The Case For 80's Adventure Movies

From John Hughes' The Breakfast Club to Steven Spielberg's E.T., 80's films not only shaped an entire generation, but inspired subsequent generations to create, imagine and pursue, no matter how impossible and risky it seemed.

We learned valuable lessons about friendship and compromise, about team work and independent thinking, we learned about the thrill of adventure but most importantly, we were thoroughly entertained by the content that we found both exciting and relatable.

Movies like The Goonies (or ET, or The Explorers) are no longer possible though, chiefly because such films heavily rely on the exploration of the world of children that is separate from the world of adults, and that world seems to be getting further and further away.

Kids don't go out to build forts in places their parents don't know about, or learn all the best short cuts to the candy store on their bikes anymore. They don't walk home alone to and from school. Play is now more regulated, either for the sake of safety or the desire of parents to participate in childhood. Kids are raised to be risk averse, and their world is a constantly shrinking one, mostly due to the role technology is now playing in our everyday lives and our hyper-awareness of how dangerous the world can be.

Some may make the argument that we already had technology all around us even back in the 80's... But before we had mobile devices, we had video game consoles and PC computers that you couldn't play with outside. If you wanted to go play, say, Mortal Kombat (which you didn't have) you would walk, unsupervised, to your friends house. And if a third kid had a game or gizmo neither of you had, you would then simply walk to that third house. It was a more inclusive and engaging reality that fueled the imagination, whereas now we've started to alienate ourselves and disappear into our respective realities.

We can see the shift happen in popular cinema too. We went from time-travelling in a Dolorian and killing Nazis armed only with a hand pistol and a whip to endless Marvel and DC remakes we're all getting sick of seeing (Ant Man? Seriously...?), not to mention endless 80's movie remakes that should have never seen the light of day.

We do see some form of a revival happening though. Between shows like Stranger Things and movies like Super 8, we re-enter the lost world of boundless imagination and find ourselves consumed by the mystery solving intrigue we so badly yearn for.

The 80's adventure movie genre shows us that anything is possible, that mysteries are meant to be solved and that adventure is always just around the corner, and perhaps our society needs to be reminded of that sometimes.