| Datebook
With big movies delayed, a look at past Memorial Day openings
For more than 40 years, Memorial Day weekend has been a time for huge movie releases, serving as the official kickoff of the summer blockbuster season. Last year, the big movie was “Aladdin.” This year, the big movie for the holiday weekend is ... well, it’s “Lovebirds,” an actioncomedy premiering on Netflix.
So, no, there are no Memorial Day blockbusters this year. The full blockbuster experience — the popcorn, the packed movie houses, the surround sound, the people on cell phones, the big heads in front of you, the people hogging the armrests, the sticky floors — those are things of the past and things of the future, but not of the present. “F9,” the latest in the “Fast and Furious” franchise, was scheduled to own this year’s Memorial
Day weekend, but because of the coronavirus, it has been moved to April 2021.
What do you want to watch instead? The traditional answer to this would be to recommend a war movie or a patriotic movie, which would be in keeping with the real point of the holiday.
But this year, let’s go back in time and revisit past Memorial Day blockbuster movies, films that were actually released in theaters on the holiday weekend. Some you’ll remember.
Maybe one or two you’ll have actually watched on some Memorial Day weekend a few years ago.
One way or the other, they may bring back a little of the holiday as we’ve always known it — and hope to know it again.
“Star Wars” opens at S.F.’s Coronet Theatre in May 1977.
“Star Wars”: This first “Star Wars” film was an unexpected box office monster when it opened in May 1977. It not only launched a franchise, but it also established Memorial Day as a really good time to release a big movie. Though an entire generation grew up watching it (over and over) on VHS, this was a grand theatrical experience back in the day. The sequence in which the Death Star is destroyed felt like being on a roller coaster — it was exciting and like nothing anyone had ever seen. “Rambo: First Blood Part II”: Sylvester Stallone had made a movie called “First Blood” about a traumatized Vietnam War veteran and his struggle with corrupt police. It was a big success, but this 1985 sequel not only surpassed it economically, but it also became a cultural staple, along with “Top Gun,” and a symbol of renewed American confidence in the 1980s.
In this installment, Rambo goes to Vietnam to rescue American prisoners still held captive by the Vietnamese and the Soviet Union. Spoiler alert: He gets them out.
“Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”: This third installment in the Indiana Jones saga, released Memorial Day weekend 1989, is considered by many to be the best. Harrison Ford plays the rugged title character, who becomes something of a sulky boy when he teams up with his father, an archaeologist played by Sean Connery. This is the film that established Connery’s later career as a mature character actor.
“Braveheart”: Mel Gibson directed and stars in this story of a Scottish independence leader, William Wallace, who led a rebellion against England in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. It doesn’t exactly go well for him, but he becomes an inspiring figure. This 1995 action film, which introduced American audiences to French actress Sophie Marceau (as the French queen), ultimately won the Oscar for best picture.
“The Day After Tomorrow”: At the time this Roland Emmerich film was made, the premise — that the climate crisis could get so bad that parts of the northern United States are covered in ice — was regarded as extreme and unlikely by climate scientists. But in recent years, according to Al Gore, scientists are thinking this could actually happen.
This entertaining 2004 blockbuster takes place in a nearfuture when the Gulf Stream slows and temperatures plummet.
“Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”: Indiana Jones is back and once again showing his marvelous survival strategies, as when he escapes getting vaporized in a nuclear explosion by hiding inside an oldfashioned refrigerator. Don’t try that at home, but this was an enjoyable reunion all the same. Released in 2008, this was the first Indiana Jones movie to hit theaters in 19 years. “The Girlfriend Experience”: Most Memorial Day weekends contain at least one example of what they call “counterprogramming,” and this 2009 Steven Soderbergh film was one of the most interesting. It starred porn actress Sasha Grey as a highclass call girl experiencing job insecurity in a suddenly collapsed economy. It was the first important movie about the Great Recession — and it has special resonance today, given the current financial crisis. “Fast & Furious 6”: The “Fast & Furious” franchise, which began in 2001, limped along for a decade with justOK sequels. But with this 2013 film, starring Vin Diesel and Paul Walker, the series found new life.
The story took these car racing enthusiasts and turned them into international foreign operatives, working in cooperation with the government. It’s one of the best in the series and the last to star Walker, who died in a car crash seven months after the movie’s release.
“XMen: Apocalypse”: This is a thinking person’s action movie, with Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and Charles Xavier ( James McAvoy) coming together to do battle against an awakened evil mutant from thousands of years ago named Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac) who thinks the weak must be destroyed to make way for the strong. Most of the key battle scenes in this 2016 superhero film take place in the minds of Xavier and Apocalypse.
“Solo: A Star Wars Story”: This 2018 release is a middling “Star Wars” spinoff, but it begins well and ends well. If only the middle were a little better. The one thing this Han Solo origin story can’t get around is that Alden Ehrenreich doesn’t seem anything like Harrison Ford, who originated the role.
Still, two years later, the idea of being able to watch even a soso “Star Wars” movie in a packed theater feels like a lovely fantasy.