[Nick Zwar]

THE THING is a film I return to quite often, but never for the story. Only for the mood, which I can stay in forever

THE THING is great, I love the way it’s set up, the opening scenes. I love the dog actor (Jed, who later played WHITE FANG alongside Ethan Hawke), I love the way it’s set up, I love the way Carpenter sets the camera, and I love Ennio Morricone’s music. (There is often the misguided notion that Carpenter only used the electronic parts of Morricone’s score, but that’s not true, a great deal of the orchestral music is in the movie as well.

Interesting side note would be why we watch certain movies over and over (or at least often). What is it that they do for us? As has been pointed out, we already know the “story”, and we know all surprises.

Story is but one aspect of a movie. No one watches James Bond movies “for the story”. Same with the MISSION IMPOSSIBLE movies. The MISSION IMPOSSIBLE stories exist to set up elaborate and intricate heist and action scenes.

No one watches Columbo for the story. I can always watch Columbo, especially the classic 70s episodes. The “story” and basic story arc is usually clear. In Columbo, it’s a usually affluent and highly intelligent person who murders someone, believing that their meticulous planning and removing of the evidence have placed them beyond the reach of consequence. In comes that disheveled and seemingly scatterbrained Police Lieutenant Columbo, who notes all kinds of oddities and just asks “one more question”, that slowly and surely puts a grip on the murderer. So that’s basically always the story, the fun is not the “story”, the fun is the riddle and the acting, the fun is finding and noting the gottcha things the murderer (and usually we, as the audience) overlooked. And the fun is to put all these great guest “murderers” up against Peter Falk. And the fun are the little unexpected “breaks” from the usual (such as the episode where Leonard Nimoy is a particularly calculating and ice cold killer, where Columbo in a rare moment loses his temper and tells him flat to his face that he thinks he’s the murderer and will find proof.)

A good movie can impress you, but what makes it “rewatchable”? Good question. Not sure if I have an answer. It may be that the story, the mood, the setting, the craft just lands with you, aligns with you. Or it so perfectly aligns with your values, your aspirations, your nostalgia, your mood, your hopes, dreams, nightmares, whatever, that it hits, confirms or even challenges certain things about you, that you enjoy re-experiencing it. Not all movies we consider great are the ones we watch over and over again, and we know some movies may not be masterpieces, but we never tire of watching them (I certainly love Ralph Bakshi’s WIZARDS (1977), and I’ve seen it often, but it’s not a flawless masterpiece of a movie). There are movies that obviously strike a nerve, we return to them not because these movies are better, but because they are “ours” in some way.