The standard narrative of blockbuster history is that Jaws (1975), Star Wars (1977), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and ET: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) were the milestones that set the template, teaching the studios how to market and release their product for maximum impact. This goes hand in hand with a parallel narrative about the steep decline of “auteur-driven”, bad-boy cinema which had distinguished the Seventies, and the scapegoating of expensive, non-populist auteur flops such as Friedkin’s Sorcerer (1977), Scorsese’s New York, New York (1977), Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate (1980) and Coppola’s One from the Heart (1982). The studios weren’t interested in reaching a strictly adult fan-base any more. They’d switched their sights to the teenage market, and found, in Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, two creative wizards whose films were practically a manifesto in access-all-areas populism, bringing in young and old.