Is It Cool or Just Nostalgia?

Dolph Lundgren hunts an alien drug dealer who turns people into the drug. I Come in Peace (1990) is the sci-fi cop movie three of us never heard of. Released as Dark Angel almost everywhere else, it cost around $5-8 million, took $4.3 million at the US box office, and sits at 42% with critics on Rotten Tomatoes. The fourth host has been pushing it on friends for years. Now he pushed it on us. So w...

The Transformers: The Movie (1986) turns 40, and we're still arguing about what happened to Optimus Prime. Hasbro is calling its anniversary campaign the Apology Tour. Fair warning: we remember why. For Episode 38, we put a lifelong G1 fan in the room with first-time viewers and ask how much this movie gives you when childhood isn't doing the heavy lifting. You get a planet-eating Unicron, a stack...

Did Demolition Man (1993) call the future with swearing fines and Taco Bell fine dining, or does it only work because we were kids? Everybody files this one under dumb 90s Stallone fun. Then you check the credits. The big rewrite came from Daniel Waters, the guy who wrote Heathers, who pitched it as an action version of Woody Allen's Sleeper and banged it out in two and a half weeks. That's how a...

Is 12 Monkeys (1995) still one of the smartest sci-fi movies ever made, or does it only feel that way because we all lived through the plot? Terry Gilliam had $29 million, a script by David and Janet Peoples built on Chris Marker's 1962 short film La Jetee, and Universal watching every dollar. What he handed back was a 129 minute studio thriller that behaves like a panic attack. Bruce Willis spend...

☀️ Is Sunshine (2007) still one of the best sci-fi movies of the century, or does it collapse the second Danny Boyle stops making a space drama? For roughly eighty minutes, Sunshine is close to perfect. Eight astronauts ride a stellar bomb the size of Manhattan into a dying sun, and Boyle sells every second of it. He made the cast live together for weeks, marched them through a nuclear submarine,...

Does Predator (1987) remain the ultimate sci-fi action hunt, or are we camouflaging an aging macho movie with pure nostalgia? John McTiernan's jungle classic sends Arnold Schwarzenegger and a squad stacked with Carl Weathers, Jesse Ventura, and Bill Duke into what looks like a routine rescue mission. Then the movie changes shape. The commandos become trophies, and Kevin Peter Hall's alien hunter t...

Is The Lawnmower Man (1992) still a wild sci-fi horror warning about virtual reality, or is it just 90s tech nostalgia in a headset? Before VR became living-room hardware, The Lawnmower Man imagined nootropic drugs, immersive simulations, corporate science, and ego turning a gentle gardener into something terrifying. Directed by Brett Leonard and starring Jeff Fahey as Jobe Smith and Pierce Brosna...

Is The Last Starfighter (1984) the CGI pioneer that quietly changed sci-fi forever, or just a Star Wars knockoff that got lucky with an arcade machine? 🚀 Long before "gamer skills save the galaxy" became its own genre, The Last Starfighter told the story of Alex Rogan (Lance Guest), a trailer-park teenager who sets the all-time high score on a mysterious arcade cabinet called Starfighter, only to...

Is Masters of the Universe (1987) a misunderstood cult classic, or proof that some toys should never become movies? 🎬 In 1987, Cannon Films took one of the biggest toy franchises on the planet and turned it into… this. Dolph Lundgren strapped on the armor of He-Man, Frank Langella became Skeletor in what many still call one of the greatest villain performances of the decade, and a pre-Friends Cou...

Is Event Horizon (1997) a genuine sci-fi horror masterpiece hiding in plain sight, or does it only hit because you watched it at midnight on DVD and scared yourself into loving it? 🚀 We're back in Season 2 of Is It Cool Or Just Nostalgia? with our deep-dive season dedicated entirely to sci-fi movies that shaped the genre. And this episode, we're strapping into the Lewis and Clark and heading stra...

Is Repo Man (1984) still the coolest punk rock sci-fi ever made, or is Alex Cox's Reagan-era weirdo masterpiece just a nostalgia trip we can't let go of? 🛸 We're deep into Season 2 of the Cool or Nostalgia Podcast, where the crew is taking on the sci-fi movies that warped our brains growing up and this episode, we're repossessing a glowing '64 Chevy Malibu straight out of the atomic age. 🎬 Relea...

Is Tarkovsky's Stalker (1979) the greatest sci-fi film ever made… or is it a 3-hour endurance test that only film school professors pretend to enjoy? 🎬 Welcome to Season 2 of the Cool or Nostalgia Podcast, where we're going deep into the world of Sci-Fi movies! This time, we take on one of the most debated and revered films in cinema history: Andrei Tarkovsky's 1979 Soviet masterpiece, Stalker. W...

