Revenge of the Nerds
movienutt/moviestillsdb
Revenge of the Nerds would never be made today, but not for the reasons you think. There are of course specific scenes that have aged horrifically and render the 1984 film borderline unwatchable (the Betty and Lewis scene being the one that has been most derided, and for good reason) but the real reason you’d never see the movie get made is because of how much “nerd culture” has been completely subsumed into normal pop culture. There’s no longer shame in liking comics, Dungeons and Dragons, or even match and science. The “nerd” and “jock” tropes are borderline unrecognizable. You could make a version of the movie, but not this version.
Encino Man
Zayne/moviestillsdb
Encino Man has a lot of things working against it in a modern context, not the least of which is that the premise is just incredibly weird.
But in actuality, the real issue is that in a world of Google and cell phone cameras, it would be borderline impossible for our unfrozen teen caveman to be able to hide their identity, let alone enroll in a school with no social security number or proof of residence. Even the “exchange student” lie falls apart instantly under even the slightest scrutiny from faculty who would be doing their jobs keeping strange, unwelcome people out of their classrooms.
Police Academy
murraymomo/moviestillsdb
Forget about the casual sexism or the off-color jokes, the big issue with Police Academy is that there isn’t an audience anymore that would accept the premise on either side. On the one hand, you’d have a certain group who would be angry that the filmmakers would imply that police officers are anything but perfect law enforcement vessels doing their sworn duty. On the other hand, folks would be unwilling to watch a comedy that shows zero introspection about real institutional problems in American police academies. It would be a mess that no studio would willingly step into.
The Shadow
Tonton-BDM/moviestillsdb
The Shadow was a superhero film released in 1994 starring Alec Baldwin (it’s okay if you’ve never heard of it, very few people showed up to theaters). After the success of Batman in 1989, studios looked for similar properties to adapt and thus audiences were treated to The Shadow, The Phantom, Dick Tracy, and The Rocketeer.
None were huge hits — two were legit flops — and it remains a mystery why studios went in that direction instead of making movies based on other established DC comic book heroes. It is a mistake that wouldn’t be made in today’s saturated DC/Marvel climate.
Soul Man
moviefan2/moviestillsdb
This isn’t even a situation where you could argue that Soul Man is simply a relic of its time, since people were protesting upon its release in 1986. They may have all had good intentions, but the second they got the screen tests back for the makeup the entire operation should have been scrapped.
Honestly, the entire plot is so offensive that it reads like the synopsis of a Daily Wire film that’s intended to somehow “own the libs” and instead just reveals the disgusting belief system behind the filmmakers. That might be a bit unfair since this film doesn’t feel as explicitly hateful as, say, Lady Ballers. It’s just incredibly misguided and tone-deaf.
Weird Science
moviestillsdb/murraymomo
Two nerdy teen boys accidentally harness the power of a lightning storm, their raging hormones and a personal home computer to create an ideal woman with magic powers who can fulfill all of their desires. There’s strange wish fulfillment, a borderline scene in a jazz club, and an insane final act where mutant bikers that were conjured from either the ending of The Road Warrior or Dawn of the Dead show up and trash the boys’ house party. Even if you took out the most objectionable bits there’s just no way — even in the 1980s only John Hughes could get this made.
Air Force One
RobertMcClaine/moviestillsdb
This is another one of those situations, like Police Academy, where there would be no pleasing anyone wading into these waters. Air Force One was released in 1996, at a time when audiences could accept a politically unspecified POTUS going Die Hard to foil the plot of Russian nationalists. Today, there would be certain people dissecting the film and projecting any and every grievance onto the film, turning it into a culture war battleground instead of letting it be the stupid, brainless popcorn film that it was made to be. The only chance this could even get close to happening is if you had a Denzel in the lead role, but even then… no shot.
Gremlins
zloben/moviestillsdb
The 1980s was a crazy decade. How else do you explain the existence of Gremlins?
From the minds of director Joe Dante, writer Christopher Columbus, and producer Steven Spielberg came a dark, surprisingly gross comedy horror Christmas film about a high school kid and his adorable pet battling with an army of disgusting creatures that they accidentally unleashed on their quant suburban town.
It’s a crime that movies like this don’t get made anymore.
Like The Goonies, what’s wrong with making a movie for a younger audience that isn’t afraid to be frightening? An entire generation grew up on this stuff and look how they turned out…right?
The Love Guru
shawneboy/moviestillsdb
How did this even get made in the first place? Mike Myers had a great track record coming into this one (let’s pretend The Cat in the Hat didn’t happen, okay?), and everyone who had seen an Austin Powers movie was accustomed to his characters that featured heavy prosthetics and funny voices. That sort of explains the blank check Myers had to make whatever he wanted. But once people got eyes on him in the full getup and doing the voice somebody close to Myers should have had the courage to pull him aside and tell him that this is decidedly not it.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
grzegorz77/moviestillsdb
In this case, we specifically mean that this version of Hunchback of Notre Dame would never get made today as a Disney animated feature. The source material is already questionable whether adapting to a children’s musical is appropriate. Still, even the sanitized version we got was out there in 1996. Today, parents would have a meltdown.
Anyone who hasn’t revisited this one since childhood should look again. There’s some not-so-subtle stuff going on with Judge Frollo and Esmerelda, not to mention Quasimodo’s backstory and the scene where the Judge essentially kicks his mother to death on the cathedral steps. It is WILD that this ever got past the concept stage, even in 1996.
