As a film buff this book was a wonderful read. Reliving the great stories through film kept me devouring this book.

The idea of the Summer blockbuster as we know it kicked off with Stephen Spielberg’s smash hit Jaws in 1975. As Universal Studios raked in cash it became apparent that the months that schools around the United States were on break was the prime time to try and replicate that success, something that seems glaringly obvious in hindsight. When George Lucas’ Star Wars burst onto the scene in the Summer of 1977 and made 20th Century Fox a small fortune, the theory bore out even more which led the studios to start releasing bigger and bigger budgeted films between late May and late August each year chasing similar results. 1978 saw Grease and National Lampoon’s Animal House take the country by storm, followed by Alien in 1979, The Empire Strikes Back in 1980, and Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981. An even bigger takeaway though, was that the once maligned genre of science fiction was equal to box office gold, and suddenly every Hollywood executive was scrambling to get their own special effects-laden projects off the ground, leading to the Summer of 1982, which saw 8 genre pictures released within weeks of each other, nearly all of which would prove successful financially and each destined to become a classic in their own right.

In The Future Was Now, author Chris Nashawaty posits that the movies that Summer and the public’s reaction to them are directly responsible for the state of cinema today, for better and for worse. He fills in the basic facts around the years leading up to 1982 that set the stage for that Summer and provides fascinating details about the development of the 8 films in question: Blade Runner, Conan the Barbarian, E.T., Mad Max: The Road Warrior, Poltergeist, Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, The Thing, and Tron. In so doing he also gives us brief looks at the creators of these movies and the studio system they were dealing with at the time.

Coming in at around 300 pages it can sometimes feel like the subject isn’t given the necessary space to be fully realized, but Nashawaty’s quick and witty writing style keeps the reader engaged and cinephiles in particular will be compulsively turning the pages late into the night. Factoids about the near-fatal accident Arnold Schwarzenegger suffered on the set of Conan or the rapturous reception E.T. received at the Cannes Film Festival fill in the story as he argues his point about the influence these films had on pop culture moving forward. By the end it’s hard not to be convinced that he’s right.

In the ensuing years Hollywood would come to fully embrace “nerd” culture, spending more and more money on increasingly spectacular films, often earning bigger and bigger paydays in return and building rabid fanbases in the process. It’s hard to believe there was ever a time that the cinema wasn’t so dominated by franchises, IP, and CGI, but it was in the Summer of 1982 that it all began in earnest, and other than in this informative and entertaining little book, we haven’t really looked back since. Movie lovers, especially of a certain generation, will eat this up like Reese’s Pieces.

This was a terrific read and anyone who enjoys movies, pop-culture, the 80's or sci-fi will enjoy it.

I was 10 years old the summer of 1982 --the year eight seminal science fiction movies were released over eight weeks that summer. I'm a life long film fan and I recognize Mr. Nashawaty's byline from many, many issues of Entertainment Weekly which I was a religious subscriber of for most of its existence.

Which is to say I know a decent amount of about movies but I still learned so much from this book which is packed with details and interesting nuggets. The thing I love about a book like this is how it puts history in context and draws connections that aren't always evident when they happen. Because of this approach, the book has a very clear through-line connecting the early summer blockbusters of Star Wars and Jaws to how studios wanted to get in on the action leading us to this monumental summer.

It's written in a clear and solid way with journalistic ease and as opposed to academic pretension making it an enjoyable read as opposed to feeling like home work.

This book has made me see these films and film history, in a new way.

***Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC of this wonderful book***
Be a fly on the wall behind the scenes of the development of 8 iconic Sci-Fi movies that took the world by storm in 1982: E.T., Tron, Star Wrath of Khan, Conan the Barbarian, Blade Runner, Poltergeist, The Thing , and Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior.

This book is compulsively readable and covers not just the movies listed above, but the work of the directors/writers/actors that led them up to their respective 1982 release. A lot of these stories I had heard before but it is a real treat to have them all conveniently compiled in one location.

This is a must read for film fans, especially ones who were raised on these movies and continue to fly the flag for them to this day!

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Flatiron Books for an advanced copy of this cinematic history of a magical time in film making a group of movies were released that changed the ideas of how films were made, marketed, even financed, and yet many of these lessons have been forgotten, even as the films are replicated again and again.

I have loved movies since I was young, and read anything I could find about film. I remember a book of lists featuring movies, and it had a section where it broke down movies by year. 1982 stood out to me as there were so many movies I could remember seeing, either in the theaters, or on my illegal cable box. Not just seeing them, but talking about them, buying candies, action figures, soundtracks. I can still remember feeling slightly ill during the maggots scene in Poltergeist. The tears on my face in both E.T. and Star Trek II: The Wraith of Khan. Watching Blade Runner on HBO and going I don't get this but I want more of this. 1982 was an awesome year. Movies made than are still making making money for studios today, through all the different sequels, reboots, soft reboots, reimagining and and whatever they can do to squeeze that cash out. The Future Was Now:Madmen, Mavericks, and the Epic Sci-Fi Summer of 1982 by entertainment journalist Chris Nashawaty is a peek behind the curtains at how these movies came to be, their sometimes difficult birthing pains, the controversies, and sometimes even hostility these films have, and how they all have become classics in their own way.

The book begins with Jaws, the blockbuster that changed the way movies were released. Films used to be released in certain cities and almost travel the country, like the Grateful Dead, playing in different cities over months at a time. Jaws blew that out of the water. Especially when it made so much money. Star Wars added to this. Customers doing repeat viewings, merchandise, action figures. Movies were suddenly hot again. Science fiction was suddenly hot, going from drive-ins to Mann's Chinese Theater for sellout weeks. Studios began to look at science fiction. Paramount retooled the tv show Star Trek to middling interest, but enough to make a sequel. Ridley Scott off Aliens and needing a movie, looked at a long gestating Philip K. Dick property and from that created Blade Runner. Disney, off the failure of the Black Hole, a movie I liked, began to invest in a new form of animation, for a computer based movie, Tron. And and Austrian bodybuilder preyed to the god Crom, and was chosen to star in Conan the Barbarian. Since movies take time to develope, this movies and others The Thing, Poltergeist, E.T. all came about the same time 1982. A meeting of cinema that still reverberated today.

I will be honest right out. I loved this book. This book is so my jam, I can't even explain. However even if it had been about films in 2002, I would have enjoyed it, as Chris Nashawaty is a fantastic writer. Nashawaty loves film and it shows. The way he writes, the way he looks at film. The way he gives the benefit of the doubt to people, and yet calls others on their actions is really honest, and makes the reader appreciate what Nashawaty does even more. There is so much behind the scenes information. I have never been much of a Tron fan, but I found the creation of the movie fascinating. And the sections on George Miller's Mad Max's shooting conditions were terrifying. Any director telling a stunt driver not to eat 12 hours before a stunt in case he has to go into surgery. That's just crazy film making.
This is a book for people who love film. Those people who buy the 4k of every release they can. There is so much new information, so much analysis on things I hade never thought about. Really a wonderful book. But it share it, and discuss these movies like we used to do in homeroom back in the day. One won't be sorry.

Fantastic book discussing an even more fantastic year for sci-fi movies! Nashawaty does a wonderful job of placing the reader back in the moment as some of the greatest minds and events collide into a blockbuster summer. It has common-knowledge discussions, sure, but it is also filled with "you had to be there" discussions that are rarely discussed. The Future Was Now is a must-read for any 80s sci-fi film fan!