A permanent wave of ’80s nostalgia seems to have overtaken our culture over the past few years. Whether it be in TV or film, the legacy of the glorious decade continues to captivate us in new and exciting ways. Stranger Things is now on its fourth-season run. Top Gun: Maverick provoked a new onslaught of mustaches and aviators across the country. Cobra Kai had us thinking back to the far simpler wax-on, wax-off days.
Whether it be for its vivid neon-soaked aesthetics or the truly timeless stories and characters that emerged from it, the eighties will continue to intrigue and provoke us (until it’s the nineties turn). In the spirit of the ’80s resurgence in a streaming-centered world, here are eight more eighties films we believe should be adapted into series.
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8 Raging Bull (1980)
Scorsese’s masterpiece Raging Bull is not so much a sports movie as it is a character study of a man as insecure as he is menacing. The story follows legendary boxer Jake LaMotta on his rise to fame, pining for the middleweight crown and the heart of a girl from the Bronx. De Niro as LaMotta is rough around the edges, driven by fear as well as ambition; this comes out through jealous outbursts at his wife, Vickie, as much as it does in the boxing ring. Although Raging Bull still holds up as one of the best biopics of all time, perfect in every conceivable way, a series could perhaps take the time to build up and deconstruct LaMotta’s character psychologically. In what other world could LaMotta have been more of a “contender” - in not just the world’s eyes, but his own?
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7 Running On Empty (1988)
Lorimar Film Entertainment
This late-career Lumet gem follows the Pope family, a group of fugitives who have been on the run for the entirety of their children’s lives. River Phoenix, in a role that saw him nominated for Best Supporting Actor, plays conflicted teenager Danny, who yearns to escape the family’s transient lifestyle while harboring a profound fear of never seeing them again. We follow Danny amid the family’s conundrums, as he adapts to a small-town lifestyle and develops a relationship with one of his classmates, Lorna. Due to the nature of the Pope’s circumstances, nothing within this film is ever predictable, and even its resolution feels open-ended and ripe for swift change. A series would allow us to see where exactly Danny ends up, and if he is ever able to fully reconcile with the reality his parents brought him into. Meanwhile, how would the technology of today affect the Pope’s status?
6 Big (1988)
20th Century Fox
Penny Marshall’s 1988 comedy Big famously saw Tom Hanks as a 13-year-old adult, spooning caviar and dancing on mammoth keyboards with his boss. Although the film is a generally lighthearted tale, with a perfect mix of comedic and fantastical elements, it does tread on some darker territory about adolescence and the true meaning of adulthood and responsibility. With this in mind, it would be quite interesting to see what Hanks’s journey portends about his actual future - how did his adventures as an oversized thirteen-year-old affect who he grows up to be? Moreover, this might be the opportunity to delve further into the strangeness of the film’s premise. After all, Big was originally intended to be a horror movie starring Robert De Niro. Although, today, it’s hard to imagine Big as anything other than a comedy, there is certainly more territory to explore genre-wise, especially relative to which actor is ready enough to take up Hanks’s part (although De Niro may not be a suitable option anymore).
5 Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)
Paramount Pictures
Matthew Broderick plays an insatiably cool guy in this John Hughes teen classic. Not only is Ferris Bueller stylish, handsome, and unequivocally well-spoken, he’s also probably something of a genius - he is able to, without blinking, hack into his school’s attendance system, as well as manipulate everyone around him into the highest state of adoration. Even principal Rooney’s assistant concedes that Ferris is “Very popular. The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, d*ckheads - they all adore him.” But, where do Ferris’s antics get him beyond the hallowed halls of Glenbrook North High School? Does the “realest” guy of the movie, Mr. Cameron Fry, still put up with him when the mischief grows old? It might be something along the lines of blasphemy to upend the mythology of Ferris Bueller, but if there’s any character we’d be dying to see a reality check on, Ferris is certainly a prime contender. The film did have a short-lived 13-episode series in 1990, but we’re looking for something a little more exploratory.
4 Trading Places (1983)
John Landis’s Trading Places is easily one of the most clever comedies of the decade, perhaps even of contemporary cinema. In the film, upper-class broker Louis Winthorpe III (Dan Aykroyd) and street hustler Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy) “trade places” after Winthorpe is accused of a crime he didn’t commit. The rest is comedic history. Simply, a remake of the film would likely be redundant and uninspired, considering how much Landis nailed it the first time around. However, a modern reworking of this premise, in the form of a limited series (or, if audacious enough, a reality series) could make for some topically hilarious material. This is especially true considering that, despite how brilliant it is, some parts of the film have undeniably grown a bit outdated.
3 Beetlejuice (1988)
Warner Bros. Pictures
Although a sequel to the horror-comedy classic is already in the works, a series reprisal could also be an exciting new step for this beloved Tim Burton film. It would be fascinating to see how Burton’s unique talents could be put to work in the TV world, as well as those of the film’s composer, Danny Elfman. A short-lived animation series of the same name actually aired for two years following the release of the film, but it never quite received the love it deserved. Due to the resurgence of adult cartoons, as well as many fantastical sitcoms like What We Do in the Shadows, there are many enticing directions a Beetlejuice series could take.
2 Risky Business (1983)
Geffen Pictures
Paul Brickman’s Risky Business is certainly one of the riskiest teen comedies to have emerged from the ’80s. With its R rating and prominent themes surrounding sex and sex work, the film certainly isn’t your run-of-the-mill rom-com where adolescents more or less do what is expected of them. Rather, Tom Cruise’s character, Joel, essentially sets up a brothel in his house after crashing his father’s Porsche. Although Risky Business was well ahead of its time in its discussion of subjects that might have been considered taboo at that point, a modern revisiting might still be beneficial, especially for viewers of today. How do we portray and discuss these topics differently in 2022? Let’s just hope that this time around there is no TikTok dance to “Old Time Rock and Roll.”
1 The Thing (1982)
Universal Pictures
John Carpenter’s viscerally horrific film The Thing has achieved cult-classic status over the years, with its grisly aesthetics and timelessly haunting premise. A prequel to the film, starring Joel Edgerton and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, was attempted in 2011 to very mixed reviews. Both critics and audience members seemed to agree that the film’s new technical effects in no way made up for the sense of paranoia and anxiety lost from the original film. A series based around The Thing could allow for a resurgence of this paranoid horror that we’ve oh-so missed, as well as an exploration into the mythology of the creature. What could its iterations look like in the modern world, and how might we respond to it differently?
