Are most movies from the 1980’s terrible??

I just watched Repo Man and Valley Girl.

Pleasure.

I was into British and French films in the 80s, then they also went to shit.

Eighties movies are great!

r3 = John Hughes

Johns Hughes was great!

Yes, most 80’s movies have not held up well at all. I understand movies are always going to look dated eventually but so many of the ones from the 80’s are simply awful - especially all those teen/high school movies. Clueless from 1995 still holds up really well after all these years while high school movies like Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller, Fast Times, etc are unwatchable now.

The 'Back To The Future' Trilogy still holds up. They're entertaining adventure films. But movies like the John Hughes comedies seem outdated and hokey because they tried too hard to make a cultural statement and as a result had a shelf life of about five years.

E.T. and The Goonies I can't speak on, I haven't seen those movies since I was a kid. I don't think those two HAVE to hold up, they're targeted at an age demographic that doesn't really give a shit. Kind of like The Sandlot.

Blade Runner

Aliens

Videodrome

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

Do the Right Thing

Blue Velvet

Ran

Something Wild

Evil Dead 2

Jean de Florette & Manon des Sources

My Neighbor Totoro

I don't know; I find the movies I liked then to be as enjoyable now.

R6, what year were you born?

Compared to the 70s and 90s, cinema in the 80s was weaker.

Totally agree, R10. I grew up in the 80s and 90s and there’s so little from the 80s I would even consider watching. The 90s brought so many great independent films in addition to Miramax, which threw big bucks at good stories. 80s was all disposable, least-common-denominator bullshit. I love many movies from the 40s, the 50s, the 60s, the 70s, and the 90s. The 80s is a big gaping neon hole.

R9 ‘79. So I experienced the 80’s and 90’s.

Most of the movies I can think of from the 80s that people would say were good were made by Spielberg or John Hughes and I’m not a fan of either.

I can think of some I did love as a kid:

The Neverending Story

Karate Kid

Batman

Gremlins

Little Shop of Horrors

Cocoon

War of the Roses

Oh, Who Framed Roger Rabbit was really a one-of-a-kind movie, of the 80s but so much more creative and visionary than most of the decade’s schlock.

I can't think of many movies of the 80s that have held up that well. Most of them were movies of their time and seem very dated now.

Try rewatching The Neverending Story r13 (actually don't if you want to keep your childhood memories intact). As an adult the movie doesn't hold up. At all.

I think 80’s was one of the best decades for comedy. Clue, Big Business, Troop Beverly Hills, the Naked Gun Movies, The Nation Lampoon Vacation series..... also big budget action films. I think the problem with the movies OP mentions is that they all use special FX that look really dated now. Comedies and action movies like Die Hard didn’t have as many effects.

The cheesy one-liners. Wasn't just the effects. The acting. It's not much better now, I guess. Mannequin, Short circuit, St. Elmo's Fire, Weird Science. I could go on and on.

BLADE RUNNER, ET, TERMS OF ENDEARMENT, AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN, URBAN COWBOY, THE COLOR PURPLE.

If 80s movies are so terrible, why are Millenials remaking all of them? Terribly I might add.

(R20) because in their arrogance and laziness they think, they can improve them.

(R19) Urban Cowboy? You almost had me in your corner.

[quote] BLADE RUNNER, ET, TERMS OF ENDEARMENT, AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN, URBAN COWBOY, THE COLOR PURPLE

Almost all of these are mediocre.

(R23) but they're better than a lot of the movies in the 80s. But we were younger then. Our expectations were lower. Easier to please.

It may be nostalgia, but I can watch 80s movies like Fatal Attraction, Hannah and Her Sisters,and Moonstruck over and over.

R24, that's true. Now, just throw in a couple of explosions and it's "awesome!".

R12, if you were born in 1979, your movie tastes were most likely formed in the early to mid 90s. Just like with music, most people form their movie 'tastes' in their early to mid teens. That is, if they watched a lot of movies. Everyone having a VCR by late 80 or early 90s probably helped cement those tastes.

Fatal Attraction and The Witches of Eastwick are good examples of movies from that era that people remember and describe as great, and I’ve watched and thought “this...isn’t that good.” I agree that they are entertaining enough and I agree that they are more thoughtful than most of 80s cinema, but compared to Mildred Pierce or Chocolat or Rosemary’s Baby or Bringing Up Baby or so many movies from practically any other decade, they don’t hold a candle.

It seems like in every other decade, some movies were made with a real sincerity, and in the 80s everything was a campy factory production made for the least common denominator.

