Each generation has different media, environmental, and historical elements specific to that generation. Depending on when someone is born, we all grow up with different aspects of childhood that shape who we become as adults. Every generation has witnessed various historical events or moments in pop culture that have impacted the trajectory of their lives. Boomers lived through the beginnings of the Cold War and saw the rise of rock 'n roll. Meanwhile, Millennials and elder Gen-Z witnessed the events of 9-11 and the start of the digital age. Many important events, technological innovations, and pop culture moments occur in a lifetime that defines entire generations. Just as major historical events and breakthroughs in media impact a generation, so do the movies that are released during those times.

Update June 13, 2023: This article has been updated to include even more movies that defined Gen-X.

The movies that people consume during their formative years have lasting effects on a person's development. A movie that comforted you as a child may still bring you joy as an adult. A movie that helped you through a rough time as a teenager may have the same effect in your adulthood. More often than not, movies that impacted a person in their youth most likely impacted other individuals in that age group. In the same way that music can define decades or generations, so can movies. The movies that are associated with Boomers, Millennials, and now Gen-Z is often talked about, but what about Generation X? Commonly referred to as Gen-X, this generation is typically defined to include anyone born between 1965-1980, starting right after the baby boom ended. When Gen-Xers were growing up, some of the best and most iconic films were being released. While movies like Star Wars and Indiana Jones certainly were part of it, there were plenty of movies that spoke to the real realities Gen X was living through. There were also a lot of movies that perhaps flew under the radar with other people but meant everything to Gen-X. Let's take a look at the twenty films that defined the generation in order of release.

20 Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)

When Amy Heckerling's teen classic Fast Times at Ridgemont High was released in the summer of 1982, the oldest Gen-Xers were getting ready to graduate high school and just starting to join the workforce. The somewhat raunchy comedy follows a group of both freshmen and seniors as they navigate school, relationships, and their minimum-wage mall jobs.

This movie was made about Gen-X teens, for Gen-X teens. One of the main settings in the movie is their local mall, which was a staple hangout spot for many teenagers in the '80s. While a lot of teen movies at the time featured a local mall, Fast Times at Ridgemont High does an excellent job at depicting what the mall culture was like for kids then, so much so that if you didn't grow up then, you can almost feel like you did through this movie. It also very accurately portrays what it is like to start high school and feel compelled to do anything to fit in and be seen as a "mature" teenager.

19 Footloose (1984)

The film that skyrocketed Kevin Bacons career, this generation adored Footloose. Following Ren McCormack (Bacon), who moves from Chicago to a small town and is horrified to discover that dancing has been banned by the local minister. A love of song, dance, and self-expression, but most of all, a rebel without a cause, Ren immediately makes it his mission to break the ban so that he and his classmates can live their lives no longer controlled by the ruling authority.

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It makes sense for Gen Xers to love this movie; they themselves are known for carrying contempt for authority. Raised on the American dream and the idea that liberties and freedoms come above all else, movies during their upbringing tend to reflect these ideologies. So when a movie comes out with the main character trying to take down The Man–– one that includes incredible dance numbers and a good-looking cast––– these young kids and newly-minted adults were excited to watch.

18 Karate Kid (1984)

"Wash on, wash off." the iconic lines that, if you ask any Gen Xer, will put a giant smile on their face. Directed by John G Avidsen, when this film came out, they probably had no idea they'd kick off a beloved franchise that continues to this day. They were just making a cool movie about karate. When Daniel (Ralph Macchio) moves to Southern California with his mother, he struggles with some local bullies. His luck changes when Daniel meets Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita), a repairman who is a pro in martial arts. The two start a quick but testy friendship that helps Daniel gain confidence and stand up to his bullies.

Fun, stylish, and effortlessly cool, Karate Kid became an instant classic with a generation excited about breaking the norms that society set for them. After all, Gen Xers are all about questioning authority. Karate Kid was many people's first introduction to martial arts and the lessons that can be discerned from the ancient practice while keeping much of the aesthetic, characters, and suburban vibes that many folks in this generation grew up with. Mr. Miyagi and his new teachings were a new world of thought that Gen Xers were excited to get behind and one that carries over today through the Coba Kai series, which has shown this brand is as long-lasting as Jurassic Park or Ghostbusters.

17 The Goonies (1985)

The 1980s gave us some of the most entertaining action-adventure movies of all time, but The Goonies really cemented its place in Gen-X culture in a way that other films of the era did not. The movie follows a group of kids and teens who find out that their homes are about to be demolished to make way for a brand-new development. They decide to go on one last adventure together after discovering a secret map that leads them on an incredible treasure hunt.

