Most of the time, this happens clearly by accident. After all, you cannot really change your opinion toward a film you once loved until you've watched the thing again with a newly obtained perspective (unless you're one of those muffins who like to alter your opinion because your mates think it's crap).
But with some foreshadowing and superstition, you can make a choice to preserve the memory, as opposed to giving it a gamble with your altered state of mind. How to do this? By not exposing your mind to that film again of course. I have made this very decision with Chris Columbus's 1999 financial flop, Bicentennial Man.
I first watched this film when I was ten years old. I was off school with a virus and my mum ordered the film from front row (a feature which was essential the sky movies before...well, before sky movies I guess).
The film absolutely broke my heart. Seriously, I had never been that much of an emotional wreck after watching a film (well, except Titanic. Honestly boys and girls, that one made me cry like a bitch). As soon as Celine Dion's Then You Look at Me started playing over the end credits, I ran to my room and cried out my stupid ten-year-old eyes until they resembled a pair of shriveled sprouts which had been left in the blazing sun for too long.
The reason why Bicentennial Man reduced me to a bubbling ball of tears was all down to its themes on the passage of time and inevitable death. The story follows an Android named Andrew (played by Robbin Williams) and his two hundred year old journey which sees him transform from a robot into a human.
Seeing as we humans possess that annoying habit of aging and eventually dying, the theoretically immortal Andrew must watch all of his friends and lovers die over the course of this story.
And oh boy, the film really does go out of its way to stress the point that everyone you've ever loved - including yourself - will one day cease to be a member of this world. This is what made this film so exceedingly heart wrenching for me.
As I watched it, my childhood mind started to reflect on its own life. I thought of all the pets who I had once loved and who had eventually died. I thought about the family who I would one day loose to the callousness of time. I even thought about my own inevitable termination which I would be unable to escape from.
And I was only ten for crying out load.
I forgot about this film for a long time after I saw it. Life just went on as it always does. Then, one day, the memory of that day reignited itself within my mind. Just the remembrance of its existence broke my stupid heart all over again. I was fifteen by this point and the very thought of a story that I had watched half a decade previous was making my cry all over again.
The internet forums seemed to have a very different idea toward this film however. I was a fool and decided to read up what the users of IMDB had to say about it (a site which I like to pretend stands for the Idiot's Moronic Debating Bunker. Seriously, that site is filled with some of the rudest, troll faced boobs of the internet. But don't worry, I am a member, so I can say derogatory things like that).
To my surprise, the IMDB users were not a fan of the film in the slightest. Many users decided to dedicate large portions of their time by expressing how they thought the film was bloated, boring, emotionally manipulative and horribly executed by a hack of a director.
I wanted to write a counter argument. I wanted to defend that very film which moved me so intensely at such a young age. How dare they ridicule a film which made me think so deeply. They would pay for their stupidity. I would slap them into shape by firing an arsenal of counter opinions left right and center at their feeble little brains!
But then what if they were right? What if I watched it again and hated every second of it? Such a possibility would tarnish and remove that beautiful memory which I held over this story. I may very well have still loved it, but the possibility of learning otherwise would be the death of what was such a powerful part of my childhood.
Instead of taking such a gamble, I decided that I would instead preserve my memory of this feature. My older mind didn't need to see it. In a world full of disappointment and negativity, I wanted to cling on to the memory of those staggering emotions which such a film once provoked from within me. Seeing it now would only serve to either prove that I was right in some bizarrely subjective way, or damage that very special memory.
Heck, even if I did end up enjoying it the second time round, the chances are that my perception of the film would be vastly different to what they were many years previous. I am a completely different person today, so inevitably I will react to storytelling experiences on a dramatically differing level.
So if anyone happened to ask me what I think of the Bicentennial Man during my adult years (as if that is ever going to happen) then I will tell them that it broke my heart as a child.
That is how I want that story to stay, from now until the day that I will inevitably die. The feelings which I felt thirteen years ago were nothing short of a life altering experience for me. It is an experience which I intend to freeze in time. Attempting to relive it would only serve to replace it with something completely different.
Some stories are best left as faded memories.
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