I liked the part where in Man of Steel some guy acted douchey to superman so the "hero" destroyed this guys (and possibly his familys) life by destroying his truck.

80's movies for me means, Schwarzenegger and Stallone movies. 😁

How have I never heard of Kung Fury?

I thought Hobo With a Shotgun was good, but this is EPIC. Holy shit.

SiliconClassics wrote:

The darkness definitely ramped-up after 2000 (post-DotCom burst and 9/11), but I think cynicism was well underway by the 90s: […]
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Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

The 90's also had X-Files and Babylon Five, so the period was not really dark and cynical...The year 2000 and above, I'm not sure.

The darkness definitely ramped-up after 2000 (post-DotCom burst and 9/11), but I think cynicism was well underway by the 90s:

1) Grunge music and gansta rap become mainstream starting in the mid 90s. Explicit song lyrics proliferate - remember the parental advisory stickers on CDs? Alanis Morissette's "Ironic" tops the charts in 1996. Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson bring angry, dark, twisted music to a wide audience.
2) "Edgy" becomes the new buzzword in screenwriting. Movies like Pulp Fiction and Fight Club shock audiences with protagonists who clearly don't GAF. By the end of the 90s animated films from studios like Disney and Dreamworks start showcasing irreverence and sarcasm.
3) TV shows like Daria and My So Called Life feature disaffected teens who look askance at anything that purports to be sincere. Cartoons like Beavis & Butthead, Ren & Stimpy, and South Park dispense with any notion of morality.

Sure there were some examples of this attitude in the 80s and earlier, and there are plenty of examples of sincere 90s entertainment like the shows you mentioned and Star Trek TNG and whatnot, but it was the 90s that really cemented irony and cynicism as the cultural standard IMHO.

I was a teen/young adult through the 90s and I never really cared much for the music of that era, I always liked 80s pop and 70s and 80s classic rock much more than the endless waves of electronic nihilism coming out of the entertainment industry during that period. I don't ever think I really felt like anything about the 90s ever "meshed" or "clicked" with me on any sort of level.

Thanks for all the replies so far (please go on)! 😄

In my opinion, an era doesn't end just because there's a roll-over from one decade into another.
The tranistion is rather smooth, I think. Sorry, I'm not so good in coining sentences.

Let me say it this way: The 80s didn't stop in 01.01.90, but rather their legacy carried on to say ~94.
Same happened with other eras. The 70s flair didn't end in 1980, but could still be felt in ~85.
Also, some "vibes" never really went away. Since we're discussing films, just think of VHS cassettes.
They were part of our culture since the late 70s to the early-2000s.
Or let's take classic roll skates (not inline models), for example. I've seen kids and adults still
using them in the mid-90s, even though they were an iconic 70s relict.

And last, but not least keep in mind, that the decades were perceived differently depending in which country you lived.
While it's safe to say we were mostly incluenced by the north american pop culture (films, music),
some countries took longer to catch up in real life. I guess especially poorer countries experienced the US-80s not until the 90s.
Be it because of war, politics or a natural disaster.

The 90's also had X-Files and Babylon Five, so the period was not really dark and cynical...The year 2000 and above, I'm not sure.

Not sure if I'm wearin' rose-coloured glasses of nostalgia here, but from a personal experience,
the early to mid-90s (-in my place-) were not gray at all. Here's what I remember positively:
Lots of cheesy music in the radio, people of all ages wearing colourful clothes unashamed w/ shoulder pads even.
Kids were playing on street/playground/soccer fields or sitting in the tram/car playing GameBoy.
Most of them were kinda polite, at least to adults or taller persons. And if they ever used swear words, they were rather harmless.
At my friends house they had this coloured drinking glasses. People were already aware of cell phones,
but not everyone had a use for them. Instead, kids and younger adults carried pagers in their pockets.
These were little devices, often in an coloured/acrylic casing, which would receive messages.
Cheap models only could display numbers, though. So could at least transmitt a phone number for a call-back.
The internet was already there, but not widely used yet. Instead local online services were more popular.
In Europe, these were Minitel, BTX, CompuServe or later AOL.
Poor people without computer could get their news via the television set (Videotext, Teletext, ..)
Kids/adults often lend video games at the video rentals. Sometimes this ended in a chaotic family holiday, too. 😉
Personally, I knew someone whose dad lend a lot of games just to make backup copies with a Super Magicom.
Back in these days, this even was legal in my country. You could make copies of payed films/media for non-commercial, personal use.
This included family members and close/best friends, even!

Anyway, these are just my two cents. I'm sure the list could be expanded greatly.
Also, I'm not saying that todays people are totally different or even worse. It all depends on the point of view.
On the contrary, tolerance for social marginal groups is much higher now.
You nolonger get "stoned" (scorned) if you're into the same gender, a nerd or have disabilities.
Well, at least not in our part of the hemisphere. 😉

(Ironically, though, the increasing brutalization of society or the social cold is somewhat of a contradiction here.)

