I asked a friend if he thought that Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer was good and his reply is interesting. He said, "If you're a purist, you'll have complaints." (I didn't ask, but presumably this has something to do with the Surfer's role as herald for Galaticos, etc.)

This same friend also said, about Spiderman 3, that whilst the show was 'not bad' the timeline was off, the characters weren't developed, it felt like a rush-job, etc.

As for me, I thought F4SS was a little 'shallow' in terms of acting but the SFX were worth it. I also thought the critics were a little harsh on Spidey, saying they didn't care about Peter Parker's love-life.

C'mon, PP is Spidey and if the movie had turned out some other way, then at least some critics would then be complaining about a lack of story, depth, ad infinitum!

So the thing is: Whether and/or how and/or how much one 'enjoys' a movie is inexorably influenced by a HOST of factors like:

• how much you know of the 'original' story (and how much you care)
• whether or not you've seen the trailer
• your mood in the cinema and what you were doing just prior to showtime
• who you're watching the show with
• what time you're watching it
• where you're watching it and how good the sound system is (I recall watching Jurassic Park in some rundown cinema in Singapore; can you believe I had to strain my ears to attain the maximum T-Rex effect?!)
• from which angle in the cinema you're watching it
• what you happen to be thinking of at any particular scene during the show
• whether or not you've read any of the reviews (and which particular review you've read)
• what your friends have been saying about the movie
• what you think about the movie's stars, genre, theme, directors, etc.
• the frequency of your movie-going

So what's the point (other than the fact that I seem to have a fetishism for bullet-points, *grin*)? It's this: The movie experience is infinitely different according to the individual's context.

Diversity, heterogeneity, difference, the exclusive there-ness of the moment - these are the elements that constitute the "movie" for us as individuals.

But things don't stop with the viewing. There's the after-math, the musings, the reflections, the recall. Different people "do" different things to movies. Some people quote them, some replay selected scenes in their minds, some quote them for sermons, some curse them, some ignore them.

What is a "movie" for us? Is it just that 2 hours plus of THX-blasted images streaming out from the projector? Or is it the new slices of experiences and actions continually created and recreated as a result of having sat in the cinema and paid attention?

When does a movie 'begin'? When the ads are over or the very first time you saw the poster as you were walking along the cinema's corridors half a year earlier?

And when, as is the case very often today, we make a movie character part of our lives (like when we visualise ourselves walking talking acting like our favorite movie star), then where is the boundary between 'movie', 'self', 'world', etc.?

And if all these questions apply to movies - imagine language.

I need that blue pill again. Or was it red?