(That said, the Marvel movie takeover of the past decade has made me stop paying attention to feature films altogether and IMO the 2010s have been 80s-level abysmal for movies overall unless you are obsessed with comic books. ‘Get Out’ is an example of a movie that is good enough—like the Witches of Eastwick and Fatal Attraction—but it was a pretty simple, straightforward and obvious extended metaphor about racism that was hailed as a transcendent work of literature on film, and it really was just...pretty good. That that movie, and a good-but-not-brilliant movie like Ladybird, are hailed as the best of the decade demonstrates how it was not a great decade for film. Fortunately, it was great for TV.)

In my mind, 1980s Hollywood featured some very talented performers, but Hollywood had a major creative slump during the decade and invested in cashing in on special effects and cheap thrills instead of well-written stories and dialogue. Most of the 80s was things like Risky Business and Cocktail and Caddyshack and Revenge of the Nerds and just really lame shit.

A movie like E.T. probably can be said to be an exception to this...I have a personal bias against the ambiance of most Spielberg movies and so I guess I should consider them but can’t. I like Close Encounters, Jaws, Schindler's List and Jurassic Park, but so many Spielberg movies, and especially ones from the 80s that are focused on kids or adolescents, have this aw-shucks big-eyed feeling of wonder inspired by over the top music scores and heavy-handed directorial tricks (Raiders of the Lost Ark, etc.) that they turn me off. Stranger Things emulates his 80s style and I can’t stand it.

Were most films of the 1980s terrible? Most of the more popular ones, yes. Why the following stinkers are remembered, let alone fondly, is a mystery.

E.T.

When Harry Met Sally

Return of the Jedi

Empire Strikes Back

Back to the Future

Ghostbusters

Conan the Barbarian

Risky Bsuiness

Terms of Endearment

On Golden Pond

Rain Man

Flashdance

Arthur

Big

Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Dirty Dancing

Tootsie

Naked Gun

Crocodile Dundee

Footloose

Tootsie

Victor/Victoria

At least everything wasn’t made with cheap, fake looking CGI.

Pretty much, OP. The 80s has more B movies than probably any other era. Many weren’t even meant to be B but were so awful they fell into that category.

John Hughes high school films are written from the perspective of someone who grew up in the Fifties. None of his teen movies feel genuine.

[quote] If 80s movies are so terrible, why are Millenials remaking all of them?

Oh, dear... and they aren’t.

There were a few good ones like Batman, Beetlejuice, Who Framed Roger Rabbit... but so many films of that era were corny as hell. It was a family values Reagan era and it showed.

[quote] If 80s movies are so terrible, why are Millenials remaking all of them?

Remaking them all? Um, no. I would also bet the ones remaking some of them are Gen X studio heads. Learn how to spell Millennial.

The 70s is when movies became very real. I wonder if there was a pushback against that by the 80s with more kid friendly flicks.

I will never understand why they’re making a sequel to Top Gun or that Blade Runner disaster. At least make sequels to films people remember. It reminds me of the Murphy Brown reboot. No one remembers it. There are old films and shows that still hold up and do amazingly well in syndication and rerun.

R36 there had to be . Look at the first Rocky inn1976, a gritty, low budget, character driven drama, beautifully written and acted And then look at Rocky IV in 1985, a campy, cheesy MTV video come to life, with a robot (!) and Dolph Lundgren as an evil sterioded Russian

It was ridiculous

Everything from the 80s was terrible. Music. Movies. TV. Clothing It became such a suburbanite centered culture.

Hang on, R38, Dress Barn went public and expanded nationwide in the 80s and Glamour Shots was within a short drive of every home in America—so it wasn’t all bad.

Mall culture ^^

No mention of Working Girl?

One thing I can say for the 80s: In elementary school during the early-mid 1980s, I distinctly remember being taught that chlorofluorocarbons had eaten a hole in the ozone layer and that it was important to stop using aerosol hairspray, deodorants, etc. And that regulations were passed to stop the damage to the atmosphere because it was causing serious problems for life on Earth.

This was in a Virginia public school during a Republican administration. Today, everything about that scientific discovery would be controversial. Schools in the south would teach that it’s all a lie. They might say the hole in the atmosphere is God’s eye peering down on us. They would say that the government is replacing aerosols with mind control agents. They would rebel. Aquanet’s CEO would be given a speaking spot on the White House lawn and Trump’s EPA would say that chlorofluorocarbons have purified our air and drinking water and that the fake news about this alleged ozone layer is conspiracy theory by socialists trying to kill fetuses and take our guns.

One acquaintance of mine said that the AIDS epidemic robbed the entertainment industry of lots of creative and talented people which was why so many people look at the 80s and 90s as a nadir of pop culture. I dunno, I am on the fence about this theory.

