Originally Posted 8/12/19
Killer robots, midwestern musicians, vengeful cobras, greedy archaeologists and vengeful spirits made the cinema one helluva place to be in 1984.
5. Purple Rain
Minneapolis band leader the Kid has a volatile home life, a fierce rivalry at the club at which he regularly performs and a new love-interest. After his girlfriend, Apollonia, gets a little too close to his archnemesis, Morris, Kid begins to exhibit the same behavior that has caused him to resent his estranged father. Making matters worse, his self-absorption is threatening to destroy his band just as their position at their regular club grows shaky.
This quasi-autobiographical film catapulted rocker Prince, who had absolutely no acting experience, into the show-business stratosphere and made him a global superstar. Combining his own experiences with (reportedly) Marvin Gaye's family dynamics and irresistible music was exactly the formula that moviegoers didn't even know that they wanted.
4. Ghostbusters
Four poltergeist hunters try to prevent Armageddon when a seismic amount of paranormal activity threatens to consume New York City.
3. The Karate Kid
The Karate Kid was conceived as "the new Rocky" with the hope that it would be at least half as successful. The similarities aren't hard to spot. Both Rocky Balboa and Daniel LaRusso are Italian-American; Rocky's from Philadelphia, Daniel hails from nearby Newark; Rocky's a boxer, Daniel's a martial-artist; each fighter is trained by an elderly expert after having already learned the basics elsewhere; both Rocky and Daniel are trained by unconventional means; they each fall in love during the film; and both are poor. Fortunately, the "Great White Hope" storyline wasn't included in The Karate Kid.
Rocky was the highest-grossing movie of 1976 at $55 million. Eight years later, The Karate Kid snagged over $100 million.
The Terminator is aptly named. Though you root for them, none of the film's human characters manage to even come close to stealing the spotlight away from the hulking cyborg in its posters.
In the year 2029, mankind is at war with an army of robots under the command of a self aware artificially intelligent defense network called Skynet that initiated a nuclear holocaust in an attempt to eradicate humanity. Concluding that the human resistance is on the verge of defeating the machines, Skynet uses time travel technology to send one its T-800 Model 101 cyborgs to 1984 to assassinate unassuming waitress Sarah Connor. As it turns out, Sarah is due to conceive John Connor, who will lead the human resistance, in the next few days. Discovering the plot, John sends one of his soldiers back in time as well in the hopes of preventing the murder.
Before the soldier, Kyle Reese, arrives, the cyborg, which appears to be a competitive bodybuilder due to a layer of flesh over its metallic endoskeleton, racks up quite a body-count. The robot kills thugs for the clothing, dusts off a gun store salesman for weapons and systematically goes through the Los Angeles phone book bumping off residents who happen to be named Sarah Connor.
After Reese locates Sarah in time to rescue her from the literal killing machine, he's arrested and Sarah's taken along to the police station in order to give a statement. Undeterred by its target's now seemingly impenetrable level of security, the Terminator mows through 17 police officers and her mom in another attempt to take her out.
Because the film has one of the slickest twists in sci-fi movie history, I won't spoil the ending or give any more details.
1. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Though The Temple of Doom is the second Indiana Jones film to be released, it's actually a prequel to the original Indy adventure: Raiders of the Lost Ark. A year before Dr. Jones tangled with Nazis, a double-cross in Shanghai landed him, his sidekick Short Round and gangster moll Willie Scott in northern India, where they infiltrate a homicidal cult that's enslaved a village full of children.
Though The Temple of Doom has often been cited as an example of a white
savior film, Indiana Jones' pint-sized Asian partner Short Round is the ultimate hero of the story. At one point Indy actually poses a threat to both Short Round and Willie, which endangers the mission. Short Round has to rescue him from the church of the poisoned mind effects of the Thuggee blood. He also saves the
Maharaja, who in turn tells him how to escape the tunnels and alerts the
British Indian Army, which sends rifleman who save Indy from certain death
at the hands of the remaining Thuggee cult members. While Indy certainly
contributes to the success of the mission -- helping to free the local village's
children alongside Short Round and Willie and returning its stone -- he's by no means a savior.
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