“Sixteen Candles,” “The Breakfast Club,” “Pretty in Pink,” “Home Alone” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”; other than being movies what do all these productions have in common? John Hughes. John Hughes is not the first person you think of when these titles come to mind and not many know that he is the magic behind all of these movies.
Our theatre and TV screens have always been able to play movies of different genres, but lately the productions seem to only revolve around action, suspense and comedy. We watch films for an escape from the real world of stress, work and responsibilities, but the beauty of reality that John Hughes presented in his creations is slowly being erased. Hughes created a platform where reality met imagination and inspiration. He wrote about what we could relate to and what we could strive to be.
“The Breakfast Club,” one of the most popular teen flicks of all time is so admired because Hughes’s perception of social norms and young adult struggles were realistic and relatable. The reoccuring element in all of his movies is when the screen goes black we are all left with a cliché warm fuzzy feeling inside. Whether it’s after the kid that was stranded at home for Christmas is reunited with his family or after the geeky girl finally gets her perfect guy to kiss her. We are left with one of the most underestimated feelings; hope.
Not a lot of movies today leave you with that feeling; yes, the mystery is solved and good triumphs over evil, but when was the last time we had that fuzzy feeling inside? We search for what we assume we can’t have in novels and films, but the beauty of John Hughes’s production is that he showed us what we could have if we really did want it. “In Baby’s Day Out,” he turned a kidnapping into a comedic adventure when a baby embarks on an unsupervised journey in a city, in “Home Alone,” a kid who is having trouble with authority in his family realizes what family is by getting scared, and in “Sixteen Candles,” an outcast teen girl finds the beauty in young love. John Hughes takes realistic things and puts a hopeful spin on it. We are all outcasts, hopeless romantics and curious wanderers, and Hughes puts that into perspective and teaches us something new with every movie.
The director, producer and screenwriter’s legacy lives on in the Netflix gallery and IMDb. More importantly, his legacy lives on when we are in need of an escape into a positive and promising world. He opened the doors to the idea of a happy ending to every story, and in today’s society we somehow feel ashamed for getting our hopes up too high or imagining the impossible, but with John Hughes in mind, we should never forget that a happy ending is not, nor will ever be, overrated.
We all deserve a happy ending.