meant is that you don’t go to the movie alone. You talk to someone else who just saw the movie about what you liked, what bothered you, the music, the performances. If you don’t get that chance to process the movie with somebody else, then you haven’t really had the movie experience. 

What movies have captured your attention in the past few years? 

I miss the kind of movies that my mother liked to watch - American genre movies from the 1930s and 40s. There are no more Westerns, and science fiction films all try to be blockbusters now. Even rom-coms, which used to be legendary, are not being made that often anymore.

But a relatively recent movie that surprised me? Absolutely, Get Out. It was game-changing. 

I’ve followed Jordan Peele with great interest since Get Out, but I don't think his later movies have equaled Get Out. But that’s okay. Orson Wells never equaled Citizen Kane, either, and, you know, he’s a pretty good filmmaker. One masterpiece in your lifetime is plenty. 

Which movies do you think you’ll see this summer?

These days, I’m more likely to go to the movies with my grandchild, and I think we’ll see the How to Train Your Dragon adaptation. We’ve seen the trailer many times!