The nine rules of '80s fantasy

The genre boom of the 1980s, sparked by the success of ‘Star Wars’ and ‘E.T.’ and fostered by the preponderance of household video players, sparked a revolution in film fantasy, combining elements of sci-fi, fairy tale, horror, action adventure and even kung-fu into family-friendly tales of strange worlds and derring-do. As the shamelessly retro ‘The Forbidden Kingdom’ hits our cinema screens, Time Out felt compelled to explore a few of the key rules and overarching themes that unify this diverse, well-loved and much-missed filmic trend…

Kids from Broken Homes
As seen in: 'Explorers', 'The Last Starfighter', 'The Neverending Story', 'The Lost Boys', 'The Karate Kid', 'The Monster Squad', 'Last Action Hero'

Centring fantasy stories on orphans, waifs and strays is nothing new: from ‘The Water Babies’ to ‘Harry Potter’, authors have used latchkey kids as a shortcut to audience empathy. But ’80s fantasy movies took things to a whole new level: if the film centres on a child – as most of them do – that child is almost invariably the product of a shattered family, usually single-matriarchal. From Philly street punk Daniel LaRusso in ‘The Karate Kid’ (an honorary mystic-fantasy entry despite its sports-movie overtones) to Dianne Wiest’s troubled offspring in ‘The Lost Boys’, the children of single mothers are shown to be problematic and rebellious, but they always come through in a pinch, proving their loyalty to the family when it counts.

Flawed, Han Solo-type heroes
As seen in: 'Big Trouble in Little China', 'Willow', 'Tron', 'Captain Ron', 'Ghostbusters', 'Innerspace'

Not all ’80s genre pics centred around actual kids. Sometimes the hero just acted like one. A sardonic quip, an eye for the ladies and only so-so in a dust-up, the '80s hero was hardly ‘Shane’. Hell, he wasn’t even Shane McGowan. The manly jaws and sculpted barnets of Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer more often than not belied the fact that they were cowardly blancmanges with low intellects and debilitating commitment issues. Kilmer flounces through ‘Willow’ like a girl’s blouse and Russell inspires little confidence during either ‘Big Trouble...’ or the bizarre yacht-folly of ‘Captain Ron’. Bruce Boxleitner went the other route as the titular hero of lunatic dayglo futurama, ‘Tron’, making the character so rigid and anonymous that many people forget that he was in the film at all, leaving centre stage wide open for Jeff Bridges's laconic, callow, frisbee-flingin' overgrown adolescent computer programmer to mooch his way to third-act glory.

Annoying siblings
As seen in: 'Weird Science', 'The Goonies', 'Flight of the Navigator', 'The Last Starfighter', 'The Lost Boys', 'Troll', 'Poltergeist', 'Back to the Future'

An offshoot (literally) of the single family, the irritating brat brother (or occasionally sister, see ‘Troll’) is another staple. He can be older, like preening weightlifter Brand in ‘The Goonies’ or Bill Paxton’s awesomely vile Chet in ‘Weird Science’, or he can be younger, like snot-nosed Robby in ‘Poltergeist’ or furtive, porn-obsessed Louis in ‘The Last Starfighter’. He can even be both, as in ‘The Flight of the Navigator’, where David Freeman’s obnoxious kid brother Jeff ages ten years while our hero remains trapped in pubescence. But one thing always remains: by the end of the movie, sibling rivalry is set aside as the brothers realize their bond and team up to defeat whatever evil is currently looming. All except for Chet; he’s still a monumental dick.

Computer nerds are cool!
As seen in: 'The Last Starfighter', 'Tron', 'Explorers', 'Electric Dreams', 'WarGames', 'Weird Science', 'Flight of the Navigator', 'Ghostbusters'

Back in the mid-’80s, the prospect of America’s youth transforming into morbidly obese, transparent-skinned keyboard jockeys hadn’t crossed the collective imagination. Computer games were hip, new and progressive, they improved hand-eye coordination and you had to leave the house and socialize in order to play them. In some circles, there was even a sense that joystick addiction could prove a patriotic act: the nation’s next great conflict could very well be fought by these self-same glassy-eyed dweebs, and the US had to preserve its Atari supremacy over those goddamn Tetris-playing Russkies. This imaginary race for dominance was the inspiration for one of the VHS era’s lost classics: Nick Castle’s ‘The Last Starfighter’, in which trailerpark dreamer Alex Rogan breaks the world record on the eponymous standup console and is drafted by intergalactic army recruitment officer Centauri to fight the evil forces of the Kodan Army. Other techheads may create foxy new lifeforms ('Weird Science'), subvert fascist cyber-societies ('Tron') or take their pals into space ('Explorers'): this nerd saves the entire universe.