My Beautiful Laundrette holds up. So does A Room With a View.

Dangerous Liasons - just rewatched it and it's still brilliant

R29 I adore all those movies and have watched them numerous times.

80's had my favorite movies and music. The TV from that era though is strangely forgettable.

I know that film afficiandos worship at the alter of 70s cinema and rightfully so. The 80s looked pretty crass by comparison, but what films in the 90s or 00s revived cinema? The 90s may have been a little better (Pulp Fiction, Silence of the Lambs, Thelma and Louise, but then again there are bloated Oscar bait movies like Titanic, Philadelphia and Schindlers List and cult faves like Big Lebowski and Fight Club (neither of which I liked). Those movies just aren't as fun. And the 00s are dire with the rise of the comic book movie and junk like Juno considered great moviemaking.

No.

OP needs to sit in a tub of sulfuric acid.

The only John Hughes movies I like starred John Candy. His output with Molly Ringwald is awful.

I can't stand Buzzfeed but here's a decent checklist of the more popular films of the era. Definitely better than the last 2 decades. The 90s was great too but a lot of the best films from that era were produced outside the studio system. Unless your into animated or indie films, then you'll prefer the 80s.

[quote] I know that film afficiandos worship at the alter of 70s cinema and rightfully so.

Personally, I feel like classic movies from the 50s and 60s have aged even better but I seem to be in the minority opinion on that one.

Can we keep this discussion to the top box office draws and other successful movies. Because good work by artists come out every year and every decade.

I beg you--Don't rewatch the movies you loved as a kid.

80s films I love: Tootsie, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Broadcast News, Matewan, No Way Out, Something Wild, Hope & Glory, Moonstruck, After Hours, Silkwood, Shoot The Moon, Maurice, Missing, The Killing Fields, Mississippi Burning, Drugstore Cowboy, Moonlighting (Jeremy Irons), Purple Rose of Cairo, Housekeeping, The Accidental Tourist

An underrated film from the eighties that I loved was NOTHING IN COMMON with Tom Hanks, Eva Marie Saint and Jackie Gleason. It was so good, with a decent performance by Hanks.

I still say one of my favorites is Heavy Metal. It was so dark and violent. It was like nothing I've ever seen before. You can definitely tell it's an 80s movie. But I still enjoy it.

Seven, Shakespeare in Love, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Clueless, Fargo, Before Sunrise, Elizabeth, Go, Eyes Wide Shut, Eve’s Bayou, American Psycho, A River Runs Through It...just a few good to great 90s movies that seem so richly diverse and interesting compared to most of what I know of the 80s.

R51 - I once read an article claiming there were no good American movies in the 60s. Utter hyperbole of course but I would agree with the writer that American movies of the 40s, 50s and 70s were stronger and my favourite movies of the 60s are as often as not to be international.

R58, yeah, in retrospect, the 60s were an incredible time for foreign film, especially Italian and Japanese. The New Hollywood period didn't begin until like 1968.

R57: Yes, but you're comparing films you like from the 90s to films posters don't like from the 80s.

The 80s had tons of shit films, but also: Ordinary People. Das Boot. Do the Right Thing. Drugstore Cowboy. Au Revoir les Enfants. Ran. After Hours. Near Dark. Heathers. Trading Places. Once Upon a Time in America. Full Metal Jacket. The Shining. Blade Runner. Fatal Attraction. Atlantic CIty. Apartment Zero. Wings of Desire. Fitzcaraldo. The Vanishing. Hannah and Her SIsters. Blue Velvet. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Matador. Dark Habits. Law of Desire. A Room with a View. Fanny and Alexander.

It wasn't a wasteland unless you look at lists of "Iconic 80s Films" where you'll find all shit. It was just a time when the concept that started to take hold in the 1970s of betting everything on blockbusters and fuck the rest became central and before "independent films" gained some footing; and before independent and foreign films were shoved off onto TV production companies and niche film channels on TV.

(R57) Good movies but this is a 80s movie thread. Start up a 90s one.

If you think 80s movies don't hold up, can't wait until you watch some of the films out now in 5-10 years. No storytelling, cardboard characters. There hasn't been a new movie star in forever.

Urban Cowboy was surprisingly good. I despise country and western music but something about this movie is endearing to me.

I thought "Urban Cowboy" was a piece of shit movie. The two lovebirds, Bud and Sissy, were a couple of rednecks with double digit IQs and the maturity of a middle schooler. They were totally unsympathetic. I thought the best thing about the movie was Scott Glenn. Madolyn Smith stood out, too. As a love interest she was much more appealing than the mechanical bull humping Sissy.