It’s no secret many of the movies from the 70’s and early to mid 80’s were some of the most imaginative, creative and moving films ever created. Maybe I’m just biased because these are the movies that inspired me, made me want to tell stories and make movies. Everything was still real back then. Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth characters were still real puppets or costumes with people inside, animatronics with people running the controls.
An army of people moving silently behind or beneath a character to bring it to life.
Back then even sets were real! Imagine that – characters actually existing within the environment they appear to be in! Green screen wasn’t perfected yet, as is quite evident in the Fiery Down sequence in Labyrinth.
So a spaceship was actually a handcrafted miniature model. Things really exploded. Actors interacted with real, tangible goblins, Skesis, and aliens rather than little stand-in heads on sticks.
It was this particular feel that really made the creature features of the time so interesting.
Besides the Jim Henson classics, some of the other films that fall into this genre as endlessly inspirational and/or nostalgic of childhood and the last great period of artistry in filmmaking include the sci-fi family flick Explorers from 1985, Short Circuit, Disney’s Flight of the Navigator, Harry and the Hendersons, Ridley Scott’s original Alien from 1979, and of course Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T.
With the exception of Alien, those films all had a great adventure feel, with a safe sense of danger and escapist appeal. I will always believe it was growing up on these kinds of movies that made Gen X so fucked up and incapable as a whole of living normal and successful lives. We had entertainment that actually inspired us to dream and create, rather than the modern mindless cartoons and movies like Where the Wild Things Are helmed by Spike Jonze, where they deal blatantly and harshly with some seriously deep-seated dysfunction.
If Where the Wild Things Are had been adapted to film in the 80’s it would have been a dark fairy tale for all of us isolated, lonely and ignored kids to dream about.
Of course, there is always a big place in my heart for the slasher films and other horror of the time, but watching Friday Night Horror screenings of Friday the 13th films only served to help me grow up. And possibly instill an unshakable correlation between sex and violence. I think the bloody breasts fetish may be limited to those of us who grew up watching Jason, Freddy, Leatherface and Michael Myers hack up hot naked teen girls and disembowel copulating summer camp counselor and babysitters on late night cable.
But there is a sense of childhood wonder that comes with the great family adventure creature features of the 70’s and 80’s. Even now, watching them with my kids, reminds me of what the world was like from the perspective of a child.
Not many movies are made anymore that accomplish all of those things. Most of today’s movies have to reveal everything, explain everything. They try real hard to make sense. Maybe in the early 80’s everyone was still high on the 70’s drugs. Movies didn’t need to make complete sense. They left more questions unanswered. They left possibilities to the imagination.
Pixar’s Wall-E feels like it distilled all of the adventure, emotion, and wonder from Short Circuit’s Johnny 5 and E.T.
J. J. Abrams brought some of that back in his monster movie Cloverfield, though the shaky, hand-held, “found footage” style of it was nauseating and claustrophobic in extreme ways you don’t want to experience in a film. The same goes for The Blair With Project.
The new Transformers movies capture the coolness of the original 1980s cartoon, then give it huge amounts of steroids to make it intense and crazy. I try to look past the weak plots, product placement and annoying dialogue to appreciate the novelty of household appliances turning into angry little killing machines.
But the project long rumored to be Cloverfield 2 has been revealed as Super 8, a collaboration between Abrams and Spielberg, intended to be a throwback to the successful, clever and highly entertaining early Steven Spielberg flicks like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. combined with modern grittiness and reality of Abrams’ style.
This is the Great Conjunction of everything good in this world.
The Super 8 teaser trailer even comes complete with a hidden message which leads to an early viral website offering a computer interface reminiscent of the late 70’s and early 80’s which seems to hold the secrets of Area 51 but currently doesn’t do a whole lot.
It also appears that a Dark Crystal sequel is finally moving ahead! Power of the Dark Crystal has been rumored for a long time, but it is now being headed up the Spierig Brothers (Daybreakers, Undead) with Brian Froud once again designing the world and creatures of Thra. It is supposedly going to be in 3D, though, so I’m hoping this latest rise in the trend recedes again back to the hole it came from before it’s too late.
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