Gen X Rewind: 15 defining movies that shaped Generation X’s golden era

Films play an important role in collective consciousness, forming a key cultural touchstone that unites a generation. That was particularly true of Generation X, who felt the full force of a cultural behemoth.

Sometimes referred to as the ‘MTV Generation’, they were the children of the 1970s and 1980s who were among the first to have a barrage of media created just for them. Going to the cinema was an affordable pastime for many young people and, in an era before streaming, the most popular films were genuine cultural moments.

All of that led History Collection to put together a list of ‘Films That Defined an Era’. This list of 15 iconic films had the power to “reflect the hopes, anxieties, and dreams of a generation, often influencing fashion, language, and even social movements.”

So, from ‘The Breakfast Club’ to ‘Fight Club’, here are 15 of the most influential films for Generation X...

Many of these films remain classics to this day and they managed to combine critical acclaim with an enormous cultural impact. They also helped to form some of the archetypes that we still look for in Hollywood films to this day.

For those who grew up in the 1980s, titles like ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ and ‘The Breakfast Club’ were transcendent stories of teenage angst and youthful rebellion. They helped to spawn the genre of the ‘coming-of-age’ movie.

‘Goodfellas’ remains one of the most iconic titles in cinema history and its dramatic editing and dynamic storytelling helped to revolutionize the genre of gangster movies. It subverted the traditional hero narrative and gave rise to an endless list of imitators.

Later in the 1990s, films like ‘Titanic’, ‘The Matrix’ and ‘Fight Club’ would come to define the enormous commercial power of Hollywood. Despite their strikingly-different aesthetics and themes, each showed the development of cinema into a big-budget, high-grossing art form that was taking advantage of the latest technologies to wow audience and create long-lasting memories for fans.

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