Is Howard the Duck (1986) a misunderstood cult classic… or one of the strangest movie flops ever made? Before the MCU existed, George Lucas produced the very first Marvel movie and it crashed so hard it almost ended his career. We're diving deep into Howard the Duck (1986) to find out if this legendary flop is still cool today, or if it only works as an '80s nostalgia trip. In this episode, we rev...

Is the original Battlestar Galactica (1978) still cool today, or is it just a relic of late-70s sci-fi nostalgia? We're going back to 1978 to revisit the original Battlestar Galactica — the big-budget, chrome-plated ABC space opera that launched in the wake of Star Wars, got sued by George Lucas, cost nearly $1 million per episode, and was still cancelled after just one season. But could it actual...

🚀 Spaceballs (1987) is one of the most quoted sci-fi comedies of the 80s, but does it actually hold up in 2026, or is it is about to self-destruct? 🎬 We break down everything — the humor, the performances, the era-defining jokes, and whether Dark Helmet and the gang still land the way they did back in 1987. 💥 We're talking: → The genius of Mel Brooks' parody style → John Candy and Rick Moranis...

Is Flash Gordon (1980) a timeless sci-fi adventure or just a nostalgic trip? We break down this campy cult classic! 🚀⚡ In this episode, we blast back to Mongo to revisit one of the most visually outrageous and musically unforgettable cult classics ever made. Featuring a legendary soundtrack by Queen, unforgettable villains like Emperor Ming, and a style that refuses to play by normal sci-fi rule...

Is Silent Hill (1999) still terrifying today, or does it only work if you grew up with a PlayStation and a CRT TV? In this episode of our pop culture time machine, we revisit Konami’s legendary PS1 survival horror game Silent Hill and put it to the ultimate test: does it still hold up by modern standards, or is its reputation powered purely by nostalgia? 🎮🌫️ We dive into what made Silent Hill so...

🦇 Before Batman got dark… it got weird. Adam West’s Batman (1966 TV series & film) is one of the strangest, boldest, and most influential superhero adaptations ever made, but does it still hold up today? In this episode, we revisit the colorful chaos of Adam West, Burt Ward, Cesar Romero, and the endlessly meme-able rogues’ gallery to answer the big question: is this version of Batman still c...

🎄 Do these Christmas classics still hold up today or are we just blinded by the nostalgia of the season? 🎄 Welcome to our 2nd Annual Christmas Special and the one-year anniversary of our YouTube channel! 🎉 This holiday-sized episode goes bigger than ever, covering FOUR nostalgic Christmas topics. In this special episode, we revisit: 🎁 90s Christmas Commercials - Were they magical, or just mark...

The Abyss (1989) — a deep-sea sci-fi that won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects and introduced one of cinema’s first photoreal CGI moments. 🐙🌊 We dive into whether The Abyss still holds up in 2025 — story, performances, and the VFX that changed the industry. Join us as we break down Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and Michael Biehn’s performances, the movie’s career-defining water “pseud...

Why we loved Blockbuster, and should we mourn the video-rental era? 🍿📼 In this episode, we dive deep into the golden age of movie and video game rentals—from the iconic blue and yellow Blockbuster signs to mom-and-pop video shops that defined Friday nights in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s. We're asking the hard questions: Was browsing physical VHS tapes and DVDs actually better than endless Netflix sc...

The Running Man (1987): still cool sci‑fi satire, or pure ’80s nostalgia? 🎯 We dig into Arnold Schwarzenegger’s dystopian game‑show thriller based on Stephen King’s novel (or was it Richard Bachman?) to judge if it truly holds up today. From Richard Dawson’s razor‑sharp host to the film’s TV‑violence spectacle and media manipulation, we explore how this ’80s classic predicted reality TV, propagan...

Michael Jackson’s Thriller • The Frighteners (Michael J. Fox) • Critters (1986) • Army of Darkness — are these Halloween classics still cool, or just nostalgia? 👇🎃 🎃 Welcome to our FIRST EVER Halloween Special! 🎃 We're diving deep into four ICONIC horror movies from the 70s, 80s, and 90s to answer one burning question: Are they still cool today, or is it time to take them off your Halloween wa...

Is TRON still cool in 2025 — or just expensive nostalgia? We rewatch 1982’s TRON and 2010’s TRON: Legacy to find out, before TRON: Ares arrives in theaters (Oct 10, 2025). 🎬⚡️ In this episode: • First Encounters — where each host first met TRON (biases on deck) 🕶️ • Time Capsule — what made TRON revolutionary then (visuals, synth score, concept) 🎮 • Favorite moments — what we loved about the fi...

Napster, LimeWire, Kazaa & Morpheus — how P2P file-sharing remade music, piracy, and streaming. 🎧🔥 Jump into our deep dive on the chaotic, brilliant, and legally explosive era when people swapped MP3s like mixtapes. In this episode we trace how Shawn Fanning’s Napster ignited a revolution, how Kazaa and Morpheus rose to fill the void, why LimeWire got shut down, and how those battles forced...