Why We Keep Rewatching the Same Movies

Ever wonder why you scroll past new releases and land on Star Wars, Indiana Jones, or that one Pixar film you could quote in your sleep? We dig into the deeper pull of rewatching and how familiar stories deliver something rare in a noisy world: emotional certainty. From the swell of a John Williams cue to the warm hit of a long-known character arc, we unpack why “safe” does not mean shallow—and why it often beats the gamble of an untested two hours.

We talk about movies as emotional time capsules, where first-view wonder lingers inside the rewatch. Then we stack that against the modern pressure cooker: new films must be original, relevant, meme-ready, discourse-proof, and somehow sequel-ready without feeling incomplete. We look at Marvel’s after-credits culture and how “what’s next” can steal thunder from “what just happened,” pushing audiences back to stories that finish their sentences. Franchises aren’t the enemy; uncertainty is. Older pillars feel confident in their identity, while many recent entries read like placeholders waiting for the payoff.

Cost and context matter too. A family night at the theater can approach triple digits, and after COVID-era streaming normalized staying in, the threshold for leaving the house got higher. We trace how access changed everything—from rare second viewings in the ’80s to instant replay today—and why that ease supercharges nostalgia and trust. Along the way, we touch on the cycle of reviving icons, the draw of familiar heroes, and how comfort rewatches become family rituals that onboard the next generation.

We want to hear from you: what’s your comfort movie and why does it still work? Share your pick, then follow and leave a quick review to help more people find the show.

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Transcript

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Welcome back to This Won't Teach You Anything, a podcast about pop culture, memory, and the stuff we keep coming back to. Today I want to talk about why rewatching old movies often feels better than watching new ones, and why that might explain why the box office just doesn't feel as strong as it used to. If you've ever opened a streaming app, stared at something brand new, and then immediately put on Star Wars Indiana Jones, or for me, Pixar Movie, or something like Silverlining's Playbook or A Star is Born instead, then this episode is for you. Because I think that instinct tells us something important. I've noticed something about myself, and I don't think I'm alone in this. When I finally have the time to sit down and watch a movie, I don't automatically choose something new. I scroll through the new releases, I read a couple descriptions, I maybe even watch a trailer, and then I hesitate. And somehow I end up watching something I already know. Sometimes it's Raiders of the Lost Ark, sometimes it's Star Wars, not even a specific one, just Star Wars. Sometimes it's a Pixar movie. I've seen more times than I can count something like maybe it's Silverlining's playbook. I usually revisit that film once a year. Just if you listen to an earlier episode of mine, then you know that what an impact that movie made on me and just how much I enjoy it. But these movies couldn't be any more different on paper, but emotionally they all serve the same purpose. They, to me, feel safe, they feel familiar, and they feel dependable. And more often than not, they feel better than rolling the dice on something new. Now, rewatching is a choice, not laziness. I want to stop here and say this clearly. Rewatching old movies isn't about being lazy, it's a choice. When I rewatch Star Wars or Indiana Jones, it's not because I've stopped caring about movies or new films. It's because I care so much that I don't want the experience to be diluted. Watching something new feels like opening a package that might be empty. Rewatching something familiar feels like opening a drawer where you already know what's inside and you still want it. You know, comfortable pair of socks, a favorite t-shirt, that type of thing. There's comfort in that. And as we get older, you know, comfort stops feeling like a guilty pleasure and starts feeling like a priority. I don't need every movie to challenge me. Uh I just want something I trust. And if this is hitting for you, if you're nodding along or already thinking about your own comfort movies or your favorite pair of comfortable socks, I'd actually love to hear from you. All the links to contact the show are in the episode description. Send me a message. Tell me what movie you re-watch the most or what you always put on when you don't want to think too hard. Same can go for music or anything pop culture related. I really do read those, and they can end up shaping future episodes of the show more than you think. Now, movies can be emotional time capsules. When I re-watch Star Wars, I'm not just watching a movie. I'm remembering the first time I heard that music. The sense that movies could feel big, hopeful, and mythic. You know, the opening shot of the Carillion Corvette being chased down by the Star Destroyer and just getting that sense of scale when that Star Destroyer goes overhead. It's just something that I'll always remember. That feeling wasn't just entertainment. It was something that carried me. The same thing happens with Indiana Jones. You know, you're not analyzing the plot the second time you watch it. You're