1980’s science fiction action films

So it’s 1980’s sci-fi action film week here at my blog with two reviews down and two more to come. Having been born in 1970 I was growing up in the 80 and spent my teens in that decade so I watched a lot of films. I was already into science fiction by the time the 80’s rolled. Sci-fi films from other decades certainly had action, but the action genre got bigger and more spectacular plus even more over the top in the 80’s. Other genres like sci-fi caught on to that trend and brought some of those elements into science fiction films. Films like Predator, Road Warrior, Escape from New York and many others had sci-fi elements like future dystopias, aliens and other ideas as the heart of their plot. Yet brute force, weapons and explosions became important means to solve these situations. The best films of this style managed a certain balance between plot, action and some type of thinking to accomplish getting past the hurdle of the story. However like any other decade there were film makers with less money and less ideas that wanted to cash in so we got a lot of cheaper copies through out the decade too. That can be fun to an extent. Any of you that are of a certain age may recall going to a video store between say 1985 and 1992 strolling over to the sci-fi section and seeing these colorful boxes of films that immediately came across as being “inspired” by the Road Warrior, Escape from New York, The Terminator and others. These films may not have had anyone you ever heard of it but some of them had some decent action and others were just what you’d expect them to be. The 1980’s was far from a perfect decade for this type of film, but many of those films were fun and there are certainly some classics from that time as well.