Gen-X had a lot of new interests that brought them together in ways that other generations were not always able to compete with. Between the discovery of heavy metal, video games, and rap, Gen-Xers were able to share their love of these new interests with other kids that maybe they would not have normally interacted. That ability is displayed perfectly in The Goonies, where kids that were part of different cliques were able to come together in their adventure.

16 The Breakfast Club (1985)

In what is perhaps his best film, John Hughes' The Breakfast Club follows five high school students who wouldn't normally be caught dead in the same room during a Saturday detention held in the school's library and overseen by their rather harsh principal. Each of the five students represents a high school stereotype, but they are all revealed to be much more than they appear early on in the movie.

The conversations they have with one another while stuck in the library are not only realistic with believable dialogue but perfectly showcase how they are all essentially the same. Sure, some may be rich while others poor, or some popular while others are not, but when it comes down to it, they are all facing the same insecurities and familial issues. Other generations can relate to this sentiment as well, but very few movies have depicted it as authentically as The Breakfast Club.

15 St. Elmo's Fire (1985)

If The Breakfast Club was the representation of the younger Gen-Xers still in high school, then St. Elmo's Fire is the representation of the older Gen-Xers who were in college and preparing to join the adult workforce. It was one of the first films to explore what young adults of the generation were going through as they were leaving adolescence behind and entering the "real world" for the very first time.

The movie follows a large group of friends, played by members of the infamous Brat Pack, as they try to navigate their way through adult life following college graduation. The movie is a moving look into what post-college life is like for 20-something-year-olds who want to retain their college friendships in adulthood despite their lives taking them in different directions. The group of friends hopelessly try to maintain their friendships even though they know deep down that it is impossible for everyone to stay the same as they were in school.

14 Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)

"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." With a message like this, you could say Ferris Bueller was a symbol for the Gen Xer population. Ferris Bueller's Day Off is a beloved film that, while still popular today, hit a particularly important note with this generation. Following an entrepreneurial, popular, and fun-loving kid, Ferris Bueller decides to plan the ultimate day off from school. From concocting the perfect scheme to get out of going to class to heading all over town looking for fun experiences to escaping his evil principal who's trying to catch Ferris skipping school, Ferris takes viewers on a journey that has them falling in love with being alive.

Ferris is a hyper individualist, something that many Gen Xers themselves firmly hold on to. While he is a lovable character who breeds connections with everyone he meets –– from strangers on the street to his best friends Cameron and Sloane, he stays driven by a desire to experience the most that life has to offer him. Themselves heading into adulthood and beginning to understand who they want to be as they grow up, Ferris Bueller was an inspiration for many Gen Xers who wanted to emulate his free-spirited nature and love of life. And while this generation of people tends to be hyper-focused on work, Ferris was an important reminder of the need to slow down and savor life while you still can.

13 Heathers (1988)

Gen-X had plenty of comedic teen movies to choose from, but they also had perhaps the best dark teen comedy to watch, 1988's Heathers. In a decade filled with upbeat stories about being a teenager, this movie turned heads. It centers around a girl named Veronica (Winona Ryder) who hangs out with the three most popular girls in school, who all happen to be named Heather, in order to survive the tricky social cliques of high school. She is miserable by their side, so when she meets devilishly charming J.D. (Christian Slater), she becomes infatuated with him and is easily lured into his plan to rid the school of its social imbalance.

The film has become a cult classic in the almost 35 years since its release, but at the time, adults were weary of it considering the dark nature of the narrative and the murderous tendencies of its male protagonist. Now it is so popular and mainstream they made a musical theater production of it.

12 Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)

When thinking of two lovable, metal-head best friends, many people probably think of Wayne and Garth, which is valid. Before them, however, there were Bill and Ted. Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure follows the two titular protagonists on their quest to avoid failing history class. The problem is they hate studying but love music. On the brink of failing, their future selves return to the past to warn them that if they fail, they won't become the "Two Great Ones" who bring peace to the world by turning it into a metal-loving paradise. They travel back in time in a phone booth to meet the historical figures they are supposed to write about in order to learn about them and eventually give their presentation.

It seems like the type of movie to strictly be a dumb comedy that plays into the California "dude" stereotype, but it is so much more than that, as the movie respects its protagonists and treats them with care. The best aspect of Bill and Ted as characters and the reason Gen-Xers love them so much is that not only are they hilarious, but they truly just want everyone to have a good time. It's a fun time any way you slice it, and fellow Gen-X members Keanu Reeves and Alex Winters add a certain charm to their characters that made the movie work so well.

