(For an explanation of this, read the Introduction. Other posts in this series can be found here.)
Movies We Still Care About
- Aliens
- Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
- Highlander
- Little Shop of Horrors
- Stand By Me
- Top Gun
Other Notable Movies
- Back to School
- Big Trouble in Little China
- Crocodile Dundee
- The Fly
- Labyrinth
- Star Trek IV
- Three Amigos
- Transformers: The Movie
Best Picture Nominees:
- Platoon (Winner)
- Children of a Lesser God
- Hannah and Her Sisters
- The Mission
- A Room With a View
Top Grossing Films (US)
- Top Gun
- Crocodile Dundee
- Platoon
- The Karate Kid Part II
- Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
- Back to School
- Aliens
- The Golden Child
- Ruthless People
- Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Rotten Tomatoes Top Movies
- Aliens (98%)
- Hannah and Her Sisters (93%)
- The Fly (91%)
- Stand By Me (91%)
- Little Shop of Horrors (90%)
Movies We Still Care About
Little Shop of Horrors
This is just a solid, well-made musical, whose performances elevate enough to pass the test of time.
It’s interesting to note that the ending of the movie radically differs from the stage play. I saw Frank Oz, who directed the movie, speak when I was in film school. He talked about how the original ending matched the play, only was bigger and more wacky, with the army coming in to battle Audrey II. But the problem with the original ending is that Seymour and Audrey die. When they did test screenings, the audience clearly loved the movie right up until that happened, and then abruptly hated it. Frank Oz said it got one of the worst scores he had ever seen a test audience give. He argued that the reason what worked on stage didn’t work on screen was because of the power of the close-up. He made the audience care about Seymour and Audrey, and they wouldn’t forgive killing them off. So he hastily reshot the ending to make it happier.
There’s an interesting lesson in that: You often hear people bemoaning films being driven by test-audiences and other interference that gets in the way of the director’s vision. But directors aren’t always perfect. They make mistakes. And the best directors are the ones that can recognize when they’ve screwed up and fix it. Which is exactly what the test-screening process allows them to do.
Anyway, here’s the original ending:
Stand By Me
In my write up on Goonies I talked about how a lot of movies are wish-fulfillment fantasies, and what made Goonies special was that it featured ordinary kids, making it easier for the children watching it to put themselves in the characters’ place. Stand By Me builds on this by having realistic ordinary kids face a realistic situation. There are no bank robbers, mutants, or pirate treasure. Just dogs, trains, bullies, leeches, and their own emotional issues – things that normal kids are likely to encounter in their normal lives.
Rather than a fun adventure, it’s more of a coming of age drama. But through it all, the heroes discover an inner strength, which makes it really resonate with an audience that themselves feels weak and powerless.
Which is why the “suck my fat one” scene works so well.
Top Gun
Top Gun perfectly encapsulated the spirit of 1980s Cold War machismo. It showed that America would beat the commies because we have the manliest men with the most powerful machines.
The screenwriter for Top Gun was my adviser in film school, so I’ll pass on some random tidbits that he mentioned. (As an aside, he’s a humble guy, and was mildly embarrassed to be showing his own movie in class. But he said that every year students asked about/demanded it, so finally he relented and made it part of his regular curriculum.)
- He said that the main reason he took the assignment to write it was because he (correctly) thought the producer would be able to get him a ride in a fighter jet as part of his research.
- After being taken through high-speed fighter jet maneuvers and realizing the physical toll that takes on the body, he decided to structure Top Gun as a sports movie. If you think about it, Maverick is essentially an athlete who wins the big game.
- While writing the film, he was picturing Tom Cruise as Maverick, even before he had been cast. The writer had previously seen Tom Cruise in the football movie All the Right Moves, which further reinforces the sports movie theme.
- The writer is a happily married heterosexual, and did not write the volleyball scene. (And I just now realized when looking up that scene on YouTube that the music playing is actually entitled “Playing with the Boys.”)
- He argues that in the mid-80s, nobody noticed all the homosexual undertones to the movie. But he does have a sense of humor about it. Immediately after showing the movie in class, he followed it up with this Quentin Tarantino rant about how the entire movie is a metaphor for Maverick overcoming his sexual confusion and embracing his homosexuality.
Other Notable Films
Labyrinth
This is one of those movies that people loved when they saw it as a kid. It’s mostly been forgotten by those who are either too young or too old to have appreciated it in the 80s. But for those who are the right age, it’s still something that affects them and that they strongly care about.
Star Trek IV
I think that most people would consider the best original cast Star Trek movie to be Star Trek II. But there is a significant minority that prefer IV. Its plot of the Enterprise crew traveling back in time to the modern day made Trek more accessible to the masses, bringing in a new and younger audience and laying the groundwork for The Next Generation TV show/films. Plus it has Walter Koenig running around asking for the “Nuclear wessels.”
Three Amigos
This was a huge movie at the time, and remained culturally relevant for a time, but has fallen out of relevance by today. It really doesn’t hold up. It’s full of racial stereotypes and broad slapstick humor that today’s audiences don’t find appealing. Plus incoherent nonsensical scenes like this one, where for two minutes they establish that the rules of the world include magic, which is never mentioned again:
Transformers: The Movie
Another movie that had a huge impact on people who were of the right age to enjoy it at the time, but has been mostly forgotten by anyone younger or older. This was especially impactful for kids who were into Transformers at the time, because this is where Optimus Prime dies. That’s certainly not something you would expect, and for a child would be quite shocking.
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Do you disagree with any of these choices, or think that I missed something? Leave a comment below.
Cinema Badger 