The 36 best summer blockbusters of the 1990s

The movie that single-handedly brought back the word “Ditto” into our everyday parlance, Ghost also proved that audiences love to see emotional fireworks on the big screen just as much as they do actual explosions. Patrick Swayze stars as a recently-murdered man whose spirit is stuck in our world trying to find his killer and make peace with the love of his life, played by a never-better Demi Moore. The Jerry Zucker-directed smash did scary-good numbers at the box office, becoming the highest-grossing film of 1990, while Ghost’s iconic pottery wheel scene—scored to the Righteous Brothers’ “Unchained Melody”—ranks among cinema’s most iconic moments.

“Get your ass to Mars.” Or to whatever VOD service that’s handy if you have yet to see the classic actioner Total Recall, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a construction worker turned spy who finds out he’s not who he thought he was and is pursued by trigger-happy bad guys. Director Paul Verhoeven’s follow-up to his R-rated sci-fi satire RoboCop is given a bigger budget and a bigger star to deliver a riveting thriller that’s equal parts future noir and ol’ fashioned action hero machismo.

Considering that James Cameron’s Terminator 2 was one of the first blockbuster action movies to rely heavily upon CG effects, it’s pretty impressive how well this movie holds up after several decades full of similar blockbusters that use much more updated versions of the tech. It doesn’t hurt that the nonstop shootouts and car chases are backed up by a truly engaging story about fate and free will.

Batman Returns is one of few comic book movies of the ’90s that stands the test of time (save for Batman killing two people with fire and dynamite, respectively). The film is aided by a doomed romance between Batman and Catwoman, which offsets all the gloomy holiday trappings and the campiness of the Penguin and Max Schreck.

August 1992 saw director and star Clint Eastwood’s future Best Picture winner, Unforgiven, become an unexpected sleeper hit at the box office, thanks to this Western’s meditative and compelling deconstruction of the very genre that helped launch Eastwood’s big screen career. As former assassin-turned-pig farmer William Money, Eastwood gives one of the most nuanced and vulnerable performances of his career as he must strap on the gun belt one last time to take on a corrupt sheriff played by Gene Hackman.

I mean, how can you NOT love this movie?! This guilty pleasure from Die Hard 2 director Renny Harlin gave Sylvester Stallone a much-needed action movie career comeback over Memorial Day weekend ’93, as their version of “Die Hard on a mountain” emerged as a peerless entry in the annals of Die Hard copycats. Cliffhanger is also one of the most beautifully shot action films ever.

Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, which turned 30 this summer, is one of the all-time great blockbusters of this or any decade. The original film in the franchise spawned four so-so (or outright terrible) sequels, yet none of them come close to the moment where Doctors Grant and Elle Sattler crane their heads to see a living, breathing “veggie-saurus” for the first time.

Sydney Pollock’s The Firm, arguably the best of the John Grisham adaptations churned out during the ’90s, is the very definition of a “thinking man’s” legal thriller. Tom Cruise plays a law school grad forced to go on the run from his employers when he uncovers their ties to the mob. Pollock spins a lot of plates with The Firm’s plot—one minute it’s a slow-burn mystery thriller, the next it’s a riveting chase film. But from the jump, it keeps us at the edge of our seats with an impressive ensemble cast and big emotional stakes.

In The Fugitive, Harrison Ford perfects the “blue-collar action hero” brand that defined his career in the ’90s with one of the most sympathetic heroes ever made, Dr. Richard Kimble. Struggling to prove his innocence after being falsely accused and convicted in the murder of his wife, Kimble is forced to go on the run to search out his wife’s killer and the people that framed him. In doing so, Ford delivers peak “less-is-more” acting; as Roger Ebert once observed, he is one of the few leading men who can sell “thinking” on screen. Or immense pain and anguish, with the slightest of facial expressions. In between the blockbuster film’s white-knuckle set pieces, Ford makes Kimble someone audiences can’t help but root for. Director Andrew Davis mines that inherent likability for maximum emotional spectacle and tension. Especially in a scene late in the second act when Kimble, posing as a hospital janitor, risks getting caught to help an injured teen. Even with his own life at risk, he can’t help but save others.

