JaxComet

They must have had a special on stripped shirts and identical haircuts......Too funny. That picture is recent?

Terrell

I was thinking it looked like one of those boy bands. Thank God that fad has long since passed.

H8nXTC

I wonder if guys now will be as embarrassed wearing these huge fake glass ice cube size errings that hange down from the weight of gravity as I am of my high school pics with the parachute pants and neon color clothes as well as the woman wearing leg warmers.

mike7162

Completely. Of all the decades, I think the 80's has "aged" the worse. Over time a decade seems to morph into a sort of timelessness that you can remove yourself from, but I can't watch too many films from the 80's and not think "Man, the 80's sucked!" We should be eternally ashamed of the music and fashion that came out of that era.

lordwow

I think they do, mainly it's the film they were shot on compared to the stuff today. It "feels" like the 80s/early 90s.

Squirrel God

I was born in the 70s and some 80s movies look dated

License to Drive hasn't held up very well.

Conversely, Ferris Bueller still looks damn good.

Julie Walker

Why no love for the Synth?

When done right..it can sound incredible and pretty kickass. Especially for a horror film or something 'tense' or 'otherworldly'.

Tangerine Dream,Wendy Carlos,John Carpenter along with the various other composers making great electronic scores to Cannibal Holocaust and Scarface among others. Are all great pieces of work in my honest opinion.


I think Dreams synth score for Legend is far superior and fits the film better than John Williams more basic orchestra score. Which is boring in its normalacy compared to the lush fantastical Dream score.

BigDan

There were just so many movies that had bad synth that it gave that whole type of score a bad name.

As for the picture, spiky hair and button-down shirts with turned-up collars weren't exactly unknown in the '80s.

UAIOE

I think it has alot to do with the script/acting that helps certain (in this case) 80's movies overcome the "dated" look/feel to them.

Ferris Bueller i think also tends to hold up because it rises above the cliched 80's teen movie where License to Drive..well, doesnt.

caligulathegod

In as much as everyone is cutting on the 70s and 80s fashions, if you are wearing jeans five sizes too big with your underwear hanging out...welcome to the "will look really stupid and dated in 10-20 years" club.

Jeremy517

Exactly zero of those are from the 80s. One is from the 60s, two from the 70s, and one from the 90s.

Jeremy517

It is from here: http://www.sherdog.net/forums/showth...1&page=1&pp=20

UAIOE

People still wear jeans 5 sizes too big? I havent seen anyone do that in at least 6 years.

Mondo Kane

Straight to Hell (1987) hasn't aged one bit.

Too bad no one's seen it.

Steve Phillips

I think THE MATRIX is already dated.

caligulathegod

Oh hell yes they do. Except now it's 10 sizes too big with the crotch around the knees and the belt around the the thighs. Dumbest style ever. Right up there with the leisure suit.

UAIOE

Where do you see this at? Who still hangs onto that fashion trend?

My girlfriend always complains that the large leg bottom pants arent around anymore (she says they fit better/looser around the hips) and that all that is left today are the stretchy form fitting pants.

As far as guys...well, i dont wear my pants large...i'll wear a 32 instead of a 30 but thats because i like my pants a bit loose. Maybe because i don't look for big-ass pants i don't notice them but i can honestly say that i dont really see anyone still wearing that style anymore.

Inverse

80s movies (including--especially---Rocky 4 and Bueller) look incredibly dated to me, and I'm older than dirt.

But hey, it was twenty years ago. Why are we surprised that things change?

Sunday Morning

Honestly I don't give a shit if 20-somethings think a film is dated. A film is forever. It's pretty silly to get hung up on that sort of thing. It's also telling of a person and pretty naive. Everything is dated, including us. Doesn't lessen the impact. It's all about the content. I probably can rant on about this more but i'm too busy watching a movie with a girl wearing a headband and leg warmers.

thephantom

As others have said, it's more about setting and the script of the movies that dates them. Movies that depict alot of trendy fashion, short lived pop culture references, and trendy "lingo" are far more suceptible to the effect.

Take for example the Back to the Future movies. Still great, but they show their age in alot of places despite the fact that the movies are rarely set in the time they portray. It's because of the pop culture references like use of the word "heavy", the Delorean(this wouldn't apply as much if they had really caught on), the crazed thrash metal guitars, Michael Jackson reference(even though people know who he is, a 20 year old isn't going to remember him being the King of Pop), etc. On the opposite end is Big Trouble In Little China, which is still great today because it doesn't rely on anything specific to that time.

Obviously most setting is the biggest factor. I think most teen movies hold up pretty good. Probably because despite what they think, each generation of teens is basically the same as the last one. There are always jocks and outcasts and the druggies, always widly different fashions and haircuts, and everyone is always worrying about the same crap. I'd be there's someone in a school somewhere right now wearing parachute pants, and someone else with a mullet. It's the soundtracks and lingo that can really set them as being in a certain time. Obviously there are some that can be made with different focus that locks them into a certain time(the Breakin' films).

War movies, even set in the time the movie is made, are virtually immune to it. Military lingo and dress doesn't change a whole lot, and the settings tend to be "ageless"(jungle is always jungle). Top Gun has the disadvantage of being based around what is now a dated aircraft, but if you digitally made them F-18s it could be today with virtually no change in dialogue(and a completely new soundtrack :P )

Overall I think the movies that have suffered the most are the drama and 20/30 something comedies with a normal setting. These movies are loaded with people and settings and pop culture references that just scream their decade. Flashdance is a great example of this.

The filming process also seems to be part of the problem. Some movies just plain don't look good, while others seem to hold of very well. I don't know enough about the difference kinds of film to know why that is, and it could just be the transfers. Some movies seem to have had more care taken when they sent them to DVD. All I know is that my DVD of The Outlaw Josey Whales looks like it was filmed years after some of the 80s films I have on DVD.

I do think most post-80s films will hold up better. I don't recall any single dominating factor in 90s and 00's. Though several fads have came and some have went, mainstream is pretty ambiguous. As long as a movie sticks to mainstream and avoids specific fads(like talking about a reality TV show or a band), there's nothing that really locks it into a specific time. Take Swingers for example. It's 10 years old. If you were watching it for the first time and didn't know when it came out, would you be able to guess how old it is?

LivingINClip

One thing that dates a movie is if a band is in it. It was the rage in the 80's to have some new wave band playing in a club and it just makes it so very dated. The latest offenders of this are.

Rat Race - Smashmouth
Spider-Man - Macy Gray

Dated already.

Supermallet

There's nothing wrong with a movie looking dated. It's a product of its time. I think a lot of movies from every decade looks dated. But that doesn't stop me from enjoying the movie. Would film noirs be as good if they didn't feel like the 40's? As for the 80's stuff, yes, the trends were absurd, but so what? If the movie is good, it's good.

Some films I can think of that don't seem terribly dated are:
Blue Velvet
The Fly
Ghostbusters
Down By Law
Gremlins
Crimes and Misdemeanors
Wings of Desire
The Shining
Dead Ringers

And those are just off the top of my head.