Do you have trouble following movies?

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i follow movies better then most, movies people have to watch two or three times i watch once and get it.

Yes, I sometimes have difficulty following movie plots. I often miss the clues that characters make that others understand due to inference. I will often get lost in those. There are some movies that I love so much that I seem like an expert in their plots---for example: Duel, Jaws, First Men in the Moon, Mighty Wind, The House on Haunted Hill (original Vincent Price version---black and white), The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (silent movie version), The Snow Queen, The Point, etc. As for movies I find confusing: Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Twilight series (my wife loves those), etc.

I don't have trouble following movies, though there are other things that I'd rather do. I don't like sitting in a dark room for 2 hours.

I dont have trouble with that, but when I watch movies I find the plot as interesting as the effects the regisseur has planned and how the actors work and sometimes I laugh at the most inconvenient points.

The opposite- I become hyperfocused, whether it be movies or TV.
The main things I quote are movies and TV,
and I get extremely-irritable when people fidget or rattle chip bags or get up to go to the bathroom during movies or a show we're watching together.

Sometimes I can't tell people apart or remember their names. Sometimes I just can't concentrate. It's better if I go to the cinema, or watch somewhere where I have to stay put and not wander off, at home I often lose interest or fall asleep.

I think there are different kinds of not following. It comes down to focus.

I find I look at different things and think about different things. Like when I saw Avatar in 3D, I watched without the glasses and wondered how such a society would work. I could not tell you any of the characters' names but I can discuss the politics and why the hero was an idiot at great length.

In contrast, my ex watches ten times more movies than I do. But when we watched Gladiator together, and the general says "unleash Hell" she thought Hell was the name of his dog.

Yes, if it's a thriller with extremely subtle clues and stars Leonardo DiCaprio.

E.g. Body of Lies, Shutter Island, Inception (although the latter I loved still)

If the film is well made, I have no problems following the story, even if the time line jumps about frequently. I enjoy films where that's a necessary part of the plot, e.g. Memento and anything related to time travel. If I'm enjoying it, I can hyper-focus and it's easy to understand.

I can't say I completely understood what was going on in the new Star Wars movies, as they feel a bit like a soap, jumping about between scenes. I get the jist of what's going on, but no more than that.

But Hulk (the one with Eric Bana) completely confused me, especially as I used to watch the TV series and the Hulk's alter-ego was David Banner, not Bruce Banner (although I think the film was trying to be true to the comic books). I gave up after about half an hour of waiting for it to start properly. I'm glad to see IMDb only gives it 5.7/10.

Last edited by Mummy_of_Peanut on 03 Oct 2011, 7:32 am, edited 1 time in total.

I used to and had people comment on it. Or they'd get angry when I would just tell them to watch it themselves or read the back of the video cassette cover when they ask me what was going on. I still hate getting asked but only because they're interrupting me.

I watch so many movies now for research so I have become better at following a movie and summarising what has happened so far when people want to know. I think being on medication helps but I pretty much practiced my movie comprehension when I realised I was no good at it. People always seemed to complain about it as if it was my fault. I feel smarter than those people now because I watch more movies and analyze them in ways they would never think.
OK, maybe that last line was a bit arrogant but they deserved it. No one ever had much faith in me.

I used to think the problem was with me not paying attention. But it is surprising how many movies have vital scenes removed. The test screening found a scene boring, or the movie was too long, so they cut it. Often the deleted scene was the one where they introduced a vital character or explained something and that is what made it boring to most people.

I sympathize with Christopher Lee in LOTR. He loved the movie and was thrilled to have a large scene with Saruman that explains everything. But they decided the movie was too long, nobody wants the explanation, so they cut it. The movie then no longer made sense. Lee was right to be angry.



I completely agree. I wanted to love that movie, and I thought Ang Lee's approach was superb... except it didn't work. Not sure why. Maybe it was deleted scenes? Having a CGI Hulk was the biggest problem IMO. The early comics and TV series were superb because the Hulk was sympathetic. The movie turned him into a rubber ball.



Funny true story. Stan lee gave the characters alliterative names so he could remember them, Hence Peter Parker, Reed Richards, Sue Storm, etc. In one of the early comics he forgot it was Bruce banner and called him Bob Banner. So his official name became Robert Bruce Banner. But the TV series felt that the name David sounded better.

Sometimes I do. There seems to be a trend for the characters in movies to speak very fast and when that happens, I have a hard time following the converstation. As a more visual person, it takes me a while to process what I hear so when they start in with that choppy, machine-gun type dialog I get lost. Also, I tend to block out the action sequences so that at the end I really don't know what just went on. Although that's rarely a problem because action scenes typically don't add much to the plot anyway.

I find it difficult to follow the plot only for the more complicated movies with a lot of twists and turns

For instance ocean thirteen or the ghost in the shell movies.

The same applies to TV shows such as ghost in the shell.

But it happens a lot others laugh at some joke or scene and I don't get what's so funny. That doesn't mean you're stupid or something, just that your sense of humor has another direction

//Arash

no, but I had one growing up. Couldn't concentrate and I got lost

I'm typically very good at following movies, but I notice new things every time I watch Shutter Island and Inception. (I have not seen Body of Lies) I think one reason Inception is difficult to follow is because of its non-linear storytelling pattern, and Shutter Island is a little difficult because it has to work two different ways: one for when you don't know the twist at the end and one for when you do. I think that makes them both great movies because they are unconventional and take some thought and often multiple viewings to understand.

i hate watching a movie with subtle humor because everyone watching laugh hysterically as I feel frustrated.