20 Greatest Summer Blockbusters Ever Made
1. The Dark Knight (2008)
RottenTomatoes Score: 94% (8.6/10)
Box Office: $1.005 billion
Why It's Awesome: After Christopher Nolan so successfully reinvented Batman as gritty and "realistic" in 2005's Batman Begins, he basically changed the dominant aesthetic of contemporary action films with his follow-up, The Dark Knight.
For one, no major comic book movie before had ever combined superhero theatrics with the grounded crime drama style of something like Heat or The Departed. As absurd as Batman's stand-off with The Joker was in actual fact, Nolan did a fantastic job selling its apparent plausibility from beginning to end.
The action is riveting, the drama absorbing, and all the technical considerations virtually without flaw. Even so, everyone knows what made The Dark Knight the best summer blockbuster in history: Heath in a terrifying, Oscar-winning turn as the Clown Prince of Crime. Never before had an actor immersed themselves so deeply in the sort of role that many actors would readily dismiss as a lazy paycheck part.
That Christian Bale's Batman essentially plays second fiddle to the villain is a testament to how spot-on the portrayal was, and that's without even discussing the other great work throughout from Aaron Eckhart, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman and Morgan Freeman.
This is as great as comic book movies or, indeed, action films or, yes, summer blockbusters ever get.
What are your favourite summer blockbusters of all time? Shout them out in the comments!