The movies became predictable and tired, and genre-savvy audiences spent more time rolling their eyes than jumping from scares. Because it’s a Tim Burton film — and for some, it’s the Tim Burton film — this allegory features a pastel and hidebound suburbia and a lonely new arrival with scissor-blades for fingers, and those frills are a wonderful bonus. When Burton is working at the top of his form as he is here, he’s a master of creating artificial and exaggerated worlds and characters that somehow speak to something real and true inside us all.
“Office Space” seemed doomed from the start, making just $10.8 million at the box office. But once it hit home video, it found its people—the burned-out office workers, the cubicle dwellers, and anyone who’s ever fantasized about smashing a printer. The movie’s deadpan humor and spot-on satire of corporate life made it an instant classic for a disaffected generation.
Movies That Defined A Generation, According to Reddit
It’s one of this generation’s major cult films that taught audiences how eccentric art can be and how far tastes can diverge. They’re meant for each other — but Jack is a broke, struggling artist, and Rose is from an upper-crust family. Its innovative “bullet time” effects and philosophical themes pushed storytelling boundaries. The movie asked deep questions about reality while delivering jaw-dropping manga quiz action sequences. The movie is the sophomore effort of filmmaker John Singleton following his debut “Boyz n the Hood” in 1991, which had established him as one of the most prominent Black Gen X filmmakers of the time.
It was the year that pop culture began to embrace things that were previously written off by the mainstream as the pursuit of introverted nerds. In other words, it was arguably the year when computers stopped just being for nerds and/or it started to be considered cool to be a nerd, which is a shift that definitely first happened with Gen Xers. Lest we forget that it wasn’t only the United States that had Gen Xers, Danny Boyle’s “Trainspotting” — based on Irvine Welch’s novel of the same name — presents a uniquely British view of the era and the people that were part of it. Of course, you can’t talk about “Empire Records” without mentioning Rex Manning (Maxwell Caulfield) or Rex Manning Day. Manning is the perfect caricature of how Gen X viewed the past-their-prime stars from their parents’ childhoods and is just one of many elements that makes “Empire Records” a great Gen X film to this day.
The rise of the internet is shared between Gen Xers and the following generation of Millennials. While most Millennials grew up in a world where the internet was more or less always around, Gen Xers got to live a life divided into pre and post-internet. Many got to experience its mass market debut at a time when they were still young enough to embrace and be wowed by it. As the older generation entered convenience stores, video stores, and other places of business that mostly employed teenagers and young adults in the ’90s, they were often quick to get irritated with what they considered to be a disrespectful attitude. They expected young people to work thankless jobs for little money, and still deal with the ridiculous demands of each and every customer with a smile on their faces. There were a lot of great action/adventure movies in the early ’80s like “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “E.T.,” and “Ghostbusters,” but most of them have a more timeless feel and don’t particularly seem to belong to Generation X.
Salon’s Charles Taylor noted how raunchy the film was at the time and “an honestly corrupt entertaining picture is never anything to sneeze at.” If it left you with wide eyes and some guilty enjoyment back in 1999, it did the job it set out to do. Torrance (Kirsten Dunst) has just become captain of her San Diego school’s Nationals-winning cheerleading squad the Toros, but discovers that the previous captain stole the winning routines from the Clovers, a Black and Latinx squad in Compton. So, Torrance enlists the help of new recruit Missy (Eliza Dushku) to create an original routine and beat the Clovers at Nationals fair and square. It’s a funny, well-crafted crowd-pleaser that really holds up, and internet-savvy Millennials can now get an additional kick out of the viral online theory that Kevin grew up to be the Jigsaw Killer from “Saw.” The movie takes us inside a world where every holiday is managed by its own pocket dimension.
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (
But as years passed, critics and cinephiles started to see the film differently. Its sweeping cinematography, bold themes, and attention to historical detail have earned it a passionate following. Today, it’s studied as a misunderstood masterpiece, and its troubled legacy is part of what makes it so fascinating. While there is no shortage of teen films where an underdog ends up with someone seemingly out of their league, “Say Anything…” is definitely among the best of them and remains one of the all-time great romantic dramedies of any generation.
We had seen the archetype before, but mean girls have changed since the ‘80s and this comedy was among the first to reflect that. Regina George is far from the nicest girl, but like her fellow Plastics, we’re strangely drawn to her charms. She feels less like another cartoon bully and more like somebody every millennial went to high school with. The same can be said about Cady, who demonstrates how easily cliques can change a person.
“Garden State” does offer some simple solutions to Andrew’s complicated issues, hence the contemporary criticisms. At its core, though, there is an inspirational message about coming out of one’s shell and finding sunshine even during a rainy day. Sure, the message may not be as profound as it thinks it is, but that doesn’t make people enjoy it any less.
Movies That Shaped The Millennial Generation
Olive’s reaction to her notoriety reflects rapidly changing opinions and discussions around sex and sexuality, which were still extremely taboo, especially among more conservative schools. Easy A also depicted an important shift in the way gossip spreads in high schools, as social media makes it extremely hard to hide secrets. It showed off the potential to use the latest CGI techniques for storytelling as well as spectacle.
While the setting and archetypes here are all modernized with ingenuity and playfulness, it’s the unfiltered mid-’90s style that makes this movie immortal. It’s the kind of movie this contemporary Romeo and Juliet might make themselves, after growing up on a diet of cutting edge music videos. Luhrmann takes their taste as seriously as he takes their love, and it’s magnificent to watch him give both their due. For millennials, Baz Luhrmann’s frenzied, imaginative, and gloriously gaudy 1996 adaptation “Romeo + Juliet” made Shakespeare cool in a whole new way. Luhrmann’s distinctive and even overpowering visual style turns out to be a perfect match for the story’s passion.
“Easy A” references films like “The Breakfast Club” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” but its mindset is more modern. This is reflected through the film’s framing device, which finds Emma Stone’s Olive addressing her audience via webcam. Due in part to the internet, millennials are more open to broadcasting their feelings and secrets compared to past generations. Olive uses this platform to clear up a lie about her personal life and critique the notion that losing/taking one’s virginity is like winning a “prize.” She also explores how young adults struggle with self-esteem, which can easily influence their public perception.