Up until about 20 movies ago, I used to watch every movie at least once and the ones I liked twice or more. Then, from movies 10-19, about half of them I barely paid attention. Movies 1-9, I paid attention for less than 10% of the film, usually stopped them early, and just read the summary on Wikipedia. Also, I don’t rent them as often anymore. I used to watch 2-3 movies per day, 3-4 times a week, then once a month, now once every couple of months. Even movies I used to be able to watch over and over again I can barely stay awake for now.
My theories:
I’m getting old.
Physically, I can’t watch a movie anymore. I wear bifocals now, and my neck hurts trying to keep the head angle so I use the proper half of the glasses.
I’ve seen the best movies ever, so all the new movies seem like cheap knock-offs. The last really great movies I’ve seen were End of Watch and Django, as well as collecting the entire Venom Mob collection.
I was going through some hard times in real life, so movies were an escape. Now that I’ve eliminated most of them, life seems more interesting than it used to be.
Has this happened to you? At what age? Will it come back later?
Since my daughter was born, I basically can’t be arsed to sit through a whole movie. I get so little time in a day to concentrate on anything, I can’t waste it on a movie.
Yes, it definitely can come back later. It’s like most burn-outs: it might last the rest of your life…but it doesn’t absolutely have to.
Think of it as taking a break. Some day, someone will come up with a clever idea for a movie, and you’ll say, “Man, I just gotta see that.”
Meanwhile, if you’re using the time more productively, or if you’re doing things you like more, just call it personal growth, and go with the flow. Personal self-definition is an unceasing project. If you used to be “a moviegoer” and you aren’t one any more, it doesn’t have to be seen as a “loss,” only as a change.
Yeah all my interests have altered in some shape or form. I still love movies and see about 40 a year at the cinema but I can happily give up on one part way through if it’s ordinary. I used to watch as much TV as most people, now I mostly can’t be bothered starting a new show unless it is supposed to be great. I used to read 2 newspapers a day, I can’t remember when I last bought one now. I used to read every book I started from cover to cover and I don’t stick to that any more. At one stage I used to watch every rugby league game each weekend, now I often don’t bother turning on the TV to watch the team I support.
I was never a big movie buff to begin with, but my interest in movies is getting less and less. The same goes for TV shows. My free time is pretty limited, and I feel I can make much better use of my free time doing other things.
I play pub trivia pretty often, and my least favorite questions are about movies and TV. The fact that I don’t know 95% of those answers just makes me hate movies even more.
That seems the easiest thing to fix. Go to a cheap place for glasses like America’s Best, and instead of getting a pair of bifocals, get two different pairs - one with your distance prescription, one with your close-up one. I’ve got two like that, wearing the close-up one for computer work and the distance one for walking around…and watching movies. Heck, just explain your problem to the optician, and they’ll tweak the prescription as needed to make it easy to resume movie watching. Keep your bifocals, and wear your “movies glasses” for watching movies.
There may be some flaw in this advice, or it might not be advisable for some reason…but given the choice of watching movies or not being able to do so, I’d work hard to solve the problem.
I used to watch a lot of movies but the last couple years I’ve switched to binge watching the great, nearly great and mostly good TV series on DVD or Netflix. I don’t have cable so I wait until it’s released to streaming and DVD and watch it on NF if possible or rent the DVDs.
It might simply be because you are more discriminating in what you like.
Some people will go see almost any film - nothing wrong with that. But at some point, you start to read reviews and realize certain films (perhaps zombie/vampire) don’t interest you as much, or you can’t put up with mindless blockbuster with nothing but explosions and no plot whatsoever.
I love watching movies, but many of the newer releases are not at all anything that interests me and are truly designed for a different audience.
However, usually around Fall/Winter - when the Oscar bait shows up on screens with adult actors and adult plots - I want to see almost every film released.
I’ve been watching a few movies on cable tv this morning, and I feel a bit better watching movies. Maybe a steady diet of bad movies killed my interest temporarily?
I guess it’s possible if watching movies is your only form of recreation. But combine a love of reading with a love of movies, a love of music, whether it be opera or rock or whatever, a love of conversation and social discourse, and you’ll never tire of any of them. Or if you do it will be because, as Johnson said of those who tired of London, you’re tired of life.
I just don’t seem to have the attention span required to sit through a whole movie these days. Anything longer than an hour or so and I start to get antsy and feel like I have things to do. I pretty much never choose to watch a movie anymore - I’ll be roped into it by friends or my husband, and sometimes end up enjoying it. But it’s a rare movie that will keep me interested enough to see it through.
And I’ve never loved seeing movies in the theater. Too goddamn loud. Can’t stand it.
I went through a phase where I rarely watched movies at all. It’s not the length, or the medium, but the format.
Now I’m watching more. Perhaps it’s just me catching up on the good movies I missed before. It’s not like they’re going to go away, so I could watch them when I actually felt like it.
I stopped using the word “outgrow” long ago, because it always sounded like a putdown of people who *like *what I claimed to have “outgrown.” Personal tastes do change. Sometimes they change back again after a time, and sometimes they don’t.
I’m watching fewer movies now, from 75 a year in my prime to about a dozen. It was common for me to see three movies in a weekend.
Now I only go to the theater about twice a year, and see fewer on DVD or Netflix. Lots of reasons for that:
[ol]
[li]The cost.[/li][li]Very few new movies interest me.[/li][li]I’m getting busier, so it’s harder to carve out two hours at a time.[/li][li]I find TV shows on streaming and DVD more interesting, and you can see them in hour (or less) chunks.[/li][/ol]
I won’t say I outgrew movies (though movies have regressed badly), but it’s just that I don’t see many that seem worth my time.
Many movies are created for an audience that goes to the theater on Friday nights as an event with friends or date, I am no longer in the age group that typically does that. But yeah, I guess if I cared enough I could find many new indie films geared towards mature audiences (not boobs and bullets mature, in fact, quite the opposite) but my interests have moved on.
I used to love watching films, all kinds, but for the past 5 years most movies just don’t seem interesting to me.
I don’t even know why I started to move away from them, but sitting down and watching a movie seems like a chore. I probably now only see 4 movies a year at the theater.
I watch two movies and five documentaries a week now. I don’t know if that’s some kind of maturation of tastes, or how I would always have done it if I’d always lived with the internet. Then there are documentaries about movies. I’d hate it if the only Martin Scorsese or Orson Welles I could see were clips in documentaries, but a documentary about Sergio Leone would be fine.