We live in an age of reboots and an unparalleled re-fascination with the 1980s.
2016-2018 saw a reboot of Stephen King's It, which invoked a John Hughes film gone wrong vibe as it followed the gang called "The Losers" battle the evil Pennywise the Dancing Clown; as well as the inception of Stranger Things, a Netflix series that takes place in Indiana, also in the 1980s. And now that we've had our fill of 80s horror...where is our John Hughes?
Well, it may not be such a good idea after all.
Molly Ringwald, the star of most of the John Hughes canon, has spoken out against rebooting any of the films in the franchise-specifically The Breakfast Club.
"You can't reboot the John Hughes movies," Ringwald said. "He doesn't want it to be done and I don't think it should be done."
Ringwald was deeply unsettled when rewatching the film with her daughter.
During a scene in which Judd Nelson's character John Bender joins Claire under the table, "he takes the opportunity to peek under Claire's skirt and, though the audience doesn't see, it is implied that he touches her inappropriately."
Ringwald found herself unable to shake an icky feeling from that moment:
"I kept thinking about that scene. I thought about it again this past fall, after a number of women came forward with sexual-assault accusations against the producer Harvey Weinstein, and the #MeToo movement gathered steam. If attitudes toward female subjugation are systemic, and I believe that they are, it stands to reason that the art we consume and sanction plays some part in reinforcing those same attitudes. I made three movies with John Hughes; when they were released, they made enough of a cultural impact to land me on the cover of Time magazine and to get Hughes hailed as a genius. His critical reputation has only grown since he died, in 2009, at the age of fifty-nine."
"Hughes's films play constantly on television and are even taught in schools. There is still so much that I love in them, but lately I have felt the need to examine the role that these movies have played in our cultural life: where they came from, and what they might mean now," Ringwald continued.
"When my daughter proposed watching "The Breakfast Club" together, I had hesitated, not knowing how she would react: if she would understand the film or if she would even like it. I worried that she would find aspects of it troubling, but I hadn't anticipated that it would ultimately be most troubling to me."
But Ringwald doesn't hate The Breakfast Club.
"I really loved those movies and by no means do I want to turn my back on them, but I would like it for people to take the good from that and are inspired by that to make something that is relevant to what's going on today because the world is a different place."
If you were hopeful that a potential The Breakfast Club reboot might have a ripple effect and bring the rest of the John Hughes canon back to life, sorry!
It looks like you'll just have to dig out those old 80s chestnuts and enjoy them the way they're meant to be enjoyed.
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