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Among the many, many things that Robert Zemeckis' 1985 film Back to the Future got right was the exact length of a pop culture nostalgia gap: 30 years. It was 30 years into the past that the teenage Marty McFly travelled, to 1955, when his parents were his age and when rock'n'roll was born. Viewed from that distance, a song like Chuck Berry's Johnny B Goode was old enough to acquire the warm glow of childhood nostalgia; to recall simpler, purer times. But, with its primitive energy, it also expressed something primal and exciting that felt like it had been lost in the course of rock music's 30-year journey into the cultural mainstream - something that begged to be reclaimed by the young.Hence the brilliant, paradoxical moment in which Marty teaches Berry his own song, and sows the seed of the rock rebellion he wishes he could have lived for himself. Pop will eat itself indeed. Back to the Future was so prophetic, so spot-on about this cultural cycle that it even set up its own nostalgia loop with Marty's trip to 2015 in the sequel - as all the hoverboards and self-lacing Nikes currently gracing your social media feed will attest.
Maybe it's something to do with the average age of a Hollywood studio exec, but the 30-year formula has stuck, and the 1980s heyday of the video game arcade is to the movies of today what diners and doo-wop were back then. Hence 2013's loving, scattershot Disney pastiche Wreck-It Ralph. Hence Steven Spielberg signing on to direct an adaptation of Ready Player One, Ernest Cline's bestselling sci-fi book about a referential virtual journey through 80s geek nostalgia. And hence Pixels, a crushingly unfunny Adam Sandler vehicle directed by Chris Columbus, which opens in the UK this week.
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