In your ratings, how do you account for the novelty factor and the chronological order in which you watched your movies?

Introduce yourself to the community or chat with other users about whatever is on your mind
livelove
Posts: 759
67 Ratings
Your TCI: na
Joined: Thu Sep 17, 2015 9:36 pm

In your ratings, how do you account for the novelty factor and the chronological order in which you watched your movies?

Post by livelove »

I often struggle with how to accurately score movies. This topic is part of a series dealing with voting-related problems, challenges, phenomenons and paradoxes — all as part of a quest whose end-goal is to correctly reflect my appreciation of movies when rating them:


Question: In your ratings, how do you account for the fact that first experiences generally have a greater impact on us than later experiences of the same kind (novelty factor)?

As far as movies are concerned, this is the main reason, why most of the time (with notable exceptions of course), sequels are generally lower rated than the first part.

Let's say you watched Jurassic Parc 1 for the first time as a kid in 1993 and are very impressed, because it's the first time you see these big and nicely animated dinosaurs on the big screen. By the time you saw Jurassic Parc 5 25 years later, you were of course less impressed. It's in the nature of things.

That JP5 might be actually worse than JP1 is not my point.
My point is that if you had watched the JP series in reverse-chronological order (JP5, JP4, JP3, JP2, JP1), then chances are that you'll rank JP5 higher than JP1. Or even if - in absolute numbers - JP1 still outranks JP5, then chances are that you'll rank JP5 higher than you would have and JP1 lower than you would have if you had watched the series in chronological order.

So my point is: chronology matters.

And this problem is not only limited to films of the same series/franchise, but also potentially concerns entire genres (e.g. superhero films), camera work (e.g. found footage films), subject matters (e.g. drugs), or actors whose unchanging shtick you grow tired off (Jim Carrey, Eddie Murphy, etc.):

chmul_cr0n @ viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7818#p67077 wrote:Another reason might the accounting for novelty factors such as a director's style or something. Sometimes I'm really impressed by some auteur's movie, but 5 years later the things that blew me away I find to be somewhat common. They just weren't common to me, because I hadn't seen very many movies.
Movies can become a personal reference point of comparative value for other movies to come ... as well as for the movies seen beforehand (which may require revisiting their scores):

chmul_cr0n @ viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5506&p=68845#p67076 wrote:Of course you always have to take into acount that you're much more knowledgeable now than you were at that time. Maybe your current favorite movie is one you saw when you were 16, and it blew your mind and completely redefined what a movie was or could be to you. So now you have new context.


So the bottom line question is:

How do you deal with the phenomenon that the chronology in which we see our movies changes our experience and thus - some might argue injustly - influences our vote ?
Last edited by livelove on Sat Sep 28, 2019 4:10 am, edited 7 times in total.

ribcage
Posts: 195
4173 Ratings
Your TCI: na
Joined: Thu Aug 18, 2011 10:13 pm

Re: In your ratings, how do you account for the novelty factor and the chronological order in which you watched your mov

Post by ribcage »

If I review it, I admit I'm being a forgiving, schmaltzy, nostalgic bum by giving it more points than it deserves. Or if I don't I just let it ride and occasionally bring it up elsewhere just to remind people I'm a monster who gave Bio-Dome a perfect 100.

paulofilmo
Posts: 2586
2428 Ratings
Your TCI: na
Joined: Mon Apr 07, 2008 3:40 pm

Re: In your ratings, how do you account for the novelty factor and the chronological order in which you watched your mov

Post by paulofilmo »

This was my thing with this.

I don't know how related it is, but I think there's an aspect of how emotions link with memory.

Novelty/unknown is emotional, especially compared to a (real) life that is safely ensconced in routine/risk aversion. (Related to the phenomenon of experience being most intense in adolescence; taste being solidified around this time. It's a bit of a tragedy that future experiences are measured against this adolescent intensity. Also related to the perception of time quickening with age).

unexpected - creates emotion - creates memories (a film holding 'a special place')

expected/unsurprising - unemotional - forgotten


-----
and therefore..

'how do you account for the novelty factor and the chronological order in which you watched your movies?'

I don't. I think I think in terms of directors. And I arrange them in my mind often according to my first experience with them. (or maybe also all the films I like, conveniently forgetting the ones I don't).

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/mi ... get-older/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog ... -get-older
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog ... s-part-2-1
https://buffer.com/resources/the-scienc ... ays-longer

livelove
Posts: 759
67 Ratings
Your TCI: na
Joined: Thu Sep 17, 2015 9:36 pm

Re: In your ratings, how do you account for the novelty factor and the chronological order in which you watched your mov

Post by livelove »

@paulofilmo:
Thank you for chiming in. You hit the nail on the head.
Concerning your linked thread, I am not sure if the "first seen film of a director" is really rated better than the subsequent ones.

I rather think that the "novelty factor" mostly concerns
  • • sequels
  • • very iconic films to which subsequent films will always be compared

For example, I don't think that James Cameron's The Abyss (1989) will be compared to James Cameron's The Terminator (1984) as much as other killing-machine movies will forever and always be compared to The Terminator.

Or other superhero movies to the Batman/Superman series.
Or dream-related movies to Inception.
Last edited by livelove on Thu Sep 26, 2019 1:34 am, edited 1 time in total.

livelove
Posts: 759
67 Ratings
Your TCI: na
Joined: Thu Sep 17, 2015 9:36 pm

Re: In your ratings, how do you account for the novelty factor and the chronological order in which you watched your mov

Post by livelove »

paulofilmo wrote:
livelove wrote:how do you account for the novelty factor and the chronological order in which you watched your movies?
I don't.
I don't currently have a good idea either how to compensate for this, but it falsifies the rankings. :cry:

If the chronological order in which original/sequels are watched influences their scores, it does injustice to these films and their scores. :x

It's as if I knew that I'm in a very bad mood in the morning and each film viewed at this time will suffer a -20 point penalty ...
If we knew this with sufficient mathematical precision, in this case it would be very simple .... we could just add 20 points to morning viewings.

I fear that it's not as easy as that with sequels and similar films. :cry:

Or has anyone here found a good solution for how to deal with this problem ?

Post Reply