not thinking about logic. You're reconnecting with that feeling of adventure, of movies being unapologetically fun. Boy, that word's been around and I still flub it. But this isn't just about blockbusters. You know, when I rewatch Silverlining's playbook, I'm not watching it for surprises. I already know what's coming. I'm watching it because I remember how it made me feel the first time, how raw and uncomfortable and honest it was. You know it's going to hurt. That's the point. These movies already did the emotional work. They don't need to earn my attention again. Now, new movies can feel like a risk. Why? Well, watching a new movie feels like a gamble now. It's not just about time, although that matters. It's about an emotional investment. You don't know if the movie is going to overstay its welcome, feel like setup instead of payoff, or pull its punches emotionally. When I re-watch a Pixar movie Toy Story, Finding Nemo, I know the emotional contract. It's the same with the classic Disney films. These movies promise something and deliver it. A lot of new movies feel afraid to fully commit. You know, they hedge, they leave doors open. They feel like they're planning the next thing instead of focusing on this thing. You know, take, for instance, the Marvel films, which I love, but, you know, the they've made this kind of creative choice to go ahead and set up the next big thing. You know, I remember the end of Iron Man, you know, seeing Nick Fury show up for the first time. When he appeared, it was like, oh wow, here we go. But that was the beginning of something new, you know, especially with cinematic universes. You know, we were already having just watched Iron Man, and instead of being able to kind of revel in that film by itself, it was like, oh, I can't wait to see what's next. And it became the aftercredits thing that I believe Iron Man really took hold of, and Marvel kind of ran with it. Nowadays, it really seems like, you know, I know I do at the end of movies, especially, you know, blockbuster type movies, summer movies. I always check Google right at the end to see if there's anything on after credits. And then I, you know, if I find something and I see the rest of the crowd start to leave, I just kind of shake my head with a grin and be like, hey, you guys are gonna miss this. But, you know, that just again kind of takes us away from what we've just seen and moved us on to the next. You know, so take something like Star Wars and, you know, modern expectations. Again, this is just me talking here, but you know, here's the thing about Star Wars. When people say they love Star Wars, they're usually not talking about plot details. They're talking about how it made them feel when they were younger, especially, you know, just it it hit at a time where I was just, you know, really impressionable and just these, you know, space and uh good guys, bad guys, and lightsabers, you know, it was all something that was just really cool to a young kid. You know, so it just it when I was younger and I saw that, it was something that was just it stuck with me and resonated. You know, that feeling, the music, the scale, the optimism, that's locked in. But new movies don't get that grace period anymore. Everything moves so fast. These days they have to be good, original, relevant, memeable, meaning, you know, they're can you do something with it on social media? Discourse proof and sequel ready. Again, these are the blockbuster summer movies, you know, and I think we can all agree we've seen films where we're like, I can't wait to see the next one, and some where you're like, boy, I hope they don't make another one. This one was perfect as it was. You know, a case in point would be Quentin Tarantino's take on Toy Story. For him, he said the first three Toy Story films are the perfect trilogy. He's never seen four and won't see five. Just because everything in his mind that needed to be done with those characters and that story was done in those three films. But going back to Star Wars, all those things I just meant, them having to be good, original, relevant, memeable for social media, discourse-proof, and sequel ready, they have to be all of those at the same time. Star Wars didn't have to compete with a thousand other films. You know, when it came out, it was just it came out at the right time. Does it have the impact it did in 77 if it came out today? I don't know. But I do know that lightning struck at that time, and that's that's what happened. You know, again, Star Wars didn't have to compete with a thousand other options. It didn't have to justify itself as content, it just had to be memorable. And that's a brutal standard for modern movies to compete with, because it's not just that it has to be memorable, it's gotta be doing this or saying that. You know, the world has gotten so small with social media that if an actor does something that somebody doesn't like, then you get review bombs, you get, you know, instead of the art as a whole being judged, you know, personal feelings get mixed in for one actor or another, and then, you know, something that thousands, hundreds or thousands of people worked on gets pushed to the wayside because of uh a perceived mistake that somebody made. Uh, it's just i it's it's a different different world these days. You know, going back to films and, you know, let's talk about franchises for a moment. So again, I've mentioned Star Wars, I've mentioned Indiana Jones. You