The best 1980s movies include a strong mix of teenage coming-of-age stories, buddy cop films, and a true renaissance for horror and science fiction. While often called the decade of excess, there were over-the-top blockbusters with loud soundtracks, bright colors, and skyrocketing budgets, but it was much more than that. A lot of heart, creativity, and inventive filmmaking took place in that decade, and there are so many films that remain iconic 40 years later.

The 1980s saw the rise of slasher movies and the beloved and iconic high school films of John Hughes. It also saw names like John Carpenter, Terry Gilliam, Steven Spielberg, Spike Lee, and Martin Scorsese really come into their own as some of the world's best directors. It also marked the rise of names like Tom Cruise, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kurt Russell, Sigourney Weaver, Bruce Willis, Glenn Close, and Harrison Ford, and many films from this decade have been entered into the National Film Registry.

10 The Breakfast Club (1985)

Directed By John Hughes

In the 1980s, John Hughes came into his own and released several films that remain iconic coming-of-age movies decades later. These include Sixteen Candles, Weird Science, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and Planes, Trains and Automobiles. However, the movie that stands above them all is his masterpiece, The Breakfast Club. The film has everything in place that teen comedy fans recognize as stereotype clichés, but that was the point of this film - to break down these stereotypes.

The Breakfast Club has a jock, popular girl, outcast, nerd, and loner all sent to a Saturday morning detention where they realize they aren't all that different and learn that all of them have problems that they have to deal with as teenagers in the 80s. The film was a monster hit and made stars out of the Brat Pack actors of the 80s. It was also added to the National Film Registry in 2016 for its cultural significance. Every teen coming-of-age movie that followed owes so much to The Breakfast Club​​​​​.

9 Back To The Future (1989)

Directed By Robert Zemeckis

Robert Zemeckis is a filmmaker who has helped bring the latest tech to movies at the same time that James Cameron started his experimental stages. However, while Cameron mostly got stuck with his tech for the Avatar franchise, Zemeckis kept pushing things in different directions. He was responsible for combining live-action and animation with Who Framed Roger Rabbit, mastered adding actors into historical situations with Forrest Gump, and was all over motion capture with The Polar Express.

However, his 1980s movie Back to the Future remains his most beloved release. Michael J. Fox stars as Marty McFly, a teenager who ends up sent back to the past when his parents first met, and he has to find a way to fix his disruption of the timeline before he disappears from existence. The movie was a monster success, becoming a hit blockbuster, and spawned two sequels. It was also added to the National Film Registry in 2007.

8 Die Hard (1988)

Directed By John McTiernan

Throughout the 1980s, the action movie genre was full of larger-than-life heroes, with names like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, and Dolph Lundgren leading the way. Giant muscular men, former soldiers with big guns, and martial arts experts were par for the course. However, in 1988, everything changed, and the action genre was never the same. Bruce Willis, best known for his comedy acting in the TV show Moonlighting, starred as John McClain in Die Hard.

McClain was the "every man" who wasn't a giant muscular hero or a master of the martial arts. Instead, he was just a regular cop forced to survive against all odds and save his estranged wife during a Christmas party hijacking. Die Hard was a huge success and remains a film that is a Christmas favorite decades after its release. It created a franchise with four sequels and was added to the National Film Registry in 2017 for its cultural significance.

7 Brazil (1985)

Directed By Terry Gilliam

Out of all the Monty Python , the one who ended up as the best director was Terry Gilliam. He had several great movies over his career, from Time Bandits to The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, 12 Monkeys, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. However, his masterpiece might be his most bizarre and offbeat movie release. Brazil was Gilliam's dystopian science fiction black comedy released in 1985, which was much more than its synopsis might indicate.

The movie was a box office failure but quickly became a cult classic when it hit home video and even received a Criterion release.

Jonathan Pryce stars as Sam Lowry, a bureaucrat who works a monotonous job and finds his life ruined when his air conditioner stops working and a wanted terrorist shows up to fix it. The movie was a box office failure but quickly became a cult classic when it hit home video and even received a Criterion release. The film is a satire of a government agency turning normal people into cogs in a machine, a perfect dystopian story during Reagan-era America. The Coen Brothers, Neil Marshall, and Rian Johnson call it an inspiration.

6 The Thing (1982)

Directed By John Carpenter

John Carpenter's The Thing is an 80s movie that was a massive box office failure that later became one of the best-selling home video releases of its era, gaining a new life. Kurt Russell stars as R.J. MacReady, a pilot stationed at a research facility in Antarctica. One day, an alien being invades the facility, and it can replicate anyone that it kills, so soon, no one knows who they can trust and who they can't as they start to die one by one at the hands of this murderous being.

