A Mathematical Analysis of the Most 1980s Movie Ever Made

Welcome to The Queue — your daily distraction of curated video content sourced from across the web. Today, we’re watching a video essay that attempts to suss out what movie is the /most/ 1980s movie of all time.

Listen. I’m going to level with you: I do not have a brain for maths. The only time the shriveled raisin that is my math brain activates is for very silly, movie-related reasons. You know, like a statistical breakdown of the ever-growing age gap between Tom Cruise and his female love interests. Or a data-heavy look at how many times woman characters of different ages speak in movies.

Or today’s video essay: a feature-length (!) breakdown of which 1980s Hollywood movie was THE MOST 1980s. After an initial sweep of every film released in the decade, the essay focuses on breaking down ten films across five categories: aesthetics (i.e. music video influence); the contemporary film industry (i.e. aimed at a teen audience); music (i.e. is there a Kenny Loggins song in it?); politics (i.e. demonizing the Soviet Union), and American culture (i.e. how much is about ambition/becoming the best?).

The admirable goal is to determine which film had to exist in the 1980s. And in the process of trying to suss out the 1980-iest movie ever, the following video essay acts as an incredibly entertaining crash course on the decade and the films it produced.

This is a long one, but it’s well worth it.

Watch “What Is The Most 80s Movie Ever?”

Who made this?

This video essay decoding what is the most 1980s movie ever was co-written by Patrick (H) Willems and company.  You can find their own directorial efforts and their video essays on their channel here. You can also find Willems on Twitter here.

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Related Topics: 1980s, The Queue

Meg Shields is the humble farm boy of your dreams and a senior contributor at Film School Rejects. She currently runs three columns at FSR: The Queue, How’d They Do That?, and Horrorscope. She is also a curator for One Perfect Shot and a freelance writer for hire. Meg can be found screaming about John Boorman’s ‘Excalibur’ on Twitter here: @TheWorstNun. (She/Her).