Which summer delivered the best blockbusters?

If you think about it, the summer blockbuster is a bit of a backward concept. When it’s warm and sunny – when you should be outside ‘getting some fresh air’, who wants to sit in a dark room and subject themselves to two hours of over-produced, shamelessly commercial cinema?

Loads of people, apparently: last year, August alone saw UK and Irish cinemas take a whopping £111 million, despite the ‘Olympic effect’. Naturally, it’s all down to the line-up, and before awards season brings complex plots and challenging characters, May to September is when Hollywood is at its brash, brilliant best.

Still, for every ‘Dark Knight’ there’s a ‘Batman & Robin’ and while Hollywood can average a fat wallet year in, year out, some summer movies aren’t always fully deserving of the cash they rake in. Using our unique formula*, we’ve ranked the ten best years since 1980 for summer blockbusters. Be prepared for some surprises.

*Years are ranked by taking the average Metacritic Metascore (or, where unavailable, the Average Rating on Rotten Tomatoes) of each year’s five biggest-earning movies released in the UK between May 1 and August 31.