It is more of the long tail of distribution. These are the stars that were seen on TV in repeats of the same movies. Or rented and taped videos.

One reason might also be how consumption of media have changed. The same stuff isn't repeated as much on main delivery channels.

The part you're missing is that Top Gun would've been readily available in rental stores around when those kids (and I was one of them) were starting to be able to get our parents to let us watch them.

I wouldn’t have agreed about GenX yesterday. But above was the third comment I’ve read today that misidentified them.

Millenials knew Tom from Mission Impossible.