SiliconClassics wrote:

That's what made 80's TV so great - it was full of shows about square-jawed vigilantes fighting crime with special vehicles. A-Team, Airwolf, Night Rider, MacGyver, Dukes of Hazzard, etc., and knockoffs like Blue Thunder and Street Hawk. There were attempts in the 90s to recapture the spirit of these shows with Viper and Thunder in Paradise, but they fell short. There was just something about the earnest vibe of 80s culture that couldn't be duplicated in the cynical 90s. Kung Fury, while full of 80s style, is more of an ironic, self-aware parody of the era than a sincere re-imagining.

But now that vibe seems to be resurfacing with stuff like Stranger Things and Ready Player One. Happy to see this, since for many people the 80s remains the best decade in living memory, producing some of our most beloved monuments of pop culture. Hopefully we're done with the ironic, cynical bullshit that has dominated the zeitgeist for the last 20+ years.

I read a review of Ready Player One (the novel as the movie is not out yet) and something about it just didn't sit right with me. The reviewer posted about a page or two of excerpts and there was something about the "overkill" level of the pop-culture references that just seemed...silly?
(Seriously, an eccentric billionaire fires someone because they don't get a pop culture reference?)
Maybe I didn't give it a chance but from the bit that I read it just seemed like it was way too smugly into itself.

SiliconClassics wrote:

The darkness definitely ramped-up after 2000 (post-DotCom burst and 9/11), but I think cynicism was well underway by the 90s: […]
Show full quote

The darkness definitely ramped-up after 2000 (post-DotCom burst and 9/11), but I think cynicism was well underway by the 90s:

1) Grunge music and gansta rap become mainstream starting in the mid 90s. Explicit song lyrics proliferate - remember the parental advisory stickers on CDs? Alanis Morissette's "Ironic" tops the charts in 1996. Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson bring angry, dark, twisted music to a wide audience.
2) "Edgy" becomes the new buzzword in screenwriting. Movies like Pulp Fiction and Fight Club shock audiences with protagonists who clearly don't GAF. By the end of the 90s animated films from studios like Disney and Dreamworks start showcasing irreverence and sarcasm.
3) TV shows like Daria and My So Called Life feature disaffected teens who look askance at anything that purports to be sincere. Cartoons like Beavis & Butthead, Ren & Stimpy, and South Park dispense with any notion of morality.

Sure there were some examples of this attitude in the 80s and earlier, and there are plenty of examples of sincere 90s entertainment like the shows you mentioned and Star Trek TNG and whatnot, but it was the 90s that really cemented irony and cynicism as the cultural standard IMHO.

The 90's era of dark and edgy was probably most prominent in comics, especially with creators like Todd McFarlane, Rob Liefeld, and Fabian Nicieza. And that's why I hate 90's comics --and was happy DC's Kingdom Come put such disgusting era to an end.

It's also 90's comics that made me hate mutants. Not that I'm a racist against mutant or something. In fact, I'm fine with the original and the giant-size X-Men. But it's the endless wave of mutant anti-heroes in 90's era X-books, and the tiring, pessimistic story of mutants-humans relation, made me really tired of 90's comics.

THIS is what's wrong with 90's comics.

Excalibur was the only comics I like from the 90's era, because:
(a) the team is a mixture of mutants and humans, so it shows race doesn't matter as long as you're the good guys.
(b) the characters are true heroes instead of angsty anti-heroes.
(c) Nightcrawler went to bar without disguise, without anyone pointing and yelling, "hey, look at that mutant!"
(d) the team is working with benevolent, non-oppressive authority (The British police) instead of being a bunch or rebellious angsty teenagers.
(e) the fantasy-laden story is so refreshing and optimistic.
(f) the drawing uses ligne claire and block colors, almost like George Perez and Dick Giordano's arts of the good old 80's.

TRUE HEROES instead of angsty anti-heroes.

As for music, I heartily agree: I generally hate grunge, punk, and almost anything labelled 'alternative rock'. I hate Brit pop as well. However, as Jo22 has said...

Jo22 wrote:

Thanks for all the replies so far (please go on)! ^_^ […]
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Thanks for all the replies so far (please go on)! 😄

In my opinion, an era doesn't end just because there's a roll-over from one decade into another.
The tranistion is rather smooth, I think. Sorry, I'm not so good in coining sentences.

Let me say it this way: The 80s didn't stop in 01.01.90, but rather their legacy carried on to say ~94.
Same happened with other eras. The 70s flair didn't end in 1980, but could still be felt in ~85.
Also, some "vibes" never really went away. Since we're discussing films, just think of VHS cassettes.
They were part of our culture since the late 70s to the early-2000s.
Or let's take classic roll skates (not inline models), for example. I've seen kids and adults still
using them in the mid-90s, even though they were an iconic 70s relict.

Yes, this excellent, 80's styled rock ballad was actually launched in 1995, and was also a big hit. This 80's style synth pop was actually launched in early 90's as well, and became my most favorite. The 90's also the era of garage house, which I love very much. Also, EURODANCE! Alright, Eurodance is probably camp, but many are good, such as this, THIS, and this.

So, not all 90's music are bad (though I hate many). Eurodance, which was my most favorite genre at that time, was a 90's era genre. 😀