MovieChat Forums > General Discussion > I've finally experienced the generation ...

I've finally experienced the generation gap when it comes to movies.


I use to have older people tell me about certain movies and stars that I just had no connection with or desire to see, and they were surprised and told me to check them out.

Now, I was telling a coworker about Wesley Snipes...he had no idea who that was and I mentioned Demolition Man, Passenger 57, Blade, and he had NO IDEA what any of that was. I was growing up on Wesley Snipes, and here this guy had zero connection or desire to see any of it.

I am close to twice that coworkers age. I pity him, that he only knows reboots and poor films. He grew up on garbage essentially. Is this how older people thought of me? Surely good films came out late eighties and throughout the nineties?

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80s and 90s you had quite some great movies. These two decades were extremely irregular, it's not like classic 40s and 50s where quality was consistently good. But the good ones from the 80s/90s, they're gold.

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I bet its harder for the newest generation to appreciate older movies. Because I remember a time when we all used landline telephones (rotary dial phones were just phasing out when I was a child and only my grandparents had them) no one had cellphones, pagers were used. It wasnt yet commonplace for every household to have a computer, we had dial up at first. There was no GPS yet, we used roadmaps on our family vacation.

So for me to go back and watch older movies im not so disconnected from them...but if the teenagers now have never even experienced 80's technology, how could they connect with these things?

My dad loved westerns and old war movies, but I didnt. I wasnt exposed to horseback riding or living in that era of technology. So I was disconnected from that.

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Everything had been downhill since Roundhay Garden Scene

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Greatest 80's movie ever, it remains to this day the best of the walking genre.
🚶‍♀️🚶

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I had that a couple of years ago with Christian Slater. I know he was never the most popular guy but at the time he was in Mr. Robot and had the Golden Globe nominations for it. So not totally unheard of. But yeah, that made me feel old.

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Devon Sawa, man. Now, that's obscure!

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It took me until the end of the first episode of Chucky to even recognize him. Once I did I wondered how I didn't before, but it did take a second.

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Slater and Sawa were like the Pitt and DiCaprio back then. Now nobody knows them.

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I know many people who don't even have a clue who River Phoenix was. I mean I knew who James Dean was, and there was a similar gap in time.

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Yeah. At least we have Joaquin now.

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really? , ive never heard of this Sawa
i was a teenager in the 80s

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Maybe you were not into heartthrobes. Many people don't. Like today there are people that don't care about, say, Justin Beiber. Did you know Aaron Carter back in the day?

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thats probly it.
no , not heard of carter either .
I'll have to check those two's film list to see why they passed me by.

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Here is something I have always thought was odd. I was born in the 70’s but as a child I watched tons of movies and tv shows from before I was born. I know actors and directors who were popular before I was born not just because I watched their movies then, but also because I’ve searched them out as an adult.

It seems more common these days for kids to only know about what’s current. I know the internet and streaming plays into this phenomenon in some way, but it also makes older films more accessible. As a kid in the 80’s I had to rent older films from the video store or happen to catch them on tv. Now everything is easily available.

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But I wonder if most of yours peers didn't also only care about then-current movies.

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Depends on the parents. My kid was born in the 2010s but he knows the 90s Mortal Kombat, George of the Jungle, Batman Returns, O.G. The Lion King, O.G. Mulan, etc. Because I expose him to those movies.

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I spent my childhood watching all the oldies on TV. My mom loved the movies and spent her childhood at the theater. Our town used to have THREE theaters. Now we have none. So I grew up loving my mom's favorites like Bogie, Bette Davis, Tracy and Hepburn, John Wayne, Cary Grant, etc.

When I went away to college I could not believe how many of my classmates never even heard of the old, great stars.

A few years ago I mentioned Marlon Brando to some teen-agers and they had no idea who he was! It's not just movies. Today, cultural illiteracy is rampant. I've encountered a lot of 'under thirty' people who have NO idea about so many things and people and places. They have no sense of history. If it didn't happen during their lifetime, it's of no importance to them.

I used to be a substitute teacher. I had a teen-age boy in history class who never heard of Richard Nixon. His excuse was that he wasn't alive back when he was President. I told him that I wasn't alive when Lincoln was in office, but I knew who he was!

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It's not just kids, our country has collective amnesia. Most people are historically illiterate. I think it's the screen culture. What Chris Hedge calls electronic hallucinations. Our contemporary world is an empire of illusion and spectacle, with widespread cultural illiteracy that undermines our ability to engage critically with society.

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“Today, cultural illiteracy is rampant”

I think your right in target here. When I was a kid and old enough to go to the video rental store it did not matter at all what year the movie came out. I just looked for movies that had interesting covers in the genres I liked. Now every film imaginable is findable through streaming services but most kids only know what is absolutely current on Netflix.



“never heard of Richard Nixon”

It’s strange because so much information is readily available at the click of a button, but instead of using this new advantage that earlier generations didn’t have, lots of kids are propaganda sponges.

