Summer Blockbuster Trivia
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7correct to beat the crowd
This summer blockbuster trivia quiz has 100 free questions with answers and starts where the summer movie season itself started, with Jaws in 1975, and runs all the way to Barbenheimer, Top Gun: Maverick and Inside Out 2. In between are the films that defined the season: Star Wars, E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark, Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, Top Gun, Batman, Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, Independence Day, Men in Black, Armageddon, Spider-Man, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Dark Knight and The Avengers. The questions cover where the word "blockbuster" came from, opening-weekend records, budgets that broke records, casting near-misses, production disasters and the odd behind-the-scenes deal, so it works for a movie night, a pub quiz round or a solo test of how much popcorn history you have absorbed. Roughly a third of the questions are easy, a third medium, and the rest are for people who read the credits. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia or a primary source, and each question links to the page that confirms it.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What did the word "blockbuster" originally describe when it entered the American press in the early 1940s?
WWII aerial bombs
WWII aerial bombs: 'blockbuster' was the nickname for bombs big enough to wreck a whole city block, and film publicists borrowed it for pictures they hoped would hit as hard.
Q 02Why does Indiana Jones simply shoot the Cairo swordsman in Raiders of the Lost Ark instead of fighting him?
The star had dysentery
The star had dysentery, like much of the crew in Tunisia, so the long sword fight the stuntman had spent weeks rehearsing was cut down to a single gunshot.
Q 03Which 1973 hit, shot for well under a million dollars, was George Lucas's last film before Star Wars?
American Graffiti
American Graffiti cost under $800,000, and a private screening of it persuaded Fox executive Alan Ladd Jr. to back Lucas's next idea, a space opera.
Q 04Jaws was adapted from a 1974 bestselling novel by which author?
Peter Benchley
Peter Benchley wrote the first drafts of the screenplay too and appears on screen as a TV reporter, though most of his script was rewritten while the cameras were rolling.
Q 05Jaws was shot mostly on location on which island, standing in for the fictional Amity?
Martha's Vineyard
Martha's Vineyard played Amity although the shark hunter who inspired the novel fished off Long Island; the crew arrived in May 1974 and were still there in the autumn.
Q 06The crew of Jaws nicknamed its mechanical sharks Bruce after whom?
Spielberg's lawyer
Spielberg's lawyer, Bruce Ramer, lent his name to all three mechanical sharks, whose constant breakdowns left the director little choice but to keep the fish mostly out of sight.
Q 07Where did Steven Spielberg film most of the shark hunt in Jaws?
On the open ocean
On the open ocean: Spielberg turned down a studio tank, and bad weather and salt-water breakdowns of the mechanical shark sent the film far over schedule and budget.
Q 08Which line did Roy Scheider improvise in Jaws on first seeing the shark up close?
You're gonna need a bigger boat
'You're gonna need a bigger boat' was Scheider's own addition to a script that was still being rewritten, scene by scene, the night before each day's filming.
Q 09Universal sold Jaws in the days before its release with a then-unprecedented burst of what kind of advertising?
Television spots
Television spots cost Universal $700,000, a sum no studio had spent that way before, and the film opened in more than 400 cinemas at once to make the most of them.
Q 10Which Star Wars actor, no admirer of its script, negotiated a percentage on top of his fee?
Alec Guinness
Alec Guinness dismissed the script to friends as 'fairy-tale rubbish', yet the percentage he held out for on top of his fee made him rich once the film became a worldwide hit.
Q 11Which Star Wars character did George Lucas model on Indiana, the Alaskan Malamute that rode beside him in his car?
Chewbacca
Chewbacca began with Lucas's big dog sitting upright in the passenger seat like a co-pilot, and the dog's name was borrowed a few years later for Indiana Jones.
Q 12Which subtitle did the original Star Wars gain in 1981?
Episode IV – A New Hope
Episode IV – A New Hope appeared above the opening crawl only then; in 1977 the film had no episode number, and by 1981 its sequel had already opened as Episode V.
Q 13Which candy company refused to let its product appear in E.T. (1982)?
Mars (M&M's)
Q 21Whose theme song for Ghostbusters went to number one on the charts?
Ray Parker Jr.
Ray Parker Jr. got the job after Huey Lewis turned it down, and Lewis then sued, saying the tune copied his hit 'I Want a New Drug'; the case was settled out of court.
Q 22Who was originally cast as Marty McFly in Back to the Future and fired in January 1985?
