1980s in film
The decade of the 1980s in Western cinema saw the return of studio-driven pictures, coming from the filmmaker-driven New Hollywood era of the 1970s. The period was when "high concept" films gained popularity, where movies were to be easily marketable and understandable, and, therefore, they had short cinematic plots that could be summarized in one or two sentences. The modern Hollywood blockbuster is the most popular film format from the 1980s. Producer Don Simpson is usually credited with the creation of the high-concept picture of the modern Hollywood blockbuster. Highest-grossing films. In the  list, where revenues are equal numbers, the newer films are listed lower, due to inflation making the dollar-amount lower compared to earlier years. Trends. The films of the 1980s covered many genres, with hybrids crossing between multiple genres. The trend strengthened towards creating ever-larger blockbuster films, which earned more in their opening weeks than any previous film, due in part to staging releases when audiences had little else to choose. Ratings. The decade also saw an increased amount of nudity in film and the increasing emphasis in the American industry on film franchises, especially in the science fiction , horror and action genres. Much of the reliance on these effect-driven blockbusters was due in part to the "Star Wars" films at the advent of this decade and the new cinematic effects it helped to pioneer. The teen comedy subgenre also rose in popularity during this decade. In the US, the PG-13 rating was introduced in 1984 to accommodate films that straddled the line between PG and R, which was mainly due to the controversies surrounding the violent content of the PG films "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" and "Gremlins" (both 1984). Some have considered the 1980s  in retrospect as one of the weaker decades for American cinema in terms of the qualities of the films released. Quentin Tarantino (director of "Pulp Fiction") has voiced his own view that the 1980s was one of the worst eras for American films. Film critic Kent Jones also shares this opinion. However, film theorist David Bordwell countered this notion, saying that the "megapicture mentality" was already existent in the 1970s, which is evident in the ten highest-grossing films of that decade, as well as with how many of the filmmakers part of New Hollywood were still able to direct  many great pictures in the 1980s (Martin Scorsese, Brian de Palma, etc.).