While the film was a failure when released, it has since been named one of the best horror movies of all time and one of the top sci-fi horror flicks ever made. One reason for the film's failure was that fans loved optimistic sci-fi like E.T., and this was a darker, more nihilistic release. That played into its reassessment, which really started in the 1990s when it began to show up on best-of lists and spawned video games, comics, and film sequels.

5 Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981)

Directed By Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg became a star in the 1970s thanks to Jaws, but he really came into his own in the 1980s, when he released both blockbusters (E.T.) and dramas (The Color Purple). The film that really showed the director at his best was the 1981 action-adventure movie Raiders of the Lost Ark. Harrison Ford stars as a treasure-hunting, Nazi-fighting adventurer in Spielberg's love letter to classic adventure movies of the past. It was a monster success.

The first film had Indiana Jones fighting the Nazis to stop them from recovering the Ark of the Covenant and using its powers to win World War II. The film made $389 million on a $20 million budget (via Box Office Mojo) and went on to win five Academy Awards with four other nominations (including Best Picture and Best Director). It spawned a sequel and a spinoff TV prequel and is often listed as one of the best adventure movies in film history. It was added to the National FIlm Registry in 1999.

4 Blade Runner (1982)

Directed By Ridley Scott

Ridley Scott has made some true masterpieces over his career, including the first Alien movie in the 1970s and Gladiator in 2000. However, the one film that science fiction fans consider his greatest work was the 1982 release, Blade Runner. The dystopian science fiction film stars Harrison Ford as Rick Deckard, a law enforcement official tasked with hunting down advanced "Replicants," which were human-created androids meant for manual labor, but ones who escaped and tried to live real lives.

Several sci-fi filmmakers reference it as one of their biggest influences to this day, and it was selected for the National Film Registry in 1993.

Based on Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the film was not a massive hit upon its release but has since become known as one of the seminal and most important science-function movies of all time. The story asks what it means to be alive and "human," and the best thing is that it doesn't give a straight answer. Several sci-fi filmmakers reference it as one of their biggest influences to this day, and it was selected for the National Film Registry in 1993.

3 Do The Right Thing (1989)

Directed By Spike Lee

While the 1990s was best known for the rise of independent cinema, it actually started at the end of the 1980s with two seminal independent films that kickstarted the movement. These were both released in 1989 with Steven Soderbergh's Sex, Lies and Videotape and Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. Both revolutionized independent filmmaking and helped later names like Kevin Smith, Robert Rodriguez, and Richard Linklater become top directors in the indie scene.

However, of the two movies, it is Do the Right Thing that remains the most important and essential of the two films. The story follows the residents of a Brooklyn neighborhood and sees racial tensions boil over between the African American residents and the Italian American owners of the local pizzeria. The film received two Oscar nominations (Best Screenplay, Best ing Actor) and was selected by the Library of Congress for the National Film Registry in 1999.

2 The Last Emperor (1987)

Directed By Bernardo Bertolucci

One of the best 80s movies was Bernardo Bertolucci's biographical epic about Puyi, the final Emperor of China. It was the first Western movie the Chinese government allowed to be shot inside the Forbidden City in Beijing. The film follows the life of Puyi from his days as an infant when he was named the Emperor of China, to his imprisonment and political rehabilitation by the Chinese Communist Party. It was a commercial and critical success and remains a highly respected film.

It also won three BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globes, and even a Grammy Award for its soundtrack.

The Last Emperor won every Oscar it was nominated for, which included Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. It also won three BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globes, and even a Grammy Award for its soundtrack. Critics have the film Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with an 86% rating, while audiences have it even higher at 88%. Roger Ebert wrote the film "never makes the mistake of having only one thing to say about the life of a man who embodied all of the contradictions and paradoxes of 20th century China."

1 Raging Bull (1980)

Directed By Martin Scorsese

A film that many consider the best movie not to win a Best Picture Oscar, Raging Bull saw Martin Scorsese tell the story of a volatile boxing champion named Jake LaMotta. The film shows his rise and fall in both the world of boxing and his personal life, and Robert De Niro turned in a career-defining performance as LaMatta. Shot in black and white and showing Jake at the height of his prowess and the depths of his post-boxing career, Scorsese told a deep story about a man who had everything and threw it all away.

Despite that, Raging Bull stood the test of time, ranked as one of the best films ever made and added to the National Film Registry in 1990

Raging Bull received eight Oscar nominations but only won two. Robert De Niro won Best Actor, and the film won for Best Editing. However, it lost out to Ordinary People and its director, Robert Redford, for the top two prizes. Despite that, Raging Bull stood the test of time, ranked as one of the best films ever made and added to the National Film Registry in 1990, one of the titles selected in the first year the Library of Congress began preserving films