Eric Stoltz
Eric Stoltz had been filming for five weeks when Robert Zemeckis decided he wasn't right for the comedy; Michael J. Fox then played Marty at night after his days on Family Ties.
Q 23Why was 88 mph chosen as the time-travel speed in Back to the Future?
It was easy to remember
Mars (M&M's) turned Spielberg down, so the trail of candy became Hershey's Reese's Pieces, and their sales reportedly tripled within two weeks of the film's release.
Q 14E.T.'s screenwriter Melissa Mathison was the partner of which actor, whose scene as Elliott's school principal was cut?
Harrison Ford
Harrison Ford played the principal with his face kept out of shot, while Mathison, his girlfriend and later his wife, played the school nurse; the whole scene was dropped.
Q 15E.T. earned nine Oscar nominations but lost Best Picture to which film?
Gandhi
Gandhi won for its director, Richard Attenborough, whom Spielberg cast a decade later as John Hammond, the showman who builds the dinosaur park in Jurassic Park.
Q 16E.T. builds his 'phone home' communicator around which popular toy of the day?
Speak & Spell
Speak & Spell: the communicator was designed for the film by science educator Henry Feinberg, and Texas Instruments went on to sell the toy as official E.T. merchandise.
Q 17Which TV star was George Lucas's first choice for Indiana Jones but could not get free of his new detective series?
Tom Selleck
Tom Selleck had just been cast in Magnum, P.I., whose makers would not release him; he withdrew in May 1980, and the part was recast within days.
Q 18Ghostbusters opened at number one on June 8, 1984, ahead of which same-weekend horror-comedy?
Gremlins
Gremlins opened the same day and finished about a million dollars behind; Ghostbusters was there to beat it only because its makers had promised Columbia a finished film within about a year.
Q 19According to Dan Aykroyd, which Ghostbusters role was originally intended for Eddie Murphy?
Winston Zeddemore
Winston Zeddemore was written with Murphy in mind, Aykroyd has said, though director Ivan Reitman denied it; by the time Ernie Hudson played him the part had been heavily cut.
Q 20The real Ghostbusters firehouse, Hook & Ladder Company 8, is in which Manhattan neighborhood?
Tribeca
Tribeca's firehouse supplied only the outside: it was too busy answering calls to be taken over, so the interiors were filmed in a disused fire station in Los Angeles.
It was easy to remember, and the designers thought it looked good on the DeLorean's digital speedometer; in an early draft the time machine was a refrigerator, not a car.
Q 24Which number-one hit did Huey Lewis and the News write for Back to the Future?
The Power of Love
The Power of Love was one of two songs the band wrote for the film, and Lewis appears in it, uncredited and in disguise, to tell Marty's band, as it launches into that very song, that it is 'just too darn loud'.
Q 25Top Gun grew out of a magazine article about the Navy's elite fighter school at which air station?
Miramar
Miramar, near San Diego, called itself Fightertown USA; the producers read 'Top Guns' in California magazine in 1983 and won the Navy's backing before they had a script.
Q 26In Top Gun, Maverick and Goose fly which Navy fighter?
F-14 Tomcat
F-14 Tomcat: the Navy gave the production its full support, and co-writer Jack Epps Jr. sat in on Top Gun classes and flew in a Tomcat's back seat before 1986's biggest US hit was shot.
Q 27Why did comic-book fans flood the studio with protest letters when Michael Keaton was cast as Batman?
He was known for comedies
He was known for comedies such as Mr. Mom, so fans feared a camp Batman in the style of the 1960s TV series and organised letter-writing campaigns against him.
Q 28What turned Jack Nicholson's $6 million Joker fee for Batman (1989) into a far bigger payday?
A cut of the takings
A cut of the takings, merchandise included, turned the guaranteed $6 million into a payday that his biographer puts at $60 million or more.
Q 29Which rock singer lost the T-1000 role in Terminator 2 after a motorcycle crash?
Billy Idol
Billy Idol was set to play the liquid-metal killer until the crash badly injured his leg; Robert Patrick, who took over, recalls seeing Idol's face on the designs at the effects studio.
Q 30According to Carolco's Mario Kassar, what did the studio give Arnold Schwarzenegger as part of his Terminator 2 deal?
A private jet
A private jet: Kassar called it a gimmick that also made sense, since a Gulfstream could be paid off over many years while a star's fee fell due week by week.