We miss the days when action movies like Speed were content to tell simple stories and focus on delivering the most concentrated dose of character-driven spectacle possible. Starring Keanu Reeves as a genuinely kind cop stuck on a bus that will blow up if it’s speedometer drops below 50 miles per hour, with Sandra Bullock behind the wheel, director Jan de Bont (in his feature directorial debut) injects adrenaline and tension into every frame of film. The movie just works, thanks to an unrelenting, well-structured screenplay by Graham Yost (with uncredited rewrites by Quiz Show’s Paul Attanasio and the recently canceled Joss Whedon). Speed, which is creeping up on its 30th anniversary and having a delayed-but-deserved re-appreciation (thanks in part to Kris Tapley’s 50 MPH podcast), still delivers nearly three decades later.

The Lion King showcased Disney at its peak in the ’90s, a studio willing to push the boundaries of what moviegoers expected while still delivering comfortably familiar entertainment. Between the lush animation, catchy songs, and Shakespearean tale of a lion cub growing to become a leader, The Lion King still has us saying “Hakuna matata.”

James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger reunited one last time, in 1994, to give us yet another thrilling action blockbuster with True Lies—this time allowing the director to give his sleek, expensive take on a Bond movie that rivals the scale of 007’s best cinematic adventures. Jamie Lee Curtis is the X-factor here that makes this particular collaboration shine, and impeccable comedic timing from Tom Arnold adds to True Lies’ rewatchability factor.

You can dismiss Robert Zemeckis’ Best Picture winner as trite and/or overly sentimental, but there’s no denying that Forrest Gump is an entertaining (and emotional) time at the movies. Tom Hanks earned his second Best Actor Academy Award for his portrayal of the titular character, a simple-minded but big-hearted guy from “GREEEN-BOW, AL-A-BAMA!”, who stumbles through a “We Didn’t Start The Fire’s” worth of history’s most memorable moments while learning all he can about love, family, and running.

Paramount Pictures minted money in the summer of 1994, thanks to Forrest Gump and Clear And Present Danger, Harrison Ford’s second (and best) appearance as CIA analyst Jack Ryan. When the president of the United States launches an illegal war on drugs, Ryan gets caught in the middle, facing threats both foreign and domestic. While Ryan as a character spends most of the run time reacting to events in the story instead of driving them, Ford is so good as the dogged, reluctant hero that his screen presence alone carries you past one of the few story bumps in this solid Tom Clancy thriller.

Director Tony Scott’s Crimson Tide, where sweaty faces are aglow in sonar greens and reds, is pure polish. They literally don’t make movies like this anymore—summer tentpoles built around people talking (or, in Crimson Tide’s case, yelling) in rooms. The people doing most of the talking here are Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington.The latter is a steadfast EXO aboard a U.S. nuclear submarine who’s forced to lead a mutiny against Hackman’s hot-headed veteran captain. These two men, their ideals, and one broken action message which potentially authorizes the use of nukes are all that stand between us and World War III. The stakes, and Scott’s ability to ratchet up of the tension surrounding them, couldn’t be any higher.

At this point, it’s clear we’re never going to get another good Die Hard sequel (sorry, Live Free Or Die Hard fans). So you might as well settle for rewatching the only good one in existence. Die Hard With A Vengeance manages to build on the original without blindly copying it; adding Samuel L. Jackson to the mix makes the whole thing that much better.

The most comic book-y of Batman movies, Batman Forever held summer 1995 audiences in a vice grip with its neon everything approach to the Dark Knight. With both Tim Burton and Michael Keaton dropping out of this sequel, there was never any chance of Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever living up to its predecessors’ gothic visuals—which was by design. The film was a box office sensation, thanks to Jim Carrey’s manic Riddler, Val Kilmer’s impressive screen presence as Batman, and the dizzying production design. (And the less said about those Bat-nipples, the better).

