![]() The range of tones and styles on display was remarkable, from family-friendly fantasy to gory horror. Not all of these movies were created equal artistically, but taken together, they made a compelling case for the increasing thematic flexibility of their genre. On July 9, Disney’s technologically groundbreaking “Tron,” set in a virtual universe of video-game software, completed the quintet. June 25 brought the competing releases of Ridley Scott’s ambitious tech-noir thriller “ Blade Runner” and John Carpenter’s R-rated remake of “ The Thing,” visions several shades darker than “E.T.” both flopped as a prelude to their future cult devotion. ![]() Seven days later, Steven Spielberg’s “ E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” debuted to $11 million but proved to have stubby, little box office legs, eventually grossing more than half a billion dollars worldwide. After its June 4, 1982, opening, “ Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” set an unexpected record by grossing about $14 million on its first weekend. ![]() The peak of this trajectory came in the summer of 1982, in which five authentic genre classics premiered within a one-month span. The final lines of movie were prescient about the rise of the American science-fiction film, out of the B-movie trenches in the 1950s and into the firmament of the industry’s A-list several decades later. This plea for eagle-eyed vigilance suited the postwar era of Pax Americana, in which economic prosperity was leveraged against a creeping paranoia - of threats coming from above or within. “Watch the skies,” he insists breathlessly, hinting at the possibility of a full-on invasion in the final lines. ![]() At the end of Christian Nyby’s 1951 sci-fi chiller “ The Thing from Another World” - about an Arctic expedition whose members are stealthily decimated by an accidentally defrosted alien monster - a traumatized journalist takes to the airwaves to deliver an urgent warning. ![]()
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