11 Do the Right Thing (1989)

Spike Lee's third directorial effort effectively portrays the brewing hatred and bigotry between the residents of the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn. However, it also just as effectively depicts the generational disdain between the younger people and the older people of the neighborhood. As we get older and become adults, it is inevitable that we start to have disagreements with the generations that came before us. Do the Right Thing explores this inevitability in a very poignant way.

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Lee captures this sentiment through an angry lens. The young people are fed up with the older people, and vice versa. No one gets along anymore because they all have their own thoughts and opinions. The growing anger and annoyance at each other rose so high that it eventually erupts into a night full of violence and chaos. The local pizzeria is burned down, the police get involved, and the neighborhood changes forever. It is a more serious look at the way young adults of Gen-X were feeling at the time.

10 When Harry Met Sally (1989)

A film with a strong female protagonist, When Harry Met Sally became an immediate anthem for women of the Gen Xer population. College grads Harry Burns and Sally Albright are not exactly friends. On a road trip together from Chicago to New York, they find themselves arguing over anything and everything, including whether men and women can really be platonic friends. Arriving in the city, the two go their separate ways until ten years later, when they find themselves reunited once again. At a bookstore and with their respective best friends, the quad decides to test whether they can be friends without sex and romantic feelings ruining everything.

This romantic comedy is as fun as it is flirty, playing with ideas that many Gen Xers were themselves beginning to contend with as feminist ideology became more mainstream. From disputing gender roles in coed relationships to beginning to see women in the workforce, When Harry Met Sally was a favorite for women of this generation who were beginning to feel a strong sense of independence in their own identity. They resonated greatly with Sally's character, a woman who was smart and self-assured as she was beautiful.

9 Say Anything (1989)

One of the most engrained film scenes in the minds of Gen-Xers is, without a doubt, Lloyd Dobbler (John Cusack) holding up a boombox that is playing a Peter Gabriel song to win back Diane Court (Ione Sky). It's one of the most endearing and romantic scenes in any movie about teens or young adults. Say Anything is the love story of average student Lloyd and valedictorian Diane and how they remain in love despite her father's disapproval and college waiting for her across the pond.

On the surface, it may seem as though it is another story about an underachiever who ends up winning the affection of someone seemingly out of their reach, but it is more than that. Lloyd truly loves and thinks the world of Diane, and Diane doesn't believe she is any better than him just because she had better grades than him in school. They just want to be together.

8 Boyz n The Hood (1991)

Boyz n the Hood was the kind of coming-of-age film that became an instant classic the minute it hit the big screens. Directed by John Singleton and featuring Ice Cube, Mia Long, Tyra Ferrell, and Laurence Fishburne, the film explores a community of kids in Los Angeles. When Tre is sent to live with his father in the tough neighborhoods of LA, he wonders if he'll like his new life in this strange environment. And while he faces all kinds of new challenges, his father is quick to instill important values in his son and the girlfriend he is in a blossoming relationship. This is almost the complete opposite of Tre's friend Doughboy who, while living in a similar environment, doesn't have the same kind of support from his family. The duo takes the audience on a journey to understand how gang culture and violence change the trajectory of their lives.

Boyz n the Hood was an important film and a defining film for Generation X. Inspired by his own life, John Singleton was able to get a snapshot of a type of reality that Hollywood hadn't really put on screen before, putting an ignored group of people from this generation in center stage. From its characters to its communities, the film focuses on the realities and philosophies of the Black community from Generation X. For this reason, it became a trailblazer project that set off a slew of other projects centering around black communities, putting a group of people from the ge

7 Wayne's World (1992)

Just three years after Bill and Ted went on their epic adventure, Gen-X was introduced to another pair of goofy metal-heads, Wayne and Garth. Based on the fan-favorite Saturday Night Live skit, Wayne's World follows two music-loving buddies who film a public access show in the basement of Wayne's parents' house. They impulsively sell the rights to their show to a big-time producer, only to regret the decision and embark on a journey to get it back.

The SNL skits poke fun at the slacker nature of Gen-X dude-bros but in a fond way rather than in a mean-spirited way. The movie follows the same formula but also captures the way that Gen-X found ways to have fun before the presence of cell phones or the internet. Teens and young adults of the time usually gathered in one car and drove around aimlessly while blasting music on Friday and Saturday nights if they had no concrete plans made. Wayne's World depicts that more than accurately, especially in its most iconic scene, where Wayne, Garth, and their friends pile into a car and headbang to the guitar solo in Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody."

