Us film fans are an odd breed. We’re like dogs really, there are many similarities we all share… and yet there are many different sub-breeds. The rabid fan-boys… the Indy snobs… chick flick junkies… A.D.D. blockbuster nuts… ect. Some of us are mixed breeds too. One of the common genetic traits that runs through the whole species of film fans though, is that in every breed you’ll always find some individuals who from time to time will pre-decide that they hate a film. What I mean is, they make up their mind that they hate something, before even seeing it.
Now let me make a VERY important distinction here. There is a HUGE difference between PREDICTING a movie will be bad, and PRE-DECIDING that it’s bad. Here’s an example:
A few years ago when I was still living in Saskatoon, a bunch of us were hyped about going to see the first X-Men flick. One of our friends though, had already made up his mind that the movie was going to totally suck. He talked about it all week… all we heard from him for about 5 days straight was how awful X-Men was going to be. Some of us were a little skeptical, but still looking forward to it. So off we all go to see it, and the film was MUCH BETTER than anyone thought a comic book movie could be (remember, the comic book genre was DEAD at the time).
We came out of the film just amazed that a comic movie could be made so well. But sure enough, our friend immediately started ranting about how it was one of the worst films of all time. He had pre-decided to hate the film… and talked about it so much, that he had become emotionally invested in it. So no matter how good the film turned out, he had pre-convinced himself it was awful. As a side note, some years later he mentioned the film had stated to grow on him.
Then there is PREDICTING a movie will suck. I’ll use myself as an example here and one of the times I had to eat crow. For almost a year I was predicting that the new TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) was going to be horrible. As the weeks grew closer I talked on the site and on various shows how no one should get their hopes up for TMNT because I thought it was going to be stupid as hell. Well… opening day came and off to the theaters I went. Guess what… I ended up actually liking it. It was with great humiliation that I had to go on a friend of mine’s show and admit on air that TMNT was actually pretty good (we had debated if it would be good or not the previous week).
There is a difference between predicting and pre-deciding. We see the pre-deciders all the time. People who get so emotionally invested in their predictions, that no matter what happens, they will declare the movie bad. Sometimes people pre-decide they hate a film because of the subject matter… sometimes it’s because of a certain actor or actress who is in the film. Sometimes it’s because of a detail (Optimus Prime has a mouth, Galactus is a Storm Cloud). Sometimes it’s just in spite of someone else (trust me, there are people who have already drafted their emails to me about how bad Transformers was weeks before seeing it). There are lots of reasons, and let’s face it… once in a while we’re all prone to it.
An argument could be made that there are also people out there who pre-decide that a movie is great. That’s true… but I’ve found it’s not as common. Disappointment is a hard emotion to hide. No matter how much I wanted Spider-man 3, Shrek 3 or Pirates 3 to be amazing… the stench of the stink was too strong for my face not to contort with disgust.
So why do we do this? Why do some people purposefully limit their possible enjoyment of a movie in advance? I’m sure there are many reasons, but one of the biggest ones is pride. And the louder you talk about how much a movie will suck in advance, the more damaging it is to the old pride to admit you ended up liking it. It’s EASY for most people… when most people predict something, they don’t have hundreds of thousands of people that week reading it and knowing their prediction. And when they’re wrong… they don’t wake up to a hundred emails mocking them… they just get to quietly let it slip by without anyone noticing. But when you talk loud to your friends, or you talk loud on a forum, or heaven forbid if you run one of these damn sites… it’s a lot harder to just admit you liked something when you spent a lot of time and energy telling people it would suck. :P
I know I did it at least once. Back when the first Jackass movie came out… I pre-decided I hated it… sure enough after seeing it for the first time I told myself I hated it, and had a terrible time. Later though… watching it on DVD… I kinda liked it. I let my pre-decision ruin a good time for myself a the theater.
So what about you? Do you think… looking back in retrospect… that you personally ever pre-decided you hated a film… and them later thought you might have cheated yourself out of an ok time at the theater?
