It is not uncommon, when people swan about, cooing with praise for the New Hollywood Cinema and the exciting American cinema of the 1970s, to act as if the whole of the film industry was engaged in thrilling experiments that met with broad favor from audiences, who for once in history were interested in being challenged and enlightened by extraordinarily bold cinematic voices, till those poopypants George Lucas and Steven Spielberg ruined everything. This is untrue. This, indeed, fucking untrue: while it's the case that movies like The Godfather and even The Exorcist would surely never be such Zeitgeist-defining megahits in the 2010s (or the 2000s, or the 1990s...), and this is a sorry reflection on later generations of filmgoers, it's also the case that The Poseidon Adventure plausibly could be. And it was right up there on the top of the pile in 1972, right alongside The Godfather. The simple fact is that the movies we now heap money upon, as a culture (effects-driven action films with simple, cookie-cutter storytelling impulses and deliberately shallow one-trait characters), are also the movies that our parents and grandparents did. Only the effects have changed, while the traits enjoyed by the characters, largely, have not. When brainy, adult-themed dramas do well, it's always an exception, not a trend, and pretending that every Joe and Jane Moviegoer in the '70s was three-quarters Film Comment critic does nobody any good. It's not like the $307 million worth of Star Wars viewers in its initial release were being marched into theaters at gunpoint.
— Tim Brayton, "Hollywood Century, 1974: In which all the artistic revolutions in the world don't stop popular things from being popular
" (Alternate Ending review of The Towering Inferno)
" (Alternate Ending review of The Towering Inferno)