Raise your hand if you love rewatching your old favourite sci-fi and fantasy shows!
Over the last few months, I’ve slowly become more reticent about watching new films and TV shows in these genres.
I’m sure many of them are going to be amazing once I return to chipping away at my humongous to-watch queue, but for now I’m much more interested in rewatching stories I’ve seen dozens of time before.
Keep scrolling for spoiler-free references to some of my favourite
Familiar Plot Twists
Okay, so don’t laugh at me, but I get pretty attached to certain characters. I cheer when they reach their goals and cry when sad things happen to them.
Empathy is a gift, but there are also times when I’d rather not ride the emotional rollercoaster of are these characters going to be okay?
Yes, most of them will be fine by the time the credits roll. But thanks to earlier experiences with Joss Whedon and the unpredictable things he likes to do with the lives of beloved characters, I don’t fully trust any director or screenwriter when my favourites are involved.
The beautiful thing about rewatching something you’ve seen many times before is that there are no big surprises around the corner. You might forget a funny line here or a minor plot twist there if it’s been a while, but for the most part you roll the opening credits knowing full well what’s to come.
There’s something soothing about that, especially when other things in life might not be so predictable.
Predictions That Do (or Don’t) Come True
Speaking of predictions, the science fiction genre in particular is filled with them.
I’m the sort of viewer who takes note of what fellow storytellers in this genre think will happen in the near future and then likes to check again five or ten or twenty years later to see what they might have gotten right.
Fashion trends of future decades have never been accurate in my experience. (Here’s looking at you, 2015 scenes in Back to the Future Part II!)
But some films do predict the future more accurately. Rediscovering those scenes is like finding buried treasure.
Jokes That Never Get Old
If you ask me, the best films and TV shows are the ones that still make you laugh the third or thirtieth time you see them. Case in point: The Princess Bride. This fairy tale was framed as something a grandfather was reading to his sick grandson.
A few minutes into Princess Buttercup’s adventures, the kid interrupted to ask if it was a kissing book.
As someone who avoided kissing books as a kid and rarely reads them as an adult, I laugh every time I hear this line. It’s classic.
New Details in the Story
Anyone who has followed this blog for a long time may remember my love of the paranormal film The Others.
(Someday I need to write a full-length review of it for this site! It’s a modern-day classic).
The first time I watched this film, I missed the major plot twist in it until the last possible moment.
It was only after rewatching it that I picked up on the clues about what was really going on with the main character and her two young children who were living in a remote house during the World War II era while waiting to hear news about her husband who was on the front lines of the war.
This was always a good story, but it became even better once I knew what on Earth was going on with this strange, reclusive family. Every time I rewatch it, I pick up on even more subtle foreshadowing or small moments of character development I hadn’t noticed in the past.
Respond
What are your favourite science fiction, fantasy, or other speculative fiction shows to rewatch?
Great ode to rewatching. You’ve reminded me I need to rewatch The Others. I’ve seen it 2 or 3 times, but not for at least a decade, so that’s clearly not enough!
Thank you! I hope you enjoy your rewatch of The Others. I think it’s something that’s awesome on a stormy day especially.
I’m glad I am not the only one who gets really attached to fictional characters. I was (probably still am) so thoroughly obsessed with Buffy, it wasn’t even funny. There was a time in high school when David Boreanaz was going to be interviewed by our local morning show so I pretended I was sick just to stay home and here the ten-minute interview. Later when my mom got home from work she said she knew I wasn’t sick and that I just should have said I wanted to stay home. It’s a show that I can watch over and over and over (though I do skip a fair amount of season six because it was so awful and I cried about that too) and never get tired of. I still laugh and cry, despite having viewed the whole series dozens and dozens and dozens of times.
Oh, that’s so interesting!
Will you be watching the Buffy reboot once it comes out? Do you feel the same way about Angel?
I don’t really re-watch shows much because there are just too many good shows out there I still haven’t had time to see. That being said, I started rewatching Supernatural from the beginning because my husband hadn’t seen it and it has been an awesome experience for the both of us. I’m picking up on things that I didn’t before but it’s also nice being with familiar characters, re-hearing some of the best jokes, and just being able to spend time with a series I love so much.
That’s so cool! Hope you both enjoy it.