We went to see The Batman this past weekend, a movie that I was as excited about as any other in a long time. I liked it a lot but didn’t love it as much as I wanted to. I won’t spoil anything here but it’s a very long movie, with a third act that I really don’t think was necessary.
Batman has always been one of my favorites and I liked the idea of exploring his detective side instead of just brute force and a bunch of fancy gadgets. More than any other version of the character this movie gave us the most accurate depiction yet of what a real life Batman would be and as cool as that was it won’t be selling any Halloween costumes or toys this Christmas. It’s a very dark flick. I left the theater wondering if I would see it differently upon further viewings.
I then wondered if I actually would watch it that many more times, if ever again.
There are a handful of movies that I wouldn’t be surprised to learn I have watched a hundred times or more, a whole bunch more that I’ve seen at least fifty. Some of these, such as Red Dawn, Tombstone, The Crow, are all time favorites. Others, such as Stripes, First Blood, Conan The Barbarian, were early additions to our VHS library as a kid. There was a time when I swear that Die Hard, Coming To America and Cocktail were the only things shown on television.
The thing that all these movies and the countless others I could name have in common is that they are all very old, older than I care to think about. They came from a time when visual entertainment came from whatever the few television channels were showing at that moment, what you picked up at the local video store or what you had on your shelf.
I’ve got a pretty fancy blu ray player but the last movie that I can remember renting was The Greatest Showman in 2017. That’s probably not accurate because I know for a fact that the last film I actually purchased was Black Panther a year later. It’s not as noteworthy as “where were you on 9/11” but for a nostalgic old timer that has an increasingly hard time remembering things that aren’t ridiculous it’s something. Last year’s “Turn Up That Dial” from the Dropkick Murphy’s just might be the last CD that I ever buy.
Call it a “first world problem” or privilege or whatever you want but there is just too much content out there, too much entertainment. Besides the pile of books I have to read I’ve also got magazines to keep up with and a stack of comic books that keeps getting bigger. I have videogames to play and just started down the podcast rabbit hole. Between my work schedule and when I get the kid to bed at night I only watch about four or five hours of non-sports television a week so I’m way behind on television shows and only have the time to devote to an actual movie on every other Saturday. I have a pretty long list of films to watch with my daughter and an even longer one for myself. It’s hard to imagine spending those hours on a re-watch when there is so much new to see.
There are exceptions of course. A Nightmare Before Christmas gets watched sometime around Halloween, Christmas Vacation never gets old. As she gets older I’m introducing my daughter to classics like Gremlins and The Lost Boys, even though so far she is less impressed with anything I’ve shown her than her older sister was when I did the same thing with her. Every once in a while a friend, usually younger, will admit that they have never seen a movie that I reference such as American Pie or Anchorman. They typically seem unimpressed as well when I make them sit through it.
Other people seem to take the opposite approach. With only a limited number of hours a week they choose to spend that time on things that they already know that they enjoy instead of wasting them on new things. I have a friend that doesn’t seem to watch much of anything besides old episodes of Friends.
I wonder if I’m taking the wrong approach. Since Modern Family went off the air I can’t remember the last time I actually watched a sitcom and found it funny but those old episodes of Friends that I’ve seen a hundred times are still great. The last movie that I really enjoyed was the most recent Spider Man but without spoiling it, that relied pretty heavily on nostalgia for the old Spider Man movies, the ones I still have on DVD. Prior to that the last thing that I can recall having really loved was Rogue One, a Star Wars movie that also relied pretty heavily on nostalgia.
Maybe it’s just a grumpy old man talking but for all the overwhelming number of viewing options that are now available, a lot of it really doesn’t seem as good as it used to be.
Scrolling through Quora recently I came across a post that postulated that if you were to exchange the Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt characters in the movie Seven with Batman and Robin you would have the perfect Batman movie and I can’t find any argument against the theory. I’ve got this upcoming weekend off, meaning that Saturday night I can actually watch something more than an hour long. Maybe it’s time I dusted off an old friend from the shelf.
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Previously Published on thirstydaddy.com
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