They’re not teenagers anymore: the adolescent archetypes who populated The Breakfast Club turn 30 this weekend — the film was released on Feb. 15 in 1985 — and are celebrating with a planned theatrical rerelease.
But, when the movie was originally released, their teen-dom wasn’t necessarily their most salient feature anyway. In a piece for that week’s issue of TIME, critic Richard Corliss took a look at the fact that there were “too damn many” movies for that age group, and that the flood showed no sign of stopping. (It was more than a year later that Breakfast Club star Molly Ringwald would be featured on the cover seen here, proof that the reign of the teen queen was yet to peak.) However, he also found that some “teenpix” transcended their demographic bounds, and that Breakfast Club was one of them:
[Filmmaker John] Hughes must refer to this as his ‘”Bergman film”: lots of deep talk and ripping off of psychic scabs. But this film maker is, spookily, inside kids. He knows how the ordinary teenagers, the ones who don’t get movies made about them, think and feel: why the nerd would carry a fake ID (”So I can vote”), and why the deb would finally be nice to the strange girl (” ‘Cause you’re letting me”). He has learned their dialect and decoded it for sympathetic adults. With a minimum of genre pandering—only one Footloose dance imitation—and with the help of his gifted young ensemble, Hughes shows there is a life form after teenpix. It is called goodpix.
See the Molly Ringwald cover story here, in the TIME Vault: Ain’t She Sweet?
See Iconic Franchises Before and After Their Reboots
The Terminator first came to theaters in 1984 with Linda Hamilton starring as the iconic Sarah Connor. Four films later, Arnold Schwarzenegger is still the titular terminator, but franchise newcomer Emilia Clarke of Game of Thrones fame joins as a reboot of Connor.
Orion Pictures; ParamountThe original Mad Max, directed by George Miller, came out in 1979 with Mel Gibson starring as the titular character. Now, the 2015 reboot brings us back to the post-apocalyptic landscape with Tom Hardy as Max.Village Roadshow Pictures; Warner Bros.The first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie in 1990 featured the respective turtles played by a team of puppeteers in animatronic suits made by Jim Henson's Creature shop, while the 2014 reboot of the same name features turtles completely rendered by computer graphics.Paramount; New Line CinemaThe original Planet of the Apes premiered in 1968 and starred Charlton Heston as astronaut George Taylor. Rise of the Planet of the Apes rebooted the franchise in 2011, with the second movie in the reboot, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, out on July 11.20th Century Fox/Getty Images; 20th Century FoxGodzilla, also known as Gojira, was originally produced by the Japanese studio Toho in its eponymous 1954 film. It was re-imagined in 1998 by director Roland Emmerich for American audiences, before being rebooted again in 2014 by Gareth Edwards. Embassy Pictures/Getty Images; Warner Bros. RoboCop first set its robot eyes on the criminals of Detroit in 1987 and was rebooted in 2014 in a film of the same name.Orion Pictures; Columbia PicturesSylvester Stallone's original 1995 take on Judge Dredd, the iconic British comic character, was lambasted and earned Stallone a Golden Raspberry for Worst Actor. The 2012 reboot, Dredd, starring Karl Urban as the titular character, didn't fare well at the box office, but was better received critically.Buena Vista; LionsgateThe Caped Crusader first hit the bigscreen in the 1989 Tim Burton Film, Batman, Starring Michael Keaton as the titular character. Batman would be rebooted by Christopher Nolan in the 2005 film Batman Begins, with Christian Bale playing the eccentric billionaire. Warner Bros. (2)The original Star Trek television series was created and by Gene Roddenberry in 1966 and starred William Shatner as Captain James Tiberius Kirk of the USS Enterprise. The iconic sci-fi franchise was rebooted for the big screen in the 2009 film Star Trek and starred Chris Pine as the new Captain Kirk.CBS/Getty Images; Paramount PicturesKing Kong first terrorized damsels in distress in the eponymous 1933 film, which was noted for its use of stop-motion animation to render the giant gorilla. The franchise was rebooted in 2005 by Peter Jackson in another film by the same name.RKO Radio Pictures/Getty Images; Universal PicturesArnold Schwarzenegger starred in the orignal 1990 sci-fi film Total Recall, while Colin Farrell played his counterpart in the 2012 reboot of the film.TriStar Pictures; Columbia PicturesChristopher Reeve was the first to portray the iconic DC comics superhero on the big screen in the 1989 film Superman. The film franchise would be rebooted first in 2006 with Superman Returns by Bryan Singer, before being re-rebooted in Zack Snyder's 2013 film Man of Steel starring Henry Cavill as Superman.Warner Bros. (2)
