Or how I learned to appreciate watching classic movies again.
My boys watched the Planet of the Apes for the first time. Being an old jaded fellow who knew the ending from day one due to the countless spoilers that have come from documentaries about hollywood films (and of course the Simpsons), I was pleasantly surprised at my children’s reaction to the film’s ending. “It was Earth?” they asked after sitting there dumbfounded. They sat there just amazed by that turn of events. The old codger in me slipped away and I could atually image the surprise those first audiences had.
It was nice to see the film through their eyes. The sudden twist and wonder they experienced by seeing the statue of Liberty in the sands. It made me appreciate the power of that last image that I had taken for granted for so long.
I can’t wait to re experience a whole slew of films to see their reactions. (The end of Road Warrior, Soylent green, Glory, and sixth sense will be interesting… of course not until they are older) It is almost like watching a film for the first time.
Anyone else had that experience of reliving a movie through their kids eyes?
When I saw the remake of Psycho there seemed to be a lot of teens in the audience who didn’t know that Norman was playing his mother. Also it seemed that many of them had never seen the shower scene, judging from the number of kids who seemed to be truly freaked out!
Actually, when you think about, the fact the apes all spoke perfect English should’ve been enough to tip off the future-president-of-the-NRA that he was still in the same neighborhood.
The shower scene is so well-known in pop culture I think the kids were already pretty familiar with it. As to why they were still freaked out by it, my guess is that they didn’t expect to see the scene so early in the movie. The fact that Hitchcock killed off his “leading lady” before the middle of the movie is what made the scene so shocking.
I was so bummed out when I watched this film. Of course I knew they were on Earth (I’m a child of the now generation), but I couldn’t believe how nobody figured it out. Close to the famous ending, Heston’s lines when he’s in a cave give it all away:
“This doll. We have… we have dolls like these in my home too and they also look human and say Mama. Why this is such a strange coincedence. ‘Made in Taiwan’? You have a Taiwan? Wow. Remarkable.”
What’s funny is that in the book (quite a good read by the way), is that it is finding a doll that gives it away. Of course, the book is actually set on another planet (unless I have a very bad translation.)
