What was the highest-grossing movie of the 1980s?
The 1980s began with one of the most pivotal moments in the history of modern culture: the release of Heaven’s Gate. The movie ended up costing so much, and recouping so little, that production companies pulled the plug on runaway directors and ushered the art form down a more managed, commercial route.
A paradigm of the fallout from this almighty flop can be seen in a conversation the movie’s lead, Kris Kristofferson, had in an elevator with UA president Norbert Auerbach. Furious from the failure of the film, Auerbach, a production tycoon, quietly remarked: “The money has to be taken from the creative people.” To which Kristofferson retorted: “Who you gonna give it to? The un-creative people?”
His question was valid and will forever remain valid. In fact, it is so valid that it has underpinned the entirety of the movie industry ever since. But it is not without irony that in the early days, this dystopian outlook led to somewhat of a golden age in the decade that followed. Chasing commercial success, the likes of UA decided to focus on what audiences wanted.
So family-friendly successes with an otherworldly edge like E.T., The Goonies, and The Ending Story all came in a flurry. Coming-of-age classics like The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and Dead Poets Society all arrived hot on the heels of one another. However, each of these entries were original and unique—they hadn’t quite figured out how to rip the soul out of the industry in a whirlwind of copy-and-paste jobs.
What was the highest-grossing film of the 1980s?
However, they would soon uncover that there was simply too much cash out there not to get cynical about it. Space was searing hot after the success of Star Wars, and with FX technology developing at a rapid rate, even auteurs were interested in getting in on the act. But as Star Wars proved in a manner that has all too often been overlooked, any good space story has to be deeply rooted in humanity.
Fortunately, Steven Spielberg recognised this and as a result, he sent E.T. racing towards a new monetary galaxy. It became the most commercially successful film of the 1980s by a landslide. The movie made an absolutely whopping $792.9million in 1982 from a budget of just $10.5million. That placed it well ahead of The Empire Strikes Back, which made $538m.
To this day, that budget-to-income ratio is a golden target that producers continually try and fail to achieve, because the methods are all wrong. As Spielberg said himself, “Technology can be our best friend, and technology can also be the biggest party pooper of our lives. It interrupts our own story, interrupts our ability to have a thought or a daydream, to imagine something wonderful because we’re too busy bridging the walk from the cafeteria back to the office on the cell phone.”
