What happened in the late 80s/early 90s that every movie decided it needed an animated opening?

Cafe Society
1

I’ve seen it in:

Christmas Vacation
City Slickers
Mannequin
Honey I Shrunk the Kids
What are some other examples?

2

How did you pick the 80’s-90’s as a starting point? The Pink Panther had one in 1964, so did A Guide for the Married Man just off the top of my head. How about some James Bond openings (or maybe you’d call those semi-animated)?

3

Better Off Dead had one, right?

4

I picked a rough date as my starting point because that is all the movies I listed are made (I say this guessing without looking up any of the dates) and I don’t see it in movies anymore

5

Grease in the late 70s had one, too.

6

Honeymoon in Vegas

True. The use of animated opening credits goes back farther than the late 80s. According to this TV Tropes link, they at least go back as far as the 1940s with The Lady Eve.

7

I suspect use of them became more common because 2D animation software became more readily available, production became cheaper, computers capable of rendering at film resolution became cheaper and film recorders to write out to 35mm negative dropped in price.

Basically, when it became cheap enough to do as a regular feature on SNL, it became cheap enough to do on tons of movie opens.