It’s probably my responsibility to state from the get go, there are a lot of spoilers in this article. I think it might be a bit difficult to get my point across without some examples, but I’ll try not to spoil anything you may not have seen. But I am going to talk about Terminator 4 and Star Trek XI, so you have been warned.
I like to be surprised. When I watch a film, or TV show, for the first time, the less I know about it the better. This can be a problem when deciding what new films or shows to watch, but that’s where I’ve developed a system with which I make these decisions. I have a couple of friends whose film opinions I trust enough that if they tell me I should see a film, I will, and no more information is required.
The new Star Trek film is a good example, I knew nothing about it going into the cinema. How did I do that? I avoided every review, every article, and ever blog post about it on the world wide web, any piece of written material that referenced it at all was brushed over quickly and filtered from view. The only thing I knew about the film was that there was time travel in it (due to a spoiler warning at the beginning of a barely related article!) and that was already too much for me. I went in knowing nothing and thoroughly enjoyed everything that happened in the film, because I wasn’t waiting for any particular event or expecting anything to happen! Oh sure, I knew Leonard Nimoy was in it, but that was impossible to avoid! And it didn’t spoil the story anyway, since his character was used in a different way than I had been expected.
Then we come to the malign paradigm shift, as discussed by my fellow blogger Drew just recently, which can be the most pivotal and amazing moment in any film, that really makes or breaks it for you. If you know what that shift is going to be, then where is the awe? Where is the surprise? Despite the fact that I had been shown the trailer to Terminator 4, I clearly completely missed the reveal of Marcus’s big secret. Watching the film I spent every moment up until the moment of shift trying to figure out what was going on, and then when it happened, I was amazed! While everyone else I know who saw the film were expecting it from the beginning. I think that moment really made the film for me.
And a quick example, the first Futurama film. I didn’t figure out who Lars was until it actually happened in the movie. Sure, everyone else who saw it thought that maybe I was a big daft for not figuring it out. But damn it was exciting.
I don’t read the blurb on the back of DVD covers. I don’t read film reviews. And I don’t listen to people talk about things I haven’t seen yet. The same goes for TV shows that I talk to work mates about, if they start telling me the result of the latest Mythbusters episode I haven’t seen, I tell them quite frankly, to shut the hell up.
Maybe it’s not the perfect system for everybody, maybe I’ll see a lot more movies I don’t enjoy because of my limited screening process. But I think the end justifies the means, and that the wonderful experience I enjoy, is worth seeing some bad apples.
The Sixth Sense is just a film about a child psychiatrist, From Dusk til Dawn is just a film about criminals on the run, Synendoche, New York, is about a play.
That’s good enough.
The points you outlined in this post are actually the same things that have made me love movies like Gangs of New York.
I had heard about it from my brother a while back; and I knew it had quite a bit of violence in it, but I hadn’t actually ever looked it up on IMDB or in Blockbusters. I was at a good friend’s house recently and he told me that I should watch it. and watch it i did.
I was blown away by how good it was not knowing what to expect. I have a habbit of researching movies and TV series’ when I have nothing else to do and the element of surprise was really what grabbed me with that movie. In fact I’ve seen it a few times now and every time its as good as the first.
Either way, Fantastic blog post Dave, really enjoyed reading it =]