1980s

1980
The Final Countdown is a 1980 alternate history science fiction film about a modern aircraft carrier that travels through time to a day before the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. Produced by Peter Vincent Douglas and directed by Don Taylor, the film stars Kirk Douglas, Martin Sheen, James Farentino, Katharine Ross and Charles Durning. This was Taylor's final film.

Produced with the full cooperation of the U.S. Navy and filmed on board the USS Nimitz supercarrier, The Final Countdown was a moderate success at the box office. In the years that followed, the film has developed a cult status among science fiction and military aviation fans.

1980
Saturn 3 is a 1980 British science fiction thriller film produced and directed by Stanley Donen. It stars Farrah Fawcett, Kirk Douglas and Harvey Keitel. The screenplay was written by Martin Amis, from a story by John Barry. Though a British production (made by Lew Grade's ITC Entertainment and shot at Shepperton Studios), the film has an American cast and director.

1981
Southern Comfort is an American action/thriller film directed by Walter Hill and written by Michael Kane, and Hill and his longtime collaborator David Giler. It stars Keith Carradine, Powers Boothe, Fred Ward, T. K. Carter, Franklyn Seales, and Peter Coyote. The film, set in 1973, features a Louisiana Army National Guard squad of nine on weekend maneuvers in rural bayou country as they antagonize some local Cajun people and become hunted.

1982
Blade Runner is a 1982 American neo-noir dystopian science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos. The screenplay, written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, is a modified film adaptation of the 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick.

The film depicts Los Angeles in November 2019, in which genetically engineered replicants, which are visually indistinguishable from adult humans, are manufactured by the powerful Tyrell Corporation as well as by other "mega-corporations" around the world. The use of replicants on Earth is banned and they are exclusively utilized for dangerous or menial work on off-world colonies. Replicants who defy the ban and return to Earth are hunted down and killed ("retired") by special police operatives known as "Blade Runners". The plot focuses on a desperate group of recently escaped replicants hiding in Los Angeles and the burnt-out expert Blade Runner, Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), who reluctantly agrees to take on one more assignment to hunt them down.

Blade Runner initially polarized critics: some were displeased with the pacing, while others enjoyed its thematic complexity. The film performed poorly in North American theaters but has since become a cult film. It has been hailed for its production design, depicting a "retrofitted" future, and remains a leading example of the neo-noir genre. It brought the work of Philip K. Dick to the attention of Hollywood and several later films were based on his work. Ridley Scott regards Blade Runner as "probably" his most complete and personal film. In 1993, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Blade Runner is now regarded by many critics as one of the best science fiction films ever made.

1985
Brazil is a 1985 British film directed by Terry Gilliam and written by Gilliam, Charles McKeown, and Tom Stoppard. British National Cinema by Sarah Street describes the film as a "fantasy/satire on bureaucratic society" while John Scalzi's Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies describes it as a "dystopian satire". The film stars Jonathan Pryce and features Robert De Niro, Kim Greist, Michael Palin, Katherine Helmond, Bob Hoskins, and Ian Holm.

The film centres on Sam Lowry, a man trying to find a woman who appears in his dreams while he is working in a mind-numbing job and living a life in a small apartment, set in a consumer-driven dystopian world in which there is an over-reliance on poorly maintained (and rather whimsical) machines. Brazil‍ '​s bureaucratic, totalitarian government is reminiscent of the government depicted in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, except that it has a buffoonish, slapstick quality and lacks a Big Brother figure.

Jack Mathews, film critic and author of The Battle of Brazil (1987), described the film as "satirizing the bureaucratic, largely dysfunctional industrial world that had been driving Gilliam crazy all his life". Though a success in Europe, the film was unsuccessful in its initial North America release. It has since become a cult film.

The film is named after the recurrent theme song, "Aquarela do Brasil", as performed by Geoff Muldaur.

1986

The Hitcher is a 1986 American action horror film directed by Robert Harmon and written by Eric Red. The film stars Rutger Hauer, C. Thomas Howell, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jeffrey DeMunn. The film was released in the United States on February 21, 1986.