References to films and series of the 80s abound in theatrical releases and on platforms scheduled for 2022, De Top Gun to the first trilogy Star wars Passing by Dragon ball z. For what reason and to whom are these nods to the past addressed?
“This decade has become an aesthetic and narrative reference“, explains Ariane Hudelet, professor at the University of Paris specializing in American series. We can see”fetishization“from the imagery of the 80s, she continues: search for a certain grain of sound or images, use of typical objects such as cassettes.
Why such an interest? “In a landscape where there are always more outings, using a known title allows you to stand out“, underlines Alain Carrazé, journalist author of Anatomy series: the 8th art deciphered (Fantask, 2017).
“Each generation of spectator attaches its own memory to a work“, observes the philosopher Richard Mèmeteau, author of Pop culture: Reflections on the dream industries and the invention of identities (The Discovery, 2014). Any modern recovery is therefore “the opportunity to dive back into those past memories“.
Series Stranger things, launched on Netflix in 2016, “put the 80s at the top of the bill“, emphasizes Ariane Hudelet.”Picking up icons from Stephen King’s novels at ET, the series embodies a mix of pastiche and nostalgic fetishization of the decade.“.
The fourth season of the series, which chronicles the adventures of a group of friends and a young girl with paranormal psychic abilities, will be released on Netflix in the summer of 2022.
For Richard Mèmeteau, Stranger Things is not moreover that a recovery, “it is a complete reinterpretation of childhood in the 80s in the light of our contemporary expectations. The female characters have more important places, the monsters are more nuanced“.
With two new Star Wars series, the adaptation of the medieval-fantasy saga Willow (1988) or the release of a movie Dragon ball z, 2022 confirms the 80s as “the decade associated with the rise of science fiction and horror“, notes Arianne Hudelet. Obi wan kenobi and Andor, the two Star Wars series to appear on Disney +, are located upstream of the founding episode of the saga in 1977.
“The people who watch series in our time are first and foremost those born in the 80s“, Alain Carrazé analyzes. These two series are therefore linked naturally”for now around the first trilogy“, which these spectators knew as children.
Like Dragon ball z, animated manga series that has a new film adaptation in 2022. Willow, which had had little success in 1988, will be released as a series on Disney + with, in the eponymous role, the actor of the time Warwick Davis.
Tom Cruise will be showing in May 2022 in two films postponed for months: Mission Impossible 7 and of Top Gun: Maverick, following the exploits of the ace of the Air Force in 1986. With Impossible mission, the American actor “uses an old title (from a series from the 1960s and 1970s, editor’s note), to define a format that works well enough with audiences to make several films of it“, emphasizes Alain Carrazé.
As for Top Gun, an almost sixty-year-old Maverick (Tom Cruise), surprised in the trailer to be “re-invited“in the army, is answered by a senior officer that he has no choice to come back because it is about”an order“… It is up to the spectators to decide if it is the one too many.