Over the past few weeks, something has been bugging me. Let me lay some groundwork for this a bit, and then I’ll get into my conundrum.
See, I’ve always thought that the 1980’s & 1990’s were some of the best decades when it came to cinema, especially action movies. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Jean Claude Van Damme; the list of superstar actors goes on and on and on. These were the decades of the action hero, with larger than life actors playing classic characters… pure fantasy, but in the most fantastically macho way. The action classics are too numerous to count… Terminator (1 & 2), Aliens, Predator, Rocky, Rambo, Universal Soldier, Speed, Point Break, Independence Day, etc, etc, etc… The list is too long to count. Basically, I’ve always just gone with the assumption that if it is from the 1980s, it’s probably better than action movies turned out today.
But, see… the past few weeks, that assumption has been tested. It starts with my viewing of 1984’s Supergirl. For those of you who aren’t aware, this is a quasi-spinoff film to the Superman movies, where Superman’s cousin has to come to earth to fight an evil witch. It is about as terrible as it sounds, and if you include it as one of the Christopher Reeves-era Superman films, it soundly drops into fifth place behind Superman IV: The Quest for Peace… and that movie is atrocious. Here is the trailer for Supergirl to give you an idea of what I am talking about.
Honestly, it is one of the worst movies I think I’ve ever seen, and I sat through the entirety of Movie 43 (I was drinkin’, but still). And then after that, since I was on a bit of a DC streak, I decided to watch a movie called Red Sonja, which was kinda sorta a sequel to Conan the Barbarian movies, even starring Arnold himself. Again, atrocious. So that got me thinking… were the 80s/90s that good, or is it that the only movies that still have a lasting influence to today are ones that rose to the top, and those just happen to be the films that define the decade?
So, how do we actually make this determination? Well, I’ve given it a bit of thought. You could look at the Best Picture winners of each decade, but I think its fair to say that the Academy Awards don’t necessarily pick movies that have significant pop culture significance. So rather, I think it makes sense to look at top grossing films. Next, we need to determine the timeframes. For this comparison, we are going to look at the highest grossing films from 1985-1995, and 2005-2015. This means that we get an equal sampling from each era, while also allowing enough time for the modern films to breath a bit (so we aren’t looking at films from 2020). Alright, so here are the films for each of the aforementioned years.
| 1985 – Back to the Future | 2005 – Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith |
| 1986 – Top Gun | 2006 – Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest |
| 1987 – Three Men and a Baby | 2007 – Spiderman 3 |
| 1988 – Rain Man | 2008 – The Dark Knight |
| 1989 – Batman | 2009 – Avatar |
| 1990 – Home Alone | 2010 – Toy Story 3 |
| 1991 – Terminator 2: Judgement Day | 2011 – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 |
| 1992 – Aladdin | 2012 – The Avengers |
| 1993 – Jurassic Park | 2013 – The Hunger Games: Catching Fire |
| 1994 – Forrest Gump | 2014 – American Sniper |
| 1995 – Toy Story | 2015 – Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens |
I did not know where this analysis was going to lead me, but looking at these two lists basically just shows how filmmakers took a LOT more risks back in the 80’s and 90’s. Looking at 85-95, we see 1 sequel (and that sequel is on the list of “greatest sequels ever”) where from 2005-2015 we see 9. The movies from the 80’s and 90’s were fresh; they took chances, they figured out what worked and what didn’t. The movies from 2005 to 2015 are basically just treading in the footsteps of the films that came before.
So, I think where I am headed after my viewing of some crappy 80s films AND my comparison of top grossing films from the 2 decades above is that todays movies are far more formulaic. Maybe that is what movie studios have found; that if they hit the right notes, they can guarantee a certain audience, ensuring profitability from their investment. I do find that bad movies today are far more watchable than bad movies from 20 years ago, so this could just be a case where the studious have narrowed the bell curve, meaning fewer standout films while also having fewer dogs. I guess that means that films today have become happy in mediocrity.
That’s not to say there aren’t good movies anymore… but it does say that the good movies of today are generally not coming from big studios. Everyone was on the Marvel bandwagon up through Endgame, but I don’t think anyone would say those were top-tier cinema. Maybe we need to trust the smaller companies; companies like Blumhouse or Neon. If we can get some low-budget films that take more risks, I imagine we can find some good movies that actually push that curve out a bit and generate some new favorites.
Ain't That Bad - Movie Blog 