/Film’s ranking of the 15 best films of the 1970s here.
However, the audience’s cinematic tastes started to evolve thanks to the release of “Jaws” in 1975. Steven Spielberg’s film became an unprecedented cultural phenomenon and popularized the modern blockbuster for cinema. Audiences were eager to be thoroughly entertained in their visits to the movie theater, and their appetite for more inspiring crowd-pleasing films continued throughout the decade, thanks to films such as “Star Wars,” “Superman: The Movie,” and “Rocky.” While “Rocky” may be a smaller-budget sports film compared to the epic scale of the other blockbusters mentioned, the 1976 release, which was written by its then-unknown leading man, Sylvester Stallone, inspired audiences with its compelling underdog story. The film became the highest-grossing film of 1976 and won three Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
