I grew up in a small town. Not village of just a few houses small, but if I meet someone on the street where I currently live, I could tell them my hometown is smaller than yours and be right like 97.6% of the time. As such being from a populationally challenged town we did not get much in the way of arts and culture. We had one movie screen for the entire town and it had about 300 seats associated. Movies only came to town for 1 week so as to make way for the next one, so if you could not make the time to watch that week’s movie then too bad, travel for three hours across majestic moose ridden highway to the ‘big city’ or wait for the VHS/Betamax release at the local video store (of which my town had 2). So we did not get much choice, and as a burgeoning yet still fledgling movie nerd I took what I could get and watched a lot of movies that I otherwise would not have bothered with and as such I have little to no reason to view a lot of them another time (there are a couple I would like to see again through the eyes of… well not maturity, but more so less immaturity to see how my adapted taste feels about it now).

This is not the only reason to keep away from rewatches. Some movies are good stories, well acted, directed and have good production values but are just a slog to get through. Others may be too violent for you now, or just not funny anymore. Your taste changes as you age and take in new content and that is a good thing. It allows you to explore new things that may have gone unnoticed or view older movies from a different perspective, which in turn can change your appreciation or reaction to it. Another reason to not review something isa because you thought it was great based on a twist or reveal such as many people’s initial reaction to The Sixth Sense. Once this reveal is known it will lessen the impact of repeat viewings (although it is worth mentioning that if you can be present for someone else’s first viewing of a movie such as this it is often fun to see their reaction). Many movies are good, and while rarer there are a lot of great or really great movies out there and many of those movies could have broad general reasons for you to never watch them again (they may also have personal reasons, but I am definitely not qualified to speak to that). And finally I have had this thought many times about many movies before a rewatch (or abandonment of a rewatch plan), but what if I don’t like it anymore? What if it was a movie from when I was a kid that I thought was cool, great and awesome but my tastes have changed and now I don’t like it? Why would I subject a positive memory with a new and updated negative one? This is of course playing rewatch roulette as a rewatch could go another way and you gain a deeper understanding and appreciation for something you loved as a kid (this happened with me and The Last Unicorn) and avoiding rewatched could avoid that positive upgrade, but those are the risks we take either way.

And now, as per usual a slightly disjointed ramble leads me to a simple weekly prompt: What is a movie you enjoyed the first time(s) around, but will probably not rewatch? My answer surprised me as I considered the many reasons to not rewatch something, do I go with a slog of a movie, or something I am worried about my reaction? In the end it came down to timing, and I often say life is about timing. In this case the time it would take to watch the thing(s), and the things in question is Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy. I worked out that if I were to watch this I would definitely need to watch all three, and I would also need to watch the extended editions which when added together clocks in at just under 11 hours if I do not watch credits. That is like 5 movies off any of my watchlists, which really sounds like a lot. There is one caveat to me not watching this and that is offspring. Not the middling punk band with diminishing returns (Full Disclosure – I loved early Offspring entries and they have had some good to decent songs since) but rather my children, who may one day want to watch these movies and as a father I believe it is my duty to facilitate and encourage good cinema so I will take that time if there is a need from someone else (they are on their own for the Hobbit movies though. I did not get along with the second at all and skipped the third entirely).