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My sister and I were just talking about that issue. We remembered having to go to the library to do research for a school project or paper. Today, young people don't have to leave their bedrooms to do research. They are a generation who literally has most of the world's knowledge at their fingertips. But they are the most ignorant generation we've produced.

I watch teens on their phones. They look up nothing but games, apps and the latest messages from their pals. They could learn so much yet know so little.

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I think one aspect is that we have information overload. While I'm critical of the younger generation for the reasons I've stated, we should consider that all our knowledge is buried under a sea of shit. If you spend all your time on TikTok, you don't have time to grab a book. I think social media is what is making us illiterate.

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Some people are more broadly curious than others. It is, imo, a marker of a certain kind of intelligence.

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I experienced something similar when I was going to school to become a medical assistant. All my classmates were 10 years younger than me (with a few exceptions); we're talking kids who were born in the mid-to-late 90s, and when I'd tell them about some of the classic sci-fi movies, they'd suddenly sound like kids or high school kids and say "Wow, that movie's old!" In my mind I was rolling my eyes, but outwardly, I kept my cool and said "So? Just because it's an older film doesn't mean it doesn't have a good story."

I find it very sad how small-minded young adults of today can be. They consider anyone older than 20 to be "old" or a "boomer," (which pisses me off to no end), and any movie/tv show that didn't come out before 2015 is considered "old" and not worth knowing about or watching. They are so damned stupid these days that they are totally missing out on all the good stuff!

And you're right, it's weird seeing all the actors/pop stars from my generation suddenly either dead, forgotten, or yesterday's news. I remember when I was a teenager, it felt as if all of them would last forever....but they don't.

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It is weird seeing those guys drop off. I'm still amazed Charlie Watts was the first Stone to die.

I never got the whole of its old it sucks thing either.

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Technically it’s Brian Jones, but I know what you meant (Musicologist Andy).

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I grew up on old movies as a kid so I never understood people who would say "that was before.my time". I don't know or care too much about current films and stars. So I'm still a misfit!

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I dont think kids these days have as much time .
flooded with media , too much choice
theres tik tok, and fortnite, youtube , etc
and all this MCU shit coming out constantly ,
so it'll take them longer to get round to the older movies

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similar post in the "Ready player one" board:

https://moviechat.org/tt1677720/Ready-Player-One/5aaec1eca2315600144dd5da/Why-would-the-kids-of-2045-be-interested-in-the-pop-culture-of-the-80s?reply=5b613df3b4669c0014340971

"I work with kids aged 12-18 and none of the have any interest in or knowledge of movies or music prior to the 21st century. They have never watched any of the classics like Wizard of Oz, Heidi, Ben Hur, have never seen Fred Astaire dance with Ginger Rogers, never watched Back to the Future, have not listened to classic rock from the 70's. They have no interest in anything that pre-dates them and their present culture. It's kind of sad. When I was growing up I had a wide range of interest in movies and music from different time periods The internet and cell phones didn't exist back then so I had the time to learn about different things."

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That is something I found kind of ridiculous, that a kid knew retro cartridge games and was good at playing them, when he was so far removed from the generation they originated from. I chalked it up to "the kid was cut from a different cloth and was a genuine videogame enthusiast. A genius when it came to videogames".

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"I work with kids aged 12-18 and none of the have any interest in or knowledge of movies or music prior to the 21st century. They have never watched any of the classics like Wizard of Oz, Heidi, Ben Hur, have never seen Fred Astaire dance with Ginger Rogers, never watched Back to the Future, have not listened to classic rock from the 70's. They have no interest in anything that pre-dates them and their present culture. It's kind of sad. When I was growing up I had a wide range of interest in movies and music from different time periods The internet and cell phones didn't exist back then so I had the time to learn about different things."

I didn't have any interest in old movies when I was a kid in the '80s. I saw The Wizard of Oz (1939) multiple times because it was on TV every year (and was considered an "event"), and I liked it, but to this day it's one of only a few movies made before the 1970s that I like.

I liked (and still like) Looney Tunes, though I had no idea at the time that they were all decades old. I assumed they were being currently produced like other cartoons on the air at the time.

On the other hand, when it came to music, I liked "oldies" (mid '50s to early '60s rock and roll) and didn't like then-current '80s music. Oldies just naturally appealed to me; I wasn't influenced by anyone else. My parents only listened to gospel music, and my older brother listened to then-current pop music on the radio. I had never even heard an oldies song until the winter of 1985 when I was almost 11, and I saw a commercial on TV that used the song Rock Around The Clock, and I thought it was the most awesome thing I'd ever heard. I didn't know what it was or how to hear more songs like it though until I discovered an oldies station on the radio a couple years later.

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Some people don't even know who Lurene Tuttle is.

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Can you imagine?!?
There are probably a few posters that will have to google this illustrious woman and her storied career…😒

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People should know Walter Tetley, no?
Where are we going today, Mr. Peabody?

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Of course! We are movie aficionados here at MC after all!
I’ll be back in a few, I have to google…uhm, good birthday presents for an 8 year old nephew…yeah, that Tetley guy was superb!

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