The Dark Age of Film

NC: Hello, I'm the Nostalgia Critic. I remember it so you don't have to. You hear it all the time from people, summer movies aren't what they used to be, nobody makes them like they used to anymore. Well, in some respects, they're kinda right.

(Clips of Ben-Hur's chariot race scene play out as an example of an old summer epic)

NC (vo): In the grand history of cinema, we've both visually and with character, pushed the boundaries of what can be done. Some of these are so incredible that you could argue we'll never recapture it again. But that's not really what I'm talking about. (Clips of Space Jam play) What I'm talking about is people who grew up in the nineties saying that they don't make summer movies like they used too.

NC: Bull-fucking-shit, a lot of people forget there was a dark, dark...DARK time in our history where summer movies were just expected to suck!

NC (vo): (Clips from Titanic and Fargo play as examples of good award season films) Now again, I'm talking specifically about summer movies. Good films came out around award season and, yes, (Poster of Batman Forever) there are a long list of summer films in the past that are terrible then and are terrible now, (Clips from Godzilla (1998), Speed 2: Cruise Control, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Battlefield Earth, Batman & Robin, Lethal Weapon 4 and The Phantom) but, honest to God, there was a period of time when audiences just accepted the fact that every summer we were gonna get something that was really stupid, and most likely we're not going to enjoy.

NC: Instead having movies like, say, (Posters for...) The Avengers, Hunger Games, The Lego Movie, and once in a while, a Transformers 4, for a while, every movie we got was Transformers 4!

NC (vo): (Clips of Armageddon) That's right. Good summer movies were the exception; they rarely happened. (Clips from Hercules and Dante's Peak) And, yeah, some films were just underwhelming; not the worst, but didn't leave much of an impression on you, but hey, that still counts as not a good movie, too.

NC: I remember this dark age so well, I can even pinpoint the exact years it happened: (years pop up on screen) 1996 to 2001.

Note: This transcript is not yet completed.