Difficulties with Movies

Post Reply New Topic

Does anyone else have a hard time watching movies?

With every movie that I see, I somehow seem to miss huge chunks of the plot and I generally just have a vague idea of what's happening on the screen. While it seems like everyone else leaves the theater able to recall minute details, I can't even remember half of the main plot line yet alone the characters' names or specific things they said.

I notice that I spend a large amount of the movie unsure of who's who and that I can't tell most of the male characters apart unless they have a very distinct look. I also notice that if I haven't read the synopsis is advance, it can take me a very long time after the movie starts to make sense of anything happening or being said. I also don't seem to get as emotionally invested as other people and I don't think I've ever naturally laughed or cried while watching a film.

My partner has commented for years on how weird it is that I can't seem to remember 90% of the movies we've watched together, but I wonder if this is a result of asperger's? Does anyone else struggle with this?

No, movies are actually one of my obsessive special interests, I waste ridiculous amounts of money on my film library.

The only time I have difficulty remembering anything about a movie is when I watch it for the first time while drinking, and go to bed right after it ends. Then I may have trouble recalling exactly how the ending went the next morning, but it comes right back if I think about it for a moment.

I can understand how actors can look alike, though, and I notice that a lot more often in recent films than in older ones. Young male actors today seem to have been cloned on a farm in Nebraska. They not only look virtually identical, they don't even have any unique mannerisms to set them apart. There just are no more Humphrey Bogarts, or John Waynes, or Jack Nicholsons. I can't tell James Franco from John Leguizamo.

Of course, the same can be said of plots in contemporary films. Between Focus-Group input to make stories completely PC and homogenous, and the popularity of comic book epics, it seems the two dozen or so potential stories writers used to work with have been narrowed down to about five. Every movie you see anymore is so much like the last one, who can remember who did what to whom? It hardly matters.

Can totally relate to that.

I cannot remember names or faces of the protagonists and I often do not get the plot. It's worst in thrillers, where I don't get who shot whom or the intentions of people. Usually after movies, I go to wikipedia and read the synopsis there... almost always I missed something (except for "easier" genres like romantic movies, comedies etc.).

Apart from that, even if I got the plot, I usually cannot remember most of the movie half a year later. People always say stuff like: Remember that scene in this movie? And I'm like: No, actually I have no idea what you mean, I don't remember anything.

Sometimes I think the reason might be that I'm often stoned watching movies...but I'm not always and the problem was there before, too. Even as a child I didn't get movies.

Also I'm no English native speaker, which might make it a bit harder for me (I usually watch English movies with English subtitles, other foreign movies with either English or German subtitles, depending on avaibility)

I can relate to this post, I was thinking about this a lot lately. As much as I want to be a movie enthusiast I can never remember the characters, names, plots, anything. I also have to read the plot synopsis beforehand. I even need subtitles to make out what the characters are saying and I end up focusing on the subtitles so much I don't look at what's actually happening in the film.

I tend to watch movies in chuncks by myself. Like take a few intermissions. And I often replay a scene to understand it better. Names and faces can get confusing to me. I definitely get confused over characters in Game of Thrones.

Usually I'm able to follow the main plot, but get confused with subplots. With GOT I usually watch someone on youtube do a recap of the last episode I saw.

Sometimes I'm looking at the screen but my mind is miles away. Then I realise I've missed whole chunks of the plot. I've got used to it.

I love movies and have always watched a lot of movies of all kinds, but I have some difficulties, yes. I tend not to "put together" things that the viewer is clearly meant to see as pointers to the plot or other markers as to something important about the story or the character.

It's almost like I view each scene or piece of dialog as its own entity instead of seeing how it serves the whole. It's a very odd "innocent" way of watching a movie and it can mean that something the director is telegraphing clearly, actually completely goes over my head.

I have to struggle not to watch in this way, but to put things together. It's almost like how, in NT conversation, they are saying things that are meant to lead you to conclusions and it's up to you to put two and two together -- and I often fail to unless something is very direct.

The same way with movies -- something a character says or does, or a certain scene, is deliberately intended for us to see where things are going -- or not. And I often fail at collating all that together.

On the upside, it means that when something happens that' huge, dramatic or that other viewers saw coming all along, I'm shocked and surprised and I feel very entertained, lol. While others around me are groaning and saying "Yeah I saw that coming right from the start . . . yawn." Sometimes I think my way of seeing things makes a movie more fun in the end.

It is a kind of impairing thing though. I have to work to "put stuff together" in my mind.

I also do not register names of characters, and I'm stunned when people immediately start talking about Patty and Joe and why Pete killed Amy -- and I'm thinking wait, who are all those people?

Oddly enough, even though personally I'm musical, I tend to have to work at paying attention to music scores in a film! When others are saying things like how the music during the goodbye scene just made it even sadder, I'm struggling to remember any music, even though it probably did affect me directly, but subconsciously.

I haven't found a movie I have wanted to see in years. Nothing holds my interest.