Helen O’Hara - Best Movies of the 80s

DECADES LATER, AND THE 1980S CONTINUE TO EXERCISE AN OUTSIZE INFLUENCE ON OUR CULTURE.

The music is still referenced, the fashions keep threatening to come back, and even the hairstyles wont stay completely dead (much as we might want them to). The same is particularly true of the decades movies. The names of most big 1980s blockbuster movies are familiar even to those who were not yet born when the films were releasedand their stars are still working, sometimes in the same franchises.

Directors such as Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, and Tim Burton continue to reign supreme, and many of the A-list directors who have followed themsuch as J. J. Abrams and David Fincherhave dipped their toes into sequels or reboots of 1980s movies. In fact, seven movies on this list have sparked (or suffered) reboots; twenty-eight have had sequels; and yet more have launched prequels, television spin-offs, or stage musicals. Their influence on our world today is out of all proportion to their age, and shows no sign of diminishing. The generation that grew up in the 1980s adored their movies and introduced them to their kids as the acme of entertainment. But what is it about 1980s pop culture that makes it unique?

Its worth looking at the time that gave it birth. The old Hollywood studio machine had broken down by the late 1960s, unable to keep up with the rise in popularity of television or properly absorb the countercultural spirit of the age. In its place rose a wealth of new, independent-minded moviemakers who pushed film in directions that television couldnt match. Moviemaking in the late 1960s and early 1970s moved toward the darker or more transgressive likes of Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, and Taxi Driver or toward the more epicbut still adultmovies tackling the kind of story that television wouldnt attempt until the 2000s; think of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now .

Many of these movies were made by the movie brats, the first generation of moviemakers to have grown up with a mature movie industry to watch. They had studied film as an art form instead of earning their stripes in theater or within the studio system. This groupincluding Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, John Milius, and Brian De Palmachanged the way movies were made, layering in allusions to earlier moviemakers they admired and pushing the art in new directions. In the second half of the 1970s, as the oil crisis died down and the global economy began to perk up, these moviemakers reinvented what success looked like for studios, particularly with the knockout punches that were Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Star Wars . There had been blockbuster movies before, but Jaws began the blockbuster era, where every studio executive aimed to make the biggest movie of all time each time they went to bat. They wanted to make movies that were wildly popular and unlike anything youd seen before. That quest would shape the 1980s.

The name of the game was half a billion dollars worldwide, a barrier that E.T. would smash in 1983. Close Encounters and Star Wars made it clear that science fiction and other fantastical tales had a particularly high chance of breaking out worldwide, so the 1980s became a golden age for sci-fi invention.

In his role as the cocksure fighter pilot Maverick, Tom Cruise gave the 1980s one of its quintessential heroes.

The Empire Strikes Back upped the ante from A New Hope to become that rarest of things: a blockbuster sequel thats better than the original.

A manic and knife-wielding Glenn Close attacks Michael Douglas in one of Fatal Attraction s most thrilling and disturbing scenes.

In a decade overflowing with tank topwearing action heroes, Bruce Williss John McClane managed to stand out in Die Hard.

Meanwhile, producers such as Don Simpson, Jerry Bruckheimer, and Joel Silver more or less invented the modern action movie, proving that you didnt need to shoot aliens to thrill people, and cemented the high-concept thriller as a cultural mainstay with movies such as Lethal Weapon, Die Hard, and Top Gun. However, the more adult successes of the 1970s lingered, too, allowing for great horror, from The Thing to Fatal Attraction, and modern morality tales, from Wall Street to Scarface .

Over in Chicago, John Hughes almost single-handedly saved the teen movie from irrelevance, while a fallow period of creative stagnancy at Walt Disney Animation led to a new and wider explosion of talent as trained animators sought opportunities elsewhere (Tim Burton, Don Bluth, and John Lasseter struck out from Disney with great success), while a few hardy souls fought to revive the Mouse Houses animation legacy by the decades end with The Little Mermaid and Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

It was a time of change, of innovation, and of something like hope. While many cinema purists will still argue for the supremacy of the art form in the 1970s, with its reputation for taking risks and gritty realism, the wild, populist experimentation of the 1980s has had more effect on what most of us watch now, for good or bad. These big, brash movies changed the world, influencing Hong Kong cinema, Japanese animation, and Bollywood as well as directing and shaping the making of Western movies.

So, this is a celebration of those daysand the movies that still inspire fond memories. But before you read further, a few caveats. Youre bound to disagree with at least some of the movies Ive chosen, especially because Ive focused on mainstream American movies. I faced some difficult choices when trying to balance contemporary success at the time of release, enduring influence, and importance to the genre. I rejected a few movies on the basis that they didnt feel sufficiently 1980s. That meant saying goodbye to favorite period dramas such as The Untouchables and Amadeus ( Chariots of Fire survives almost entirely on the basis of that Vangelis theme). But it also meant turning down movies at each end of the decade that felt more properly part of the 1970s or 1990s. Raging Bull feels like a piece of Scorseses earlier work, while (at the other end of the decade) Bill & Teds Excellent Adventure feels quintessentially 1990s. I knowmost heinous.

The British are coming Chariots of Fire s tale of athletes in search of Olympic glory turned out to be an Academy darling.

The list is also overwhelmingly male, straight, and white. For the most part, there was little other choice in a book designed to cover the most widely loved and influential movies of the decade, because white male leads and creators predominate the movies that were seen to such a huge degree. I have tried to call out the worst cases of sexism, racism, and other prejudices in their plots, but the list itself is a testament to privilege. Hopefully, the selection at least shows that society has moved on since then, although a similar selection of the past ten years would feature many of the same stars and directors.