CO said:
Zombie, I agree there is crap in every era of movies, but the ones you named are sequels, the originals were never cheesy. Of course there are great movies today: LOTR, The Matrix, Batman Begins, but those movies are either PG-13 or Rated R and kids just don't see them in the theater.
The tricky thing from the 70's/early 80's is that they were able to appeal to both markets. A movie like Star Wars worked for kids, but worked for adults/teenagers too, LOTR isn't trilogy I am going to show my 5 year old nephew.
Zombie, I agree there is crap in every era of movies, but the ones you named are sequels, the originals were never cheesy. Of course there are great movies today: LOTR, The Matrix, Batman Begins, but those movies are either PG-13 or Rated R and kids just don't see them in the theater.
The tricky thing from the 70's/early 80's is that they were able to appeal to both markets. A movie like Star Wars worked for kids, but worked for adults/teenagers too, LOTR isn't trilogy I am going to show my 5 year old nephew.
Raiders is hardly a movie for five year olds and neither is Jaws; Jaws in fact would very likely be rated R without a few trims. BTTF, Raiders, maybe even Superman, would all be PG-13 movies today. I didn't list any R movies in the list I compiled. Men in Black is a perfect analogy to BTTF, for example, and its PG-13, just like BTTF likely would be today.
Maybe Jaws would be poorer made if it were filmed today, but its a sort of accident anyway, you can't plan classics like that they just happen. Today you have stuff like Pan's Labyrinth, which is on par as an adult fantasy film that expertly made and probably will never be repeated. I think movies like Batman Begins and LOTR show that there are an equal amount of character-oriented movies than can appeal to adults. I mean, in the 70's-80's what do you have? BTTF, ET, Star Wars trilogy, Raiders and Superman-Superman II. So thats eight movies. The rest of that era is mostly crap, worse crap than today in many cases, I'm afraid. Today you have LOTR trilogy, Pirates Trilogy, Superman Returns, Batman Begins, Men in Black, Spiderman 2, Harry Potter and its sequels, Chronicles of Narnia. Thats 12. And those films, I have to say, are about on par with the 70's-80's list. Maybe you can say the 70-80's bunch is still better, but if so then not by a whole lot, and I think thats the point I'm making--there are still great blockbusters being made, theres just more bad ones covering them up in the mix.