Why do you think so many people are fascinated with the 70's?

I was a kid in the 70's. Trust me, it's best forgotten.

The 70's happened before 2016.

I could leave it at that, but there are plenty of great films about the 60's & the 80's. All 3 decades show a lot of growth and change in this nation.

When enough time goes by they'll be plenty of films about the 90's too.

It's what they do in Hollywood man, reminisce.

My thoughts are (and I have no statistical evidence to back it up) that it has to do with the generation that is most influential in the movie-making business at the time. Using these movies as a window to the past, when they were kids or in the early 20s.

Paul Thomas Anderson (force behind Boogie Nights) would have been a child in the 1970s, as was Will Ferrell (the driving force behind Anchorman).

Of course, at some point this doesn't hold up because folks in their pre-teens/teens/20s are all middle-aged or older now, and naturally there are people of this age heavily influential in the movie business. Correlation or causation...I'd have to look if say, movies based in the 50s/60s were popular in the late 80s into the 2000s.

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Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.

I wouldn't say i'm fascinated with it but take a movie like Boogie Nights, the clothes, the music, the facial hair, cars, the parties, ect, it becomes a character unto itself and you can take it seriously too, not like with the 80's where it looked like all cool stuff went to *beep* (except the Delorean from Back to the Future of course) and the films of the 60's, that i've seen, have mostly been like about hippie culture rather than about style so yeah, i'd say 70's movies just have more style.

Trying to go for a smart, funny Youtube channel. If you guys check it out, I hope you like it and I appreciate you giving it some time. Thanks.

https://youtu.be/VVkanC7uJjo

its mostly only people who grew up in/immediately after the 70s (very young kids) are those who are.
just like there will be movies about the 90s and 00s within the next few years.

🐙

As another poster said, there is an element of mocking to many movies set in the 70s because it is indeed an easy era to mock. Styles in clothing, hair, interior decor and even cars were at about the lowest point they've ever been. But it is indeed, as someone said, an affectionate mocking.

So why do people like to watch the era on screen? Maybe for some of the same reasons people keep making movies about the late 50s and early 60s. They are eras that are near enough to be familiar, but far enough in the past to be distinctly different from our own times. Both seem like eras it would be lots of fun to visit for a time-traveling vacation.

In terms of the 70s, I think people enjoy the idea of the freedom we had back then. (I was 20 in 1977, so I could have been at the big party in the movie.) While it's hard to argue with reduced drunk driving, less smoking or healthier eating, it does seem that a lot of the fun has gone out of having fun. It's not like we didn't know any better, by the way. We knew it was a bad idea to drive when you had been drinking. Everybody knew smoking was bad for you and that you should eat less fat and exercise regularly. We just weren't as ... frightened, I think is the only word to use. It seems people today are so much more risk-averse. It's like everybody thinks they're going to live forever, even if it means living like a Puritan along the way.

And if you did act like a fool, there was a good chance you'd get away with it because we did not live in a surveillance culture, as we do now. (That culture is not only, or even mostly, law enforcement. It includes the youtube vigilante brigade and people who think it's funny to shame others on FB or who get their kicks accusing others of violations of political correctness on Twitter.)

So, yeah, it was fun, and I think lots of people enjoy watching that, just like they enjoy watching the bygone - but not really all that long ago - elegance and style of ca. 1960.

By the way, although this has nothing to do with movies set in that era, a lot of that fun was possible because we young people of 70s were the last generation to grow up, if you were middle class, with a sense of an economically secure future. Although the go-go years of the 60s were over, and the economy was terrible for much of the decade, it hadn't really sunk into our brains yet that the old economic days were over. We still believed that, if you got an education and did your job, it was entirely reasonable to expect to have job security throughout your career, with generous benefits and a good pension at end. All the while working reasonable hours, by the way. Little did we know ...

I was a little kid in the 70s, and it's my base reference for how the world should be.

American Gangster - Ridley Scott did a wonderful job!

Steve Jobs - even though it wasn't entirely set in the 70's, but the depiction was great.
The same goes for Goodfellas, Forrest Gump, A Beautiful Mind, Rush, and City of God.