know, some people say they're afraid of franchises. I myself don't think that's true. We're not, as a whole, tired of Star Wars, as is evidenced by the amount of money that those movies uh still bring in at that property. We're not tired of Indiana Jones. You know, despite what happened over the last two films, there's still a demand for Indiana Jones. The video game that came out here last year, Indiana Jones in the Great Circle, is an amazing adventure. If you haven't played it and want a good Indiana Jones story, give that a try. We're not tired of Pixar Disney as a as a whole, as an idea. You know, we get we can all have our own personal feelings about current standards of, again, companies and their films they're putting out. But when you look at the classic films, that, you know, the Pixar, you know, when Pixar movies were an event coming out, you know, we we long for those types of of films. And, you know, I think Frozen captured that, you know, with when it came back out being Disney animation studios, you know, it had been Pixar, Pixar, Pixar. And then, you know, Frozen came out, tangled before it, but Frozen really blew the doors off of that genre. So we're not tired of it. You know, there's always a new crop of kids coming up and growing up. And, you know, the just because we've seen something and they haven't, it it really puts them in a unique position to go ahead and and find what they love. And up to the parents to go ahead and and put that in front of them, to let them either grasp or push away. But as a whole, you know, franchises, we're not tired of those. What we're tired of is uncertainty. Older franchises feel complete, right? I mean, Star Wars is cemented in what it is, even as more uh stories come out, it's still, you know, Star Wars as a as a universe. You know, those films, those franchises, they know who they are and they know when to end. And again, what I mean by that is they know when to let other people decide when that time is for them to either stay on board or end their journey. And Star Wars has grown up through generations now, and I don't think we're there. A lot of modern franchise entries uh they feel tent, like placeholders instead of stories. Whereas old movies feel solid. New movies often feel unsure. And audiences can feel that difference immediately. Now, with all this talk, I mean, what what does this mean for the box office? The box office isn't weak because people don't love movies, it's weaker because people are cautious. You know, they're cautious for many different reasons. You know, leaving the house now requires essentially confidence. It requires a certainty, it requires a reason. Re-watching gives you a certainty. The theater asks you to take a gamble. Uh, when you already know Star Wars works, when you already know a Pixar movie will hit emotionally, a gamble feels unnecessary. You know, especially when you're talking about how much it actually takes cost to take your family to the movies. I live in the Midwest where it is essentially one of the cheaper places to go catch a movie, as is, you know, talking to my buddy Funkel Hipster, who's been on the show a lot. He lives out in LA, and the you know, the cost that he pays is considerably more than what I'm paying around here, and it's still$15 a seat here in the Midwest. So a family of four, you know, I mean that that adds up real quick. Sixty just to get in the door. And then, you know, you know, a couple bags of popcorn, a couple of sodas will go ahead and run another 20 bucks. So you're you're nearing$100 for a night out at the movies. And I think that may be part of the reason that sometimes it's just feels better to go ahead and at least financially, just stay home and not risk it. You know, again, not just for the financial impact, but the time impact. And again, going with something that you've seen before, maybe sharing something you've seen before and like with your family who maybe hasn't seen it, right? And then introducing them to something that that they haven't been emotionally attached to and might uh latch on to. And when millions of uh people feel that way, you know, the box office reflects it. That's why the numbers are down. You know, we are here again in the Midwest where I'm at, and in my town, you know, we had multiple places you could go see movies. And then it was down to three main places, but each of those theaters, you know, I mean, had, you know, they're multiplexes. So, you know, there's you know, 13 theaters at one, eighteen at another, you know, ten, I think, at another one. And now we are down to basically two. There's one on the west side of town, and there's one near me on the north side of town. And so, you know, that reflects the box office hit that that the box office has taken, you know, since COVID. You know, when when that happened and streaming became a big thing, and you had first-run movies streaming on HBO. I remember James Gunn's The Suicide Squad having its premiere on HBO Max. And, you know, that was would have been definitely a movie shown in the theaters first. It just COVID really changed a lot of things, and it really was kind of the start of the box office fall. You know, now it's clogged back a little bit here recently, but still, you you know, it's it's again the franchises, Avatar performs strong. You know, the superhero movies, Superman, things like that, you know, Avengers Doomsday, the hype machine leading up to that one is is going