Welcome to an exciting year-long project here at The Nerdy. 1982 was an exciting year for films giving us a lot of films that would go on to be beloved favorites and cult classics. It was also the start to a major shift in cultural and societal norms, and some of those still reverberate to this day.
We’re going to pick and choose which movies we hit, but right now the list stands at nearly four dozen.
Yes, we’re insane, but 1982 was that great of a year for film.
The articles will come out – in most cases – on the same day the films hit theaters in 1982 so that it is their true 40th anniversary. All films are also watched again for the purposes of these reviews and are not being done from memory. In some cases, it truly will be the first time we’ve seen them.
This time around it’s June 18, 1982, and we’re off to see Firefox.
Quick side note: Since we launched this series this year, we’ve discovered that Vintage Video Podcast is doing the exact same project with two differences: First, it’s audio (naturally), and second, they are doing every major film. We’ve listened to numerous episodes and it’s fun checking off their thoughts against my own. Check them out over at Vintage Video Podcast.
Firefox
Firefox played into a lot of what was going into the zeitgeist of the world at the time: A love affair with the military, hatred of Russia, and Clint Eastwood. And mix all of those things in a bowl and you almost get a movie.
I’ll say this for Firefox, in the opening moments of the film it had me engaged. The idea of this super jet was exciting, and the idea that Major Michell Gant (Eastwood) had PTSD – something that was barely discussed at the time – was a fresh idea at the time.
And then it decided that the jet’s weapon system was controlled by your thoughts. Nothing else mind you, just the weapons. And I immediately started to lose interest as this was simply such a convoluted, unnecessary addition.
I kept trying to give the movie a chance, but then we got to the seemingly endless “sneak Gant into Russia” section of the film that just kept going.
There were the bones here for a decent film, but it fell victim to the problem so many films do where they mistake adding more ideas as making up for a weak script. If it had simply pulled back on one to two layers and it would have been a far better movie, but it just kept going.
At the end of the day we’re left with a very forgettable thriller that really had nothing of importance to say. And a movie not having a message is fine, but it squandered the chance it had when it brought in the PTSD angle.
You can definitely throw Firefox on the ’80s movies you can forget’ list.
1982 Movie Reviews will return on June 25 with Blade Runner, Megaforce, and The Thing!
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