Thread: Late 70s to late 80s- best period ever for sci-fi, fantasy, horror, or adventure movies?
  • 80skidAK
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    • 12 years 8 months ago
    • Posts: 703
    		 Watching the original Indiana Jones movies again got me thinking...

    Is it me, or is the era from the late 70s to the late 80s a really great era of these kinds of "Speculative Fiction" movies? You know, sci-fi, fantasy, etc.

    You had the genuinely great movies of these kinds like the original Star Wars trilogy, the first three Indiana Jones movies, Blade Runner, Alien, Aliens, Roger Rabbit, Superman I and II, an underappreciated classic in "Tron," "Halloween", and others.

    Then you had movies like The Goonies, Gremlins, Back to the Future, the Friday the 13th and Elm Street films, Ghostbusters, etc. Maybe not "great" films like the ones above, but still a lot of fun.

    And that's not even mentioning the "cult classics" yet- Flash Gordon, Clash of the Titans, the Evil Dead movies, anything by John Carpenter, and infinitely more fantasy/horror films that would be too long to list.

    No knock against more recent films- the big blockbusters of the 90s and 2000s have been great, but it seems like there was a lot of cool and innovative stuff in this era, and in terms of the sheer number of good sci-fi/fantasy/horror movies, I don't know of any decade that can top it..
  • RetroRickster923
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    • 12 years 8 months ago
    • Posts: 883
    		 By George, I think you're right! I mean

    "Star Wars"
    "Indiana Jones"
    "Child's Play"
    " Nightmare on Elm Street"
    "Friday The 13th"

    and many more...
    I am Ricky, hear me think!
  • ChicagoSheriff
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    • 12 years 8 months ago
    • Posts: 387
    		 It sucks all we got today is more cgi and less story
  • yeazell
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    • 12 years 8 months ago
    • Posts: 513
    		 Inthe late 70's "Close encounters of a third kind" and "Alien" were great science fiction/thriller.
  • sm2000
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    • 12 years 8 months ago
    • Posts: 441
    		 Totally. It was a period of INCREDIBLE innovation and creativity. The films of Lucas and Spielberg from that era were actually what inspired me to try to get into movies.

    Oh, and how about Dragonslayer! All done with phenomenal model work and "Go-Motion" (a bloody brlliant variation on stop-motion animation techniques). If that was done today, it would be all CGI. Ditto The Thing, another cult classic from that era. BOTH of which are far better for NOT being CG.
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  • YoJoe83
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    • 12 years 8 months ago
    • Posts: 393
    		 they should've just stuck with the wholesome programming they used to put out back in the 80s and throughout the 90s. The 90s ruled man. Nintendo.
    UFC is great
  • Greengoblin
    • 12 years 8 months ago
    • Posts: 1742
    		 Well there has been a renissance in Sci-fi and fantasy thanks to the successes of "Lord of the Rings", "Harry Potter", "Transformers", "Narnia", "Iron Man", "X-Men 1 & 2", "Spider-Man 1 & 2", "I Robot", "War of the Worlds", and "Spiderwick Chronicles".
  • COOLHAND
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    • 12 years 8 months ago
    • Posts: 2941
    		 id say 50s - 60s

    but then again who knows
    [IMG]http://i168.photobucket.com/albums/u163/c-o-o-l-h-a-n-d/1188669386271.gif[/IMG]
  • DMoney89
    • 12 years 8 months ago
    • Posts: 2531
    		 To me, fantasy and sci-fi movies (other than the god-awful Sci-Fi Channel movies) are a rarity nowadays. Other than Narnia and Harry Potter, fantasy movies are a thing of the past. Adventure movies have been replaced by 1000s of generic action movies, and horrors haven't changed all too much. They're all the same and not scary anymore...
  • 80skidAK
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    • 12 years 8 months ago
    • Posts: 703
    Quote by Greengoblin

    Well there has been a renissance in Sci-fi and fantasy thanks to the successes of "Lord of the Rings", "Harry Potter", "Transformers", "Narnia", "Iron Man", "X-Men 1 & 2", "Spider-Man 1 & 2", "I Robot", "War of the Worlds", and "Spiderwick Chronicles".



    Yes, there have been the blockbusters in the last decade, and I've enjoyed them, but there have been few "great" ones on the level of the best from the 70s and 80s (except maybe The Matrix, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Spider-Man, and Batman Begins) and moreover, not even CLOSE to the number of "secondary" films- cult classics a la The Beastmaster, Big Trouble in Little China, the Mad Max movies, etc. The late 70s to late 80s is the decade for those movies- if I were to list all the cult classics from that era, it would take all night.

    Like I said, I enjoy the blockbusters of the last 10-15 years or so, but but it just seems like that whole era from 1977 to 1989 or so (Hell, I'll even count 1990 or 91, with movies like Total Recall, Dick Tracy, and of course T2) was just a wellspring of creativity for these kinds of films.
  • Joe_1979
    • 12 years 8 months ago
    • Posts: 36
    		 I really think the problem today is that we've done it all and anything that comes out now is just a rehash of someone else's idea.
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