10 beloved 1980s movies that are actually terrible

Credit: Far Out / 20th Century Fox / Universal Pictures / United Artists / Cinema International Corporation / Tri-Star Pictures

The adoration of the 1980s needs to end.

Nostalgia works in unusual ways, and it’s often that people remember the past more fondly than it deserves credit for. While there is generally a wave of nostalgia that develops a few decades after an era has passed, Hollywood has become unusually obsessed with the ‘80s as a fixation point in popular culture. This is almost inadvertently hilarious, as for many years the decade was seen as disastrous for cinema, in which the experimentation of the New Hollywood era of the ‘70s made way for the more cynical, commercial sensibilities of the Ronald Reagan era.

The rekindling of popularity for the ‘80s may have something to do with the current media that is overly reverential towards it, with Stranger Things, Ready Player One, and the 2017 adaptation of It being the primary culprits. It hasn’t hurt that there’ve been reboots, remakes, and reimaginings of nearly all of the most popular films of the decade, such as Ghostbusters, The Terminator, Predator, Robocop, Mad Max, The Running Man, and even Overboard. Considering this summer will see the release of new Supergirl and Masters of the Universe films, it’s safe to say that this trend isn’t ending anytime soon.

There are certainly a number of great films from the ‘80s that have stood the test of time, such as ‘Best Picture’ winners Platoon and Amadeus, among others, however the nostalgia has prevented some cinephiles from addressing the films that weren’t that great back then, and have only aged worse today.