full born, is just absolutely the marketing is is in overdrive for that. So we'll see. But again, with a big box office hit like that, which I'm sure it will be, it still took a lot to get it there, right? It took the franchise uh the Marvel cinematic universe to put us in those seats. And not only that, but characters we'd thought for sure we'd seen the last of in Marvel and actors are back for this Avengers Doomsday. You know, one of the first trailers that hit with Avatar was an Avengers Doomsday teaser that featured Chris Evans as Steve Rogers. You know, Steve Rogers will return in Avengers Doomsday. Robert Downey Jr. was cast as Dr. Doom. So, you know, what version of Doom it it it remains to be seen if it'll be tied in with a Tony Stark variant or something like that. But, you know, Marvel reached into the pocketbook and went into the formula bag of what they know works. So they're pulling out all the stops, you know, the movies that they've come out with recently, with arguably a lesser tier of characters. And what I mean by that is, you know, everybody knows Spider-Man, everybody knows Iron Man and Superman and things like that. And I guess I know Superman's DC. I'm just using as an example. The big ones have an automatic fan base. But when you get into the the smaller level of heroes, and I mean by comic standards, the the characters that not that aren't mainstream, that people don't know. Again, Superman, everybody knows Superman, rather whether they read comics or not. Same goes with Batman or Spider-Man. They're gonna have automatic fan bases, but some of these others, Shang Chi was a great movie. Many people I talked to had no idea that was an established character. Some thought it was new, thought he was new, just created for the Marvel cinematic universe. So again, you know, once you get out of out of those mainstays of the Marvel stable, you know, you you start running the risk and seeing where stagnation and disinterest comes from. But, you know, the the the big ace they have in their their pocket right now with Avengers doomsday coming up is the relaunch of the X-Men, one of the largest Marvel franchises that we haven't seen reborn in the Marvel Cinematic universe completely. So that will be interesting. But yeah, I think that's again a familiarity with those characters. And the box office will show once those characters hit the screen again. But it all stems from being familiar and having a comfort level in the past. So what does all this say about us? Basically, I think it says that rewatching old movies feels better because it's comforting, because they're familiar, because they don't demand anything from you. Again, from me, whether it's Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Silver Line. Playbook, a Star Is Born, or a Pixar Disney movie you've seen a hundred times, those films have already earned our trust, my trust. Your trust, your mileage may vary, but you've got those films that you go back to. For me, these these films I mentioned, they don't need to prove themselves. They just need to be there, right? And everything has gotten so much easier to obtain these days, again, with streaming services. And before that, sa uh physical media, DVDs, Blu-rays, and before that, VHS tapes. You know, one of the things that that I talk about with with my friends when we're talking movies and films and whatnot is the trying to explain to somebody younger that you know, I remember in 1984 seeing a film and then going ahead and coming back and and seeing it again the next day at the theater, you know, and which again at that at that age I was some I had to get somebody to take me to the theater. I wasn't driving at that point. So it was something that just had to go ahead and again be an an investment. And that movie in 1984 that I'm talking about was Ghostbusters. And I saw that twice in one weekend. It was the first time I was able to see a movie I that I liked so much, like in consecutive days. And then after it left theaters, there was really nothing. You know, it was not readily available on on for the average person to get a hold of. Mainstream VHS wasn't a thing, you know, yet. And so it was waiting for things like uh at the time HBO was around and it was a paid cable service. And I remember the uh premiere of Ghostbusters, you know, the next year, and thought, man, this is great. I'm watching a a theater movie on TV and one I really love. So again, I couldn't wait to revisit it. But you know, there was a time where back in my day, it wasn't just something you could pop a DVD in or go to your smart TV and search Ghostbusters and watch. So again, a familiarity there, you know, brings you back. So I'm genuinely curious, what movies do you keep coming back to? What are your comfort rewatches? If you want to share, all the links to contact the show are in the episode description, as I mentioned before. I'd I'd really love to hear from you. And one quick thing before I wrap up, if you've been listening to this show for a while, or a rating or a review on Apple Podcast or wherever you're listening really helps the show find people who might actually enjoy it. So no pressure, but if you've got the time, I'd really appreciate it. And if you want to make sure that you don't miss future episodes, you can subscribe or follow the show wherever you're listening. Again, everything's linked in the description. This has been This Won't Teach You Anything, and thank you for listening.