Five 1980s Flicks That Need Sequels (Other Than Bill & Ted)—Like Totally for Sure!

As new Bill & Ted movie moves along, we think big thoughts about Return of the Jedi, Fast Times—Tootsie, too!

Per the late-breaking tweet from Bill, er, Alex Winter, the semi-long-planned new Bill & Ted sequel is coming together. 

With that project (and Keanu Reeves) in a good place, it's time to turn our attention to more pressing matters. Like, which other seminal 1980s films should be sequelized before we get too bogged down in mid-1990s nostalgia:

1. Return of the Jedi: One, the prequels weren't sequels. Two, they weren't any good. Three, we're owed. Four, we want to know what happened to Han and Leia, but we don't want to read the books. (Do we look like geeks to you?) Five, we have no idea how we'd cast. Six, that's not our problem.

2. Fast Times at Ridgemont High: We are not forgetting that The Wild Life was, as the New York Times put it, "something like a sequel." We are telling you it wasn't a sequel. We are not forgetting that the 1982 original tells you what becomes of its characters. We are telling you we need more. So, Spicoli (Sean Penn) rescues Brooke Shields. What then? (We mean after the Van Halen bash…) The way we see it, in the wake of John Hughes' passing, it is Cameron Crowe who has the responsibility to lead at least one set of the era's iconic teen characters into middle age.

P.S. to Hollywood: Do not—repeat: do not—sequelize Hughes. He's gone. The moment's passed. Speak no more of Ferris Bueller 2. 

3. Who Framed Roger Rabbit? So, Disney figured it'd have Roger Rabbit 2 out by the summer…of 1991. So, a decade later, one of the producers said the project was a lost cause. So, Robert Zemeckis, who revived hopes in 2009, is presumably occupied these days with digging out from the wreckage of Mars Needs Moms. So, what? We can still hope that one of the decade's finest movies—one that actually lends itself to a followup—makes like a bunny, and reproduces. 

4. Tootsie: After losing his savings to the Wall Street crash, and wife Julie (Jessica Lange) to her Dancing With the Stars partner, down-on-his-luck actor Michael Dorsey (Dustin Hoffman) returns to Southwest General to reprise his gender-bending role only to learn that the daytime soap's been canceled like so many All My Childrens. It's a comedy for our times! Now, somebody go figure out the second act… (An ending would be nice, too.) 

5. Lost in America: If more people in 1985 had watched—and heeded—this comedy about people getting what they deserve (or what they think they deserve), then maybe fewer people in 2011 would facing foreclosure, and we wouldn't need Albert Brooks to do a told-you-so update.