Rather than talk about this weekend's boring box office results (nothing new to see here beyond a big weekend for that new kill-the-trespassing-teenagers flick Don't Breathe) let's travel back to 1984 which was a hugely influential year for franchises of many kinds. What can the biggest hits tell us about the then and the now?
TOP TWENTY OF 1984
numbers adjusted for today's dollars via box office mojo
01 Ghostbusters $589.6
Two Oscar nods. Spawned 1 terrible sequel, two animated TV shows, and this year's reboot
02 Beverly Hills Cop $581.5
Led to two sequels, a TV remake, and a TV pilot that wasn't picked up. Beverly Hills Cop 4 has been in some stage of development for 20+ years and is still supposedly being made. We'll believe it when we see it.
03 Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom $463.5
Two Oscar nods. Led to the creation of the PG-13 rating with that heart-ripping-out scene. You can see far worse things on television now during network prime-time (like, oh, decapitations and such). There are no longer any restrictions on violence in American film and television which is just so weird and a little bit scary...
04 Gremlins $381.8
Also led to the PG-13 rating though our guess is it would be G rated today
words cannot sufficiently express how much little Nathaniel loved this movie.
05 The Karate Kid $234
One Oscar nod. Led to two sequels, Hilary Swank, and a remake.
True confession: I've never seen any of the Police Academy movies
06 Police Academy $209.2
Led to six sequels
07 Footloose $206.2
Two Oscar nods. Remade in 2011. Also became a stage musical.
08 Romancing the Stone $197.3
Top Ten Sexy Things List. One Oscar nod. Made Kathleen Turner & Michael Douglas superstars. Led to one sequel and constant rumors of a reboot which still hasn't happened and which we don't think ever should because Kathleen Turner already perfected Joan Wilder and no one else could ever top her.
09 Star Trek III: Search for Spock $197
Posterized episode -How many Star Treks have you seen?
10 Splash $179.9
Hit Me With Your Best Shot this Tuesday night. Join us.
11 Purple Rain $176.2
Oscar win for its genius score. Prince RIP *sniffle*
12 Amadeus $128.1
We've had episodes of Hit Me With Your Best Shot & The Furniture devoted to this wonderment. Eleven Oscar nominations with eight wins.
13 Tightrope $124
An R rated Clint Eastwood cop thriller
14 The Natural $123.5
With Robert Redford and three key 80s actress stars (Close, Basinger, Hershey). Received four Oscar nominations
Andie MacDowell's film debut. With Glenn Close's voice.
15 Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan $118.1
Make sure to read about our recent revisit. Three Oscar nods but then the franchise went dormant again.
16 Revenge of the Nerds $105.3
Three sequels thereafter
The mid 80s. Back when Hollywood thought Helen Mirren was Russian (see also White Nights)
17 2010 $101.5
Five technical Oscar nods (with Helen Mirren long before she was a household name)
Jean Claude Van Damme film debut!<-- 18 Breakin' $99.7
Was sequelized later that same year with Breakin' 2: Electric Bugaloo!
19 Bachelor Party $99 s
Tom Hanks's breakout year as a movie star with two hits (see also Splash)
20 Red Dawn $98.9
The first movie to earn the PG-13 rating. Remade in 2012 to much less success. The Cold War really helped the first one.
What do we glean looking at this list?
• The first obvious grab is that being a sequel was unecessary. In this top twenty, a full half of the films spawned sequels, remakes, and franchises, but only 4 of them were actually sequels of a kind already (Temple of Doom, Search for Spock, Greystoke, and 2010)
• Animation was no longer popular. That's a far cry from such top of the box office lists today which generally have several animated films near the top of charts. We were five years away from the Disney renaissance and MANY years away from animation being the #1 box office genre. The big Disney release (and "big" is a considerable overstatement) was The Black Cauldron which flopped.
The Terminator is an amazing 80s time capsule in so many ways
• In the 80s you didn't have to be a giant hit to spawn a franchise. The Terminator was just outside this top twenty list but with the popularization of VHS and watching movies at home, The Terminator fanbase grew and grew until it returned as a true blockbuster in 1991.
• Being an Oscar player made you a big deal at the Box Office. Can you imagine a three hour costume drama about a composer being the 12th biggest hit of the year today? Other best picture nominees like Places in the Heart, A Passage to India, and The Killing Fields all finished in the top 40 of their year. Contrast that to the most recent slates of Best Picture nominees and The Revenant and American Sniper aside, unless you're also a genre picture (Mad Max, The Martian) that's extremely tough to do.
Adolph Caesar and Denzel Washington reprised their Off Broadway roles for the film production of A SOLDIER'S STORY
Today's Best Picture nominees are lucky to be as popular as A Soldier's Story (the least popular of the 1984 Best Pictures) which in current dollars was less popular than The Big Short, Imitation Game, and Bridge of Spies, about exactly as popular as Grand Budapest Hotel and Selma, but more popular than Spotlight, Birdman, Theory of Everything, Whiplash, Boyhood, Brooklyn, or Room. It helped that the theatrical window was much longer of course so word-of-mouth could prove buoyant. But I think the main difference is that adult audiences were more used to movies being made for them - they hadn't yet been trained by the distributors to stay at home.
• The following stars who had films in the top 20 were all making their film debuts! Andie MacDowell (Greystoke), Charlie Sheen (Red Dawn), Elisabeth Shue (The Karate Kid), Jean-Claude Van Damme (Breakin'), and Damon Wayans (Beverly Hills Cop). Other actors who made their movie debuts this year (albeit in less popular films...at least originally): Colin Firth, Rupert Everett, Val Kilmer, Kyle Machlachlan, Tim Roth, Ken Watanabe, Michelle Yeoh, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, Heather Graham, Jennifer Connelly, Aidan Quinn, and Jennifer Tilly.
What movies did you catch this weekend? Were you even alive in 1984? Whether or not you were, how many of those 20 hits from 1984 have you seen in your lifetime?