Lights, cameras, action! “A summer movie should be fun, exciting, adventurous, and leave one feeling good upon exiting the theater,” said English Department chair Mrs. Kathleen Devine. Without a doubt, she is right. Summertime is usually reserved for film studios’ tentpole blockbusters, meaning they have a lot of action and make a lot of money at the box office. This summer, movie theaters were jam-packed with new movies that excited many people around the world. There were a handful of hit summer movies that a variety of people especially adored, but what makes these films so enjoyable to TBS students? Let’s take a look at some of their favorite movies that came out this summer.

According to a poll of 86 Benjamin middle schoolers, their favorite summer release was Incredibles 2 (36%), followed closely by Avengers: Infinity War (33%), and rounding out the bottom three were Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (15%), Ant-Man and the Wasp (9%), and Solo: A Star Wars Story (7%).

Let’s start with everyone’s favorite family of superheroes, The Incredibles. After a long wait of 14 years, the world finally received the sequel for which it had been waiting. Incredibles 2 set the box office on fire during its opening weekend from June 15-17, grossing $182 million. Overall, it made $1.183 billion worldwide.

According to Benjamin students, this was the best movie of the summer.

“Incredibles 2 was a pretty good movie,” said eighth grader Owen Nutter. “You had to have watched the first movie to understand it, though, because many of the details in the story belong to the first one,” he said. “My favorite part was the fight between Elastigirl and Screenslaver.”

“It was good,” agreed seventh grade student Ella Chait. “It was a little predictable, though. There is a lot of movies [that have] the bad guys pretending to be good guys.”

Next we have Avengers: Infinity War. Though Infinity War was released in late April, we had to include it here as it really kicked off the summer movie season. Infinity War became the fastest movie ever to hit $1 billion in earnings, and has been one of four movies ever to earn a grand total of $2 billion overall. In fact, it has made $2.046 billion so far. With the villain being somewhat relatable for the first time in a Marvel action film, many fans could not get over Thanos whose main plan was to get rid of half of the universe’s population.

“Infinity War, besides the ending, was a very good movie,” said Nutter. “I thought it was a good movie because it had many different traits and characters that had different appearances which were cool,” he said. “My favorite part was when Thor made the new axe.”

“It was good, but it was sad that [many of the characters] died at the end,” said sixth grader Sammy Solomon.

Another big movie to come out this summer was Ant-Man and the Wasp. In the opening weekend, it made around $76 million. Worldwide, it ultimate;y grossed $617 million.

“Ant-Man and the Wasp was kind of difficult to understand because it was going on at the same time as Infinity War, but in the end it was a good movie,” said Nutter. “It was a good movie because of the many characters and diverse storyline.”

Lastly, we look at Solo: A Star Wars Story. In the first four days of the movie being out, Solo made around $101 million dollars, which has been the smallest opening for a Star Wars movie since 2002. This aligns with what TBS students thought of it, as it was their least favorite of the five big films that were released this summer. Though Disney and Lucasfilm were disappointed with the amount of money the movie made, the film still managed to earn $392 million worldwide. The main factor of their disappointment was that this movie was the lowest grossing film in the Star Wars franchise. Disney and Lucasfilms were working on spinoff films about Obi-Wan Kenobi and Boba Fett, but as a result of Solo’s disappointment, they have decided to put spin-off films on hold for awhile.

“[Solo] was a pretty good movie because it had many different characters, and if you know the Star Wars universe as well as I do, it’s pretty fun to watch,” said Nutter.

“Solo was a very good movie,” agreed eighth-grade student Darien Salehi. “It was very interesting because you could learn about Han Solo, his background story when he was young, which none of the other movies show.”

So while dinosaurs and smugglers were a big part of the action this summer, many TBS students (and many moviegoers in general) preferred to see their favorite superheroes on the big screen as Incredibles 2 and Avengers: Infinity War were the big winners both at Benjamin and at the box office.