Director Ron Howard let the high-stakes drama of an ill-fated, real-life moon mission do all the heavy lifting in 1995’s Apollo 13. Stacked with an all-star 1990s cast (Tom Hanks, Ed Harris, Bill Paxton, Kevin Bacon, and Gary Sinise), Apollo 13 borrowed from astronaut Jim Lovell’s book documenting the mission’s aborted lunar run to spin a gripping tale that punctuates the early U.S. space program’s heavy reliance on human daring, resourcefulness, and a pioneering appetite for exploration—no matter the risk.

How good is this Michael Bay movie? Good enough to be selected for the Criterion Collection. The Rock is an expertly crafted action thriller that makes the most of the unusual but satisfying pairing of Nic Cage and Sean Connery, who must break into Alcatraz to stop Ed Harris and his rogue team of soldiers from launching a deadly gas attack on San Francisco.

Independence Day became one of the biggest blockbusters of the ’90s, thanks to its satisfying blend of mindless “disaster movie porn,” feel-good heroics and, of course, Will Smith. Director Roland Emmerich and screenwriter Dean Devlin’s ID4 certainly stands the test of time better than its 2016 sequel, which failed to capture any of the awe or matinee fun of this July 4th staple.

Some would argue that Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible franchise is better than it has ever been thanks to writer-director Christopher McQuarrie’s character-first approach to the IMAX-worthy stunts. But others argue that nothing can top the Brian DePalma original in the slow-burn espionage department. Mission’s convoluted plot seems less twisty now than it did upon initial release, and the iconic NOC List break-in sequence is as good as popcorn entertainment gets. It’s a testament to the film’s staying power, and Cruise’s performance, that this one scene has found its way into our pop culture lexicon by way of parody or imitation for more than 25 years.

The premise of Face/Off skirts the line between brilliant and ridiculous, which is only fitting for a movie featuring John Travolta and Nic Cage swapping faces and impersonating one another. It’s a wild, stylish ride—as all John Woo films should be.

Men In Black rates right up there with True Lies as one of the most audaciously, unapologetically entertaining movies of the 1990s. Will Smith’s charisma-fueled newbie to the MiB teams with Tommy Lee Jones’ methodical, stone-cold veteran to stop an alien menace and save the planet. Director Barry Sonnenfeld taps the actors’ effortless chemistry for maximum summer movie impact. And we’ll never get tired of watching Vincent D’Onofrio’s off-kilter, twitchy performance as a redneck that the Big Bad alien wears as a withering skin suit.

Humans will literally go deep into space to talk to aliens before they will figure out how to best talk to each other. Or accept the collective differences about what makes us unique. Those thematic struggles are at the beating heart of Robert Zemeckis’ Contact, a sentimental piece of grounded sci-fi, based on Carl Sagan’s book of the same name, that deals with what would really happen if Earth made contact with extraterrestrials. Jodie Foster and love interest Matthew McConaughey lack the chemistry to sustain the movie’s strained romance plot, but they more than make up for it with their fierce commitment to the story’s emotional truth and Contact’s heartwarming approach to unlocking whatever mysteries that call the coldest depths of space home.

Harrison Ford had one of his biggest hits ever in this 1997 “Die-Hard-on-a-plane” action thriller. In a time of ongoing political scandal, it was refreshing to see a president getting down to business and punching a bunch of terrorists off of his plane. Air Force One serves as another reminder that Gary Oldman is the all-time champ when it comes to over-the-top villains.

The Jim Carrey of 1998 might not have been quite the huge, bankable force he was in 1994, but at least he was choosing more interesting roles. The Truman Show flexes both Carrey’s comedic and dramatic chops as it tells the story of a naive man who’s unwittingly spent his entire life as the subject of a reality TV program. The film was oddly prescient about the reality TV explosion, and it still holds up 25 years later.

The first theatrical X-Files movie had a difficult task, as it had to both continue the long-running mythology of the TV series while also appealing to newcomers hungry for grounded, summer sci-fi. It mostly managed that balance by bringing Agents Mulder and Scully several major steps closer to uncovering the truth they so desperately sought. It’s just a shame that the TV series started going downhill afterwards.

One of the best adaptations of an Elmore Leonard novel to hit the big screen, Out Of Sight is a slick, funny caper about a fugitive bank robber who falls for the U.S. Marshal charged with tracking him. The film also kicked off a fruitful partnership between director Steven Soderbergh and star George Clooney.

