As I scroll through Netflix looking for something appealing to watch, I'm constantly haunted by that red line that is only reaching part way across the bottom of a large number of the thumbnails. There are two reasons that I rarely ever successfully finish or even get half way through a movie or TV series; either I predict what's going to happen and get bored so I don't bother, or I predict what's going to happen and I avoid it. The result of this habit has been a lack of interest in anything Netflix and sometimes even YouTube has to offer.
For a while my family and I found it funny that we would only be 10-20 minutes into our movie when I figure out who ends up with who or how they are going to stop the bad guy or what the 'major plot twist' is going to be. It was a fun little game that I very often won, but after a while it took on a bad side: I lost interest in actually committing to watching anything.
Some of the time it's simply boredom because many plots for movies can easily be predicted: character introductions, story build up, things are going well, something goes horribly wrong, there's no way it can end well now, but wait. Plot twist, a bit of backstory to explain plot twist, crisis solved, happy ending. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a foolproof template, obviously there are some movies that won't fit this particular pattern, but I'm generalising. My point is that I find myself very rarely inclined to watch a movie that I can predict the ending of simply by reading Netflix's plot summary.
Other times, and I find this is more often the case, I find something I wouldn't mind watching, but when it gets to a point or is approaching a point where I know something is going to happen that I don't want to happen, I feel the urge to stop watching it. It's an avoidance technique I've developed as a way to do exactly that: avoid the parts of a story that I don't want to see.
Even if I know there will undoubtedly be a happy ending, I feel it hard to handle the tightness in my chest that occurs when the tension of a plot reaches its peak. Just last week I sat down with my mum to watch Peter Rabbit. I know what you're thinking, "come on Beth, that's a movie for kids, based off of a children's book. There's no way something is going to happen that's bad enough for you to want to turn it off." Right? Wrong. When (*spoiler alert*) the rabbits' burrow gets blown up and Thomas McGregor leaves to go back to the city since he figures he has lost his chance with Bea, I felt bad for everyone involved and I hated the feeling enough that I expressed my feelings to my mum, who is very aware of my avoidance habit. She simply patted my head and told me I had to fight through the tough part to get to the happy ending. To be fair, she was right and the ending was adorably happy with dancing rabbits and hedgehogs and birds and other wildlife all over the place.
Despite the fact that I know that more often than not the ending will be a happy one, I cannot bring myself to go back and finish all of the movies and series that I have abandoned in favour of letting my brain come up with an ending I'm happy with and skipping all the angsty parts. I'll let myself believe that The 100's Finn survives the wrath of the Grounders and he and Clarke live happily ever after. I'll let myself believe that Erin Brockovich successfully brings down the company lying to people about the harmful water supplies without having to face any hardships in the process. I'll let myself believe that Jackie and Kelso of That 70's Show end up together without breaking up and getting back together 18472 times. My imagination may or not match up with what actually happens in the end, but I will to submit myself to the pain that must be endured before finding out.
So I suppose this piece of writing will be left in the same manner as most of the movies and series on My List: un-ended. I have yet to find a solution or a way to cope with the angst of movies without simply avoiding all of it. For now I'll just let myself come up with the ending I want in my head. Maybe I'll become a screenwriter so I can write plots that don't have painful plot twists...
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