It was a different time, with a different society. Movies had a chance to be themselves and people were having fun making them, and productions were more independent coming off of the late 60's to 70's auteur boom, (though the big movies didn't usually grant that much freedom there were a lot of smaller ones were made with it). There's too much of a movie by committee approach now, and the studios have more of a say. I noticed a change when Michael Bay, Roland Emmerich, and Simon West were gaining traction with their style of movies in the mid to late 90's, then you had the pop music, southern rap, rap rock, and nu metal music boom in the late 90's and early 2000's that was the death knell for diversity of music on the radio. Corporations got bigger as well becoming conglomerates that control most of the media from entertainment to news to entertainment services like cable tv. Boys were still allowed to be boys in the 80's as well, which is why it and the early 90's was the last era without helicopter parenting and you still had shows and toys about war and fighting and such, kids would build tree forts and boxcars, they wouldn't be politically correct but also wouldn't be douches, and boys would go out and get dirty, get scratched up, and be rough and tumble kids. Girls were allowed to be themselves, they had pop idols that showed they could be be tough and independent without the push for vanity, political correctness, and early expressions of sexuality (ok Madonna was whoring it up, but she was the only big one doing that then) and the like that came from the Britney Spears era and beyond. People still had things they were allowed to be proud of then as well (without being vain).
It was just a very different society then, the early to mid 90's was essentially the last vestiges of an era of classic Americana. I cannot speak for other places. The movies and entertainment reflected this. Commercialization did see a boom in the late 70's and 80's, but it wasn't like today which reflects the themes of They Live far more than the 80's did, when there was still a sense of independence. I think all of these themes reflect the movies of the era. The 80's sort of hearkened back to the 50's and early 60's in some sense after sobering up from the issues of the late 60's and early 70's, and films were often a source of comfort food without feeling like processed crap that makes you sick afterwards.
