Forty has never looked so good. It’s been a full four decades since the summer of 1984, a period dominated by the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.
A.” and a booming box office that reverberates today as loudly as the neon colors of the time. In a time when nostalgia is as trendy as the latest viral TikTok video, the biggest movies from that summer are all relevant, seemingly destined to last longer than any clip that permeates your social media feed of choice.
That summer’s — “Ghostbusters,” “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” “Gremlins,” “Star Trek III: The Search for Spock” and “The Karate Kid” — all still exist today with new TV and film projects that have come out within the last year, with many more on the way. “Those were the days, the good old days. Movies were movies,” Ralph Macchio recently joked to TODAY.
com in an interview alongside “Karate Kid” and co-star William Zabka promoting the final season of the Netflix series. “It was a special year, that’s for sure,” Zabka said. It a special year — not just for what fans could catch at their local theater, but for what those movies birthed.
It was hardly a matter of the flicks coming out and then surfacing a few months later in video stores, before they’d premiere down the line on cable. Yes, the movies had staying power, but, perhaps more importantly, they also have power. “The Karate Kid” was the surprise hit of the bunch, s.