Bullies who get their comeuppance
As seen in: 'The Neverending Story', 'Explorers', 'The Goonies', 'Soul Man', 'Weird Science', 'The Karate Kid', 'Back to the Future'

The obligatory teen bully in '80s genre cinema tends to fit a standard template: they’re foul-mouthed, they all own a muscle car and their parents are either putrid jet-trash who habitually blow the DSS cheque on malt liquor and Papa John's, as in ‘Back to the Future’, or smarmy nouveaux riches who own a country club, as exemplified by ill-fated public toilet-user Troy in ‘The Goonies’. Whichever it is, they all bare mild resemblance (be it facially or behaviourally) to jumped-up mouthy meatbag Gary Busey. Fingerless leather gloves often crop up, as does access to the latest technological forms, like remote control helicopters used for panty raids, BB guns (also used for panty raids) and a panty raid ladder. However, their presence in these films is often merely symbolic and used to draw the hero or heroine back to his or her drab quotidian existence after they have been into space or some other parallel reality. As such, they often end up being given names like 'Bully #1', 'Bully #2' or 'Louisiana Joe'.

Mysterious old shops
As seen in: 'Gremlins', 'The Neverending Story', 'Big Trouble in Little China', 'The Golden Child'

With the gods of Atari and Mattel indulging a whole generation of spoilt brats, increasing pressure was being put on parents to find that unique gift for their little moppet. In ’80s fantasy films, this usually meant Pop would find himself in a subtly lit, generically ethnic back-alley thrift store trying to rip off a wizened oriental shopkeep. In ‘Gremlins’, Hoyt Axton ventures into a sketchily delineated Chinatown to buy his son a furry little playmate that comes with the doom-laden warning that he must never ‘play with it after midnight’. Similar stores dealing in cornball mysticism and unconvincing plot devices also frame the excesses of ‘Big Trouble in Little China’, German-produced wig-out ‘The Neverending Story’ and that red-headed stepson of ’80s movies, ‘The Golden Child’.

Suburban America under threat
As seen in: 'Poltergeist', 'The Goonies', 'Gremlins', 'Gremlins 2', 'Willow', 'Weird Science', 'The Monster Squad'

The shadow of Spielberg looms massive over ’80s fantasy, eclipsing all others. Perhaps his most pervasive influence was over the era’s location scouts, as the sprawling wood-frame California towns venerated in ‘E.T.’ became the battleground for all manner of supernatural conflicts. Chief among these was Spielberg’s own ‘Poltergeist’, in which the Freling family’s antlike residential warren turns out to have been constructed on the sacred site of – you guessed it – an Indian burial ground. But smalltown America didn’t have to be confined within the borders of the US itself: in George Lucas’s Tolkein-aping ‘Willow’, the midget Nelwyns’ rustic conformist suburbia makes a perfect stand-in for good ol’ hometown USA.

Unattainable girls who don't stay unattainable for long
As seen in: 'Explorers', 'Gremlins', 'Back to the Future', 'Weird Science', 'WarGames'

‘Put up or shut up’ is the unfortunate rule by which the stock saucy/bookish minx was forced to live in mainstream '80s cinema. In everything from ‘Weird Science’ through to ‘WarGames’, though she initially came across as haughty and, like, ‘way out of your league, dude!’, her vulnerabilities (and strange fondness for goggle-eyed mommy's boys) was duly exposed by some daffy coincidence, a cornball clash in the girls' locker rooms or, more often than not, pure untainted pity. Whatever the set up, some dorky man-child like Cory Haim would improbably traverses the social chasm to run his Dorito-encrusted fingernails through her flaxen mop to a variation of Eric Carman’s ‘Hungry Eyes’.

Important life lessons
As seen in: 'The Neverending Story', 'The Goonies', 'The Princess Bride', 'Weird Science', 'Willow', 'The Karate Kid', Explorers, Gremlins, Big Trouble in Little China... hell, all of ‘em.

It wasn’t all fun and games in the ’80s. There were lessons to be learned, demons to be overcome, decks to be sanded and fences to be painted. From ‘The Goonies’ and ‘Explorers’ we learned the value of friendship and loyalty, from ‘The Karate Kid’ we learned the importance of hard work, and from ‘Willow’ we learned that even the smallest person can affect the course of history, a lesson those of us who’d read ‘Lord of the Rings’ already had down.

Ironically, one of the key teachings to be taken from these movies is also one of the most self-defeating: namely, that books are cool. In knowing epic fantasies ‘The Neverending Story’ and ‘The Princess Bride’, the idea that reading leads to imagination and thenceforth to happiness is reinforced by the converse argument that television, and other forms of low visual media, are mind-rotting and dangerous. There were also movies we felt were trying to tell us something, but quite what was never defined: is ‘Gremlins’ a lecture on sticking to the rules, or does Joe Dante’s lust for on-screen mayhem subvert that message? Is ‘Weird Science’ a straightforward ‘bros before cyber-ho’s’ lesson, or does the ending seem to suggest this classic friendship is about to end? But perhaps the most important and enduring message of all comes from Kurt Russell’s legendary Jack Burton in ‘Big Trouble in Little China’: it really is all in the reflexes.

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