80s Movies: Not What You Remember

Remember going to see movies in the 80’s? There was no streaming, no reserved seats, and “stadium seating” meant you were at a baseball game. But once the lights dimmed and the screen lit up, the magic was still there. Or at least that’s how we choose to remember those days. Think back to the films you saw during that decade and I’m willing to bet more than half of them are not really as great as you thought. Let’s examine some of the 80’s films that we like to call “classics,” but don’t hold up anymore.

St. Elmo’s Fire

In the 80’s every guy wanted to be Rob Lowe and every girl wanted to be with Rob Lowe. The film was directed and co-written by Joel Schumacher who came from D.C. Cab and would go on to direct Batman Forever but he kept the D.C part as a location for St. Elmo’s Fire The movie follows a group of friends who are recent graduates and lays out all their issues like they’re major problems. It’s kind of like every show on Bravo but everyone is good-looking (oh wait, that’s Bravo too). Watch it again: it’s all gloss and no substance (other than a killer song from John Parr). It’s simply relationships that work and then don’t work. You’re never truly invested in the characters so we don’t really care.

The acting is stiff and the dialogue is mostly unbelievable. Yet, when I was in high school in the 80’s we all hoped for a place like St. Elmo’s and wanted to hang out with good-looking, angsty people.

Predator

The real problem with Predator today is that the effects don’t hold up, which is kind of funny because the film was nominated at 1988’s Academy Awards for “Best Visual Effects.” The other issue is that action films today need relatable heroes and are less concerned with the size of your muscles. We need to feel invested in our heroes even if they are taking on a manhunter from another planet. Watching Arnold run around a jungle is not something anyone can identify with. Go back and watch that scene where Arnold Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers clasp hands and we see a close- up of their muscles. Would that ever fly in today’s action films? Mix in some bad one-liners, “I ain’t got time to bleed” and dated action (mostly due to a lack of CG) and you’ll see why Predator just doesn’t hold up.

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Purple Rain

Full confession, the first time I saw Purple Rain was actually in the 2020s. Obviously, I knew the music but had never seen the film when it first came out in 1984. And I had a ton of questions: why doesn’t the Kid have a name? What’s with the wardrobe? And was there even a script for this film? However, the music was and still is amazing.

It astonishes me that the film managed to gross over $68 million in the U.S. but I guess if you wanted to see some great Prince performances back then you would have to sit through some terrible Prince acting as well.

Top Gun

Before you get all agitated that the top-grossing film of 1986 is on this list, let me explain. The only reason I put Top Gun here is because the sequel Top Gun: Maverick was so good. In fact, it was so well directed that the first film could not compare to it. There’s a lot of repetition in Maverick and all of it is done better than what we saw in Top Gun. The aerial sequences are infinitely better, the beach sports scene is better (why would you wear jeans to play volleyball on the beach?), and the romance in Maverick is more believable too.

Had Maverick not come along in 2022, I’d still be remembering Top Gun fondly but because the Oscar-nominated Maverick was so well produced, Top Gun just doesn’t hold up.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not about just trashing 80’s films. There are certainly many that do hold up over time. 48 Hrs. is just as funny today as it was then and Eddie Murphy is even funnier in this film than he’s been in years. Heathers is just as subversive as when I first saw it in 1988 and Bull Durham is still my favorite sports film ever produced. Even The Breakfast Club weirdly holds up somehow due to teenage problems in the 80s being similar to teenage problems in the 2020s.

Let me know what you think of my list or go back and watch these films again and prove me wrong.

-Robert Matvan

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This post was previously published on CultureSonar.

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