Box Office Special: 1984 Hits
Sunday, August 28, 2016 at 5:00PM 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?
Reader Comments (25)
There still was cartoon-like junk, but the 80's seem more progressive, diverse and fun. I forgot that Glenn dubbed Andie. Embarrassing for both of them.
There is a calculatedness about summer movies now that seems soulless. People focus much more now on weekend performance and global markets over storytelling or creativity.
If Florence Foster Jenkins can crack $20-30 million U.S., is that cause for celebration or worry?
I saw all of the Top 10 in the theater (I was 15 that year) and the rest of the Top 20 on HBO or VHS (except for "Breakin'", which I've never seen.)
Goonies was also a reason for the PG13 creation, because of the Mom vs. Gremlins scene in the Kitchen.
I wish I knew how much fun I was having in those days.
Agree about diversity, and placement of adult fare in cinema. If you look at the top ten films for 2016, every single film is a cartoon or comic book film. Every single one.
If there were no Oscars, would adult films even get made? That December window seems smaller and smaller. Bless Streep and Jeff Bridges.
I am finishing Narcos and feel like I am seeing history repeat itself with the big drug cartels.
84 The year of Freddy Krueger,It's a real shame you don't do at least one horror movie post every now and then.
Wait Jean-Claude Van Damme is in Breakin'!? My mind is a little blown!
(Well, Helen Mirren is half-Russian...)
I've only seen five of those movies, because as I've said elsewhere '80s Hollywood was a time-out for me.
I saw all of these in the theatre except Breakin', Purple Rain and Bachelor Party though I've seen those three since.
I know I'm pretty much alone but God I HATED Ghostbusters, I even gave it a second shot and fell asleep both times! As much as I disliked it I loathed the theme song even more. I don't think I'm alone however in thinking that Temple of Doom is the worst of the original Indiana Jones trio by a huge measure.
That extended theatrical window is a real loss for many films. I remember when I was working in a theatre and Baby Boom came out, it did okay business when it debuted but its word of mouth was so good it ended up playing at the theatre for almost three months and was doing double sometimes triple its original pull at about the five week mark and continued to do well up until it left. Nothing has a chance to build like that now.
This weekend I saw the Brigitte Bardot film Contempt that was directed by Jean-Luc Godard which was excellent. The intriguing Liv Ullman misfire Pope Joan, the Danish film Gertrud which was fascinating but felt more like a play than a film and for variety two Boris Karloff films The Man They Could Not Hang which wasn't bad and the ridiculous The Terror with an impossibly young Jack Nicholson playing a Frenchman named Andre Duvalier!!
It's so interesting (and depressing) to compare!
I have never seen Star Trek III, Purple Rain, Tightrope, 2010 and Red Dawn.
I've seen all the rest, but only a few in theatres: Gremlins, Police Academy 2, Romancing the Stone and Splash.
A better time at the movies than the current crap - well except for " Kubo and the Two Strings"
I've seen the entire top 10, but only The Natural and Red Dawn in the second half. I am not a fan of those latter two.
I loved 80's cinema. 1984 was possibly the best year in film. you never get that these days. the 1980's were smash for adult themed blockbusters and critically acclaimed hits. they were diverse, happy and quality times at the movies. they were a range of first time stars and genre films were big like Indiana jones, Beverly hills cop, Amadeus and the little films like purple rain a soldiers story, the natural, and a sports movie called the karate kid
BEVERLY HILLS COP and SPLASH were both nominated for Original Screenplay.
I've seen 10 of these. I didn't become movie obsessed till 1987, so at the time I only saw the blockbusters everyone at school was talking about: GHOSTBUSTERS, INDIANA JONES and GREMLINS (at age 12, I was too young for some of the others).
I caught up more of these later, but have never got around to seeing BEVERLY HILLS COP, FOOTLOOSE (!), SPLASH (!!) or PURPLE RAIN (!!!). I know, I know. Too many movies to see, never enough time.
FFJ has already made over $30M total and is opening in additional overseas markets. Funny and moving film. Should have legs.
I am a little freaked out that 1984 was 32 years ago.
Steve G -- SPLASH is so fun. see it for the Best shot episode this Tuesday!
You may be right about there being only four sequels in the Top 20 - however, once the 'Splash' remake is out there, the highest-ranked movie that is not a sequel, did not inspire a sequel and was never remade is 'Purple Rain' at #11. So in some way, this still feels like the year that doomed the box office.
Was anyone else disturbed by the dead lady stuffed into the washing machine in Tightrope?
I think a large reason that we don't see the type of box office diversity we once did is that ticket prices are so high nowadays that the average movie goer can't justify spending $10-20 on something that isn't a spectacle.
Yes, alive and completely in love with movies at the time so I saw all but Tightrope and Purple Rain in the theater. The worst on that list is Temple of Doom--absolutely hated it so much. My favorites then--Amadeus, Splash, and Bachelor Party (don't judge), but now, probably Romancing the Stone, Beverly Hills Cop, Splash.
Started The Detectives and Hinterland on Netflix, both dark UK police dramas.
Nothing I want to see is close by, but will probably get to Equity and Southside with You later this week.
Saw Bessie which was good. Latifah, Mo'Nique, all the technical aspects...everything was...good. Nothing blew me away (although Latifah sure had some great moments) but I enjoyed it so there you go.
Also, I have 2 more episodes of Stranger Things to watch. So good! So glad to see Winona back with big role, love David Harbour and HOW did they get so many talented kids in one cast?
I was 22 years old, just back from the mission, and stuck in Provo Utah. I went to as many movies as I could afford, just to escape. People did not do VHS at that time unless you had money. People would go to the video store and rent a movie (and the player) and then invite a bunch of people over to split the (exorbitant!) cost.
I saw many of these but Splash and Romancing The Stone were my definite favorites. I saw them more than once. I had no qualms with Amadeus winning all those Oscars since it deserved it I guess. The one Oscar nominated movie that really got to me was The Killing Fields.
SoSue -- gross! (i've never seen that movie and now i don't want to despite Genevieve Bujold and good reviews)
Nathaniel, give it a chance. It's a good genre flick, and G and Clint have amazingly good chemistry.
Mr W -- just hand me a razor why don't you. ;)
Apart from Breakin', Bachelor Party and Tightrope, I saw all these movies in the cinema. I miss the 80's...
I don't want to confuse nostalgia for a time when movies without superheroes and lasers played for weeks in theaters with a time when Oscar winners were respectable, dull, and innocuous. Do y'all remember A.O. Scott's article six years ago about the peculiar interzone in which '80s prestige films preside? It's folded into an overview of Streep's Oscar career. The only reason I'd want "The Natural" to exist is to create space for a "Lost in America" or Peter Weir film.
www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/movies/awardsseason/21scott.html?_r=0