Is it just me or is Die Hard rendered tame by virtue of its taking place on Christmas Eve? All that joy to the world shit doesn't work for me at all.
Having only just watched it for the first time, however, I can’t get past the little things like that, and the twenty years of build-up the movie’s had. A movie just can’t stand up to twenty or even ten years of build-up. It’s one of those movies you really had to see as a child or adolescent to love.
It’s like those John Hughes movies from the 80s (and that whole genre of 80s coming-of-age comedies, because I’m sure one or two weren’t by John Hughes): you really had to see them for the first time as a young person or else there’s more magic to them. By and large they’re not that great unless you saw them when they came out or when you were young, and since most people do they’re standard classics. Everyone fucking loves The Breakfast Club, but if you were to watch it for the first time as a late-teen, it’s no cat’s meow.
The same goes for movies like The Nightmare before Christmas, in which I can’t sit through the first ten minutes but since everyone else saw it when they were in Kindergarten it’s some ridiculously inexplicable phenomenon. Why, out of everything we watched as children, did The Nightmare before Christmas attain such a status that its merchandise is still sold in vast quantities at music stores like Sunrise Records, to the exclusion of the merchandise of everything else we watched?
There’s a very specific window in which movies can be eternalized as a favourite by a person for life. Why people my age still list The Breakfast Club as one of their favourite movies of all time is beyond me, because I’ve seen and I know they’ve seen five objectively better films in the last ten months, never mind the last ten years.
In the end it really doesn’t matter what their fave five movies are because the list is entirely subjective, but at the same time it pains me that people are so blind to the fact that its status is based entirely on nostalgia and has nothing to do with how good the film is – or was.
That’s not to say I don’t like a few films that are objectively worse than the average “good” movie, although the only one that comes to mind right now is A Knight’s Tale, a movie that I know many of my friends dislike but I watched so frequently as an eleven-thirteen year-old I can’t not enjoy watching it. I also have a secret soft spot for Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace, a movie that everyone says was terrible but I just can’t figure out why. And for the record I loved the original trilogy before I ever saw TPM, so I’m not one of those kids who’s only seen the new stuff and doesn’t know what the good Star Wars is supposed to be. I’m just hotwired to not be able to hate anything that has anything to do with Star Wars. In fact, I have more new trilogy toys within arm’s reach than I do old trilogy toys, although actually now that I’m actually looking I see some hidden gems I’d forgotten are out on my shelves above my computer. So it’s about even.
…I realize it's just me.
DFTBA
Having only just watched it for the first time, however, I can’t get past the little things like that, and the twenty years of build-up the movie’s had. A movie just can’t stand up to twenty or even ten years of build-up. It’s one of those movies you really had to see as a child or adolescent to love.
It’s like those John Hughes movies from the 80s (and that whole genre of 80s coming-of-age comedies, because I’m sure one or two weren’t by John Hughes): you really had to see them for the first time as a young person or else there’s more magic to them. By and large they’re not that great unless you saw them when they came out or when you were young, and since most people do they’re standard classics. Everyone fucking loves The Breakfast Club, but if you were to watch it for the first time as a late-teen, it’s no cat’s meow.
The same goes for movies like The Nightmare before Christmas, in which I can’t sit through the first ten minutes but since everyone else saw it when they were in Kindergarten it’s some ridiculously inexplicable phenomenon. Why, out of everything we watched as children, did The Nightmare before Christmas attain such a status that its merchandise is still sold in vast quantities at music stores like Sunrise Records, to the exclusion of the merchandise of everything else we watched?
There’s a very specific window in which movies can be eternalized as a favourite by a person for life. Why people my age still list The Breakfast Club as one of their favourite movies of all time is beyond me, because I’ve seen and I know they’ve seen five objectively better films in the last ten months, never mind the last ten years.
In the end it really doesn’t matter what their fave five movies are because the list is entirely subjective, but at the same time it pains me that people are so blind to the fact that its status is based entirely on nostalgia and has nothing to do with how good the film is – or was.
That’s not to say I don’t like a few films that are objectively worse than the average “good” movie, although the only one that comes to mind right now is A Knight’s Tale, a movie that I know many of my friends dislike but I watched so frequently as an eleven-thirteen year-old I can’t not enjoy watching it. I also have a secret soft spot for Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace, a movie that everyone says was terrible but I just can’t figure out why. And for the record I loved the original trilogy before I ever saw TPM, so I’m not one of those kids who’s only seen the new stuff and doesn’t know what the good Star Wars is supposed to be. I’m just hotwired to not be able to hate anything that has anything to do with Star Wars. In fact, I have more new trilogy toys within arm’s reach than I do old trilogy toys, although actually now that I’m actually looking I see some hidden gems I’d forgotten are out on my shelves above my computer. So it’s about even.
…I realize it's just me.
DFTBA