There’s Something About Mary wound up becoming the highest-grossing comedy of 1998, and with good reason. It was, and still is, a hilarious R-rated raunchfest that instantly turned Cameron Diaz and Ben Stiller into superstars. It also paved the way for a new wave of edgy, gross-out comedies like Superbad and The Hangover.

There is life before, and life after, Michael Bay’s Armageddon. When a comet the size of Texas targets Earth for an extinction-level event, it’s up to oil driller Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis) and his ragged team of roughnecks to go into space and save the planet. Their ill-fated run straight to the planet killer’s surface, where they must drill a hole to place a nuke, is filled with nail-biting complications and some truly eye-rolling plot contrivances (Space Dementia!) Sure, it’s all-caps cheesy and critics hated it—but audiences couldn’t get enough of Armageddon’s melodramatic spectacle and ‘Merica heroics anchored by a game and likable ensemble that included Ben Affleck, Steve Buscemi, Billy Bob Thornton, Liv Tyler, and Owen Wilson.

GoldenEye director Martin Campbell revitalizes pulp hero Zorro with the same vigor and visual flare that he applied to Pierce Brosnan’s 007, but this time with an Amblin-y sense of four-quadrant fun thanks to executive producer Steven Spielberg. Once earmarked for Spielberg to direct, The Mask Of Zorro benefits greatly from Campbell’s exceptional action movie director chops—as well as the lively chemistry between stars Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones. The movie also scores points for delivering two of the ’90s most loathsome (and underrated) villains: The power-hungry Don Rafael (Lethal Weapon 3’s Stuart Wilson) and the love-to-hate Capitan Love (Matt Letscher).

The opening D-Day invasion sequence of Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan is generally considered the most realistic, and most horrific, combat sequence ever filmed. But the rest of Spielberg’s Oscar-winning World War II epic is a thoughtful meditation on loyalty, sacrifice, and humanity struggling to shine through the toll of overwhelming bloodshed.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe was still 10 years away when Blade arrived in theaters. But without Wesley Snipes’ first and best movie about the half-human, half-suckhead vampire hunter, the MCU might never have existed at all. This slick, stylish action horror hit served as an early example of how to do superheroes right on the big screen.

South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone translated their hilarious and smart TV show into an even funnier big-screen outing with South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. A piercing satire full of fart jokes and un-PC themes, South Park skewers Disney animated fair with legit and catchy musical numbers with appearances from the Devil himself and a voice cameo from George Clooney. But the real treat is a feature-length South Park episode that takes direct aim at every controversial topic the show itself had long been targeted for daring to talk about.

You gotta love the guts studios used to have in the ’90s, when they would release a chamber piece about a marriage on the brink as a July summer tentpole. That would never happen today. The buzz around the release of Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley Kubrick’s final film, spent too much time on its approach to sex. But that missed the point. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman star in Kubrick’s profile of a modern marriage unwittingly under siege by its own limits and the allure of what’s beyond them. One long, dark night of the soul for Cruise’s handsome doctor takes him to a prostitute’s tiny NYC apartment before he infiltrates a truly unsettling sex party, where the wealthy guests wear masks and speak in vaguely cult-ish terms in between orgies. It’s in the shadows of thoughts and feelings we don’t like to talk about, or feel too anxious to share with our spouse, that Eyes Wide Shut emerges as both an unlikely but satisfying piece of summer counterprogramming and as a legendary filmmaker’s final masterpiece.

M. Night Shyamalan will likely never be able to top his work in The Sixth Sense. One of the decade’s biggest hits, this gripping, character-driven supernatural drama centers on a young boy who can see ghosts, who falls under the care of a psychologist torn between letting go of his mortal existence and accepting his afterlife. It’s not just the sheer novelty of this twist that makes it stand out, but also the fact that Shyamalan spent the whole movie dropping clues and teasing the big moment without tipping his hand. The Sixth Sense’s biggest achievement here is infusing a character drama with the exact amount of “right-in-the-feels” energy it needs, cementing it as a modern classic.