6 Dazed and Confused (1993)

While not technically about Gen-X, Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused is a film made by Gen-Xers, for Gen-Xers. The movie takes place on the last day of school in 1976 and follows a group of teenagers trying to find the best party and just have a good time. The incoming freshmen hang out with the freshly graduated seniors, who are hanging out with even older kids that have already graduated.

The film displays how some of the characters think they're the cool older "kids" because they have been out of high school for a year or two, but really they just miss the days of being a teenager, which is why they let both the newly graduated teens and the incoming freshmen hang out with them on a Friday night. Every character in the movie is simply trying to find their place while still having fun with their friends, which is something that people of every generation can relate to. Nevertheless, Gen-X especially relates to this film because it was released when the oldest of the generation was a few years out of college, and the youngest of the generation was still in high school.

5 Reality Bites (1994)

Ben Stiller's directorial debut Reality Bites is purposefully a study on Gen-X and their mannerisms. It centers around a college valedictorian named Lelaina (Winona Ryder), who uses a camcorder to film her friends to make a mock documentary about life after college. A television executive (played by Stiller) feels that her mockumentary could be turned into a project for MTV, but the older producers he passes the footage along to miss the point entirely and chalk it up to kids who just want to party.

Related: 15 Quintessential Millennial Coming-Of-Age Movies

The movie encapsulates the existential feeling of dread that occurs when anyone graduates from college and is immediately wondering what they are supposed to do next. College is supposed to prepare you for life as a working adult, but it doesn't necessarily prepare you for a life or career path that will send you away from your friends and everything you have known.

4 Clerks (1994)

The 1990s saw a rise in independent cinema. This is the decade where filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, Robert Rodriguez, and many more started to make a name for themselves. While many of their films would become beloved by Gen-X, it is Kevin Smith's directorial debut Clerks, that might be the one accurate to the time.

The film centers itself on a group of Gen-X adults who find themselves feeling stuck with their place in life. They feel their lives wasting away at dead-end jobs, talking about pop culture references for their youth, and trying to discover a path forward in a world they feel rather cynical about. This theme would carry over into the two sequels, 2006's Clerks II and 2022's Clerks III, in a story that spanned 28 years, effectively telling a trilogy for Generation X that appropriately is small scale and about the complexities of living a normal day to day life.

3 Clueless (1995)

It is nearly impossible to talk about iconic youth movies of the '90s without mentioning the teen classic, Clueless. Cher Horowitz graced viewers with an arsenal of quote-worthy lines and a fashion sense that is still unparalleled even 28 years later. Clueless taps into what it is like to be a high school teenager, specifically a high school teenager in the '90s.

Each generation faces its own challenges when it comes to surviving four years of trying to fit in. Cher has the advantage of coming from a wealthy family, but even she struggles with friendships and relationships. Cher and her friends deal with their problems just like other teenagers before them, except with the early phases of cell phones and home computers.

2 Trainspotting (1996)

Danny Boyle's thoroughly British take on Gen-X follows a darker side of the generation's older members. Trainspotting takes place in the gritty streets of Edinburgh, Scotland, and centers around a group of 20-somethings who are so heavily involved in Edinburgh's drug scene that it has negative impacts on every aspect of their lives.

This specific group of Gen-Xers has been so bogged down by society and has been unable to find the right path for themselves. The only constant in their lives is incessant drug use. It’s a darkly comedic outlook on a generation that was inextricably impacted by heavy drug use that still holds its weight to this day.

1 Office Space (1999)

In 1999, the oldest members of Gen-X had been part of the workforce for a little over ten years, and the youngest members were just starting to get a taste of corporate America. Spending days in gray cubicles and listening to an older boss drone on about business growth was just not something Gen-X was willing to deal with, although the same can be said for Millennials and Gen-Z. Plenty of other movies have taken on the concept of "sticking it to the man," but in Office Space, the employees simply stop trying their best.

Despite essentially giving up on his job performance, Ron Livingston's Peter is effectively promoted while his hard-working colleagues are left in the dust. It shows how meaningless most advancements in corporate America are when people who actually put in the effort to succeed are threatened with layoffs instead of bonuses or promotions. Thankfully, Gen-X's rebellious nature has helped improve the rather robotic and toxic aspects of the corporate working environment over the years.