The hidden value of random old movies on international flights

As I've told you previously, I'm a real lookee loo when it comes to what other people are watching on the plane. I make a game of trying to figure out what they're watching as quickly as I can, even if it's not something I've seen before, based on a few cast members or disconnected images from the movie (or TV show, but that's not as fun).

It didn't take me long over the weekend to identify that my neighbor was watching Gladiator, a movie that is now 25 years old.

Because I have a very specific plane agenda from which I only rarely stray -- new releases from the current year, assuming my trip is late enough in the year for those to be available -- I tend to turn my nose up at people who are not doing the same thing. 

Don't worry, I know there's no validity to this reaction, and I try to squash down such snobbery as soon as I notice it. But there's a moment it flares up before I have a chance to do anything about it. And I think "Why the hell is this guy watching Gladiator? Surely he's seen Gladiator before. How very mid of him."

The answer is obvious. Sometimes people just want to watch movies they like when they're trying to pass the time. They don't need to find the latest marginally enjoyable new release, the type that will never appear on the plane again after its three-month window of value to passengers like me. In a way, the fact that I'm watching this far more mid programming, rather than a classic that has been enshrined as such as a result of winning best picture, is very mid of me.

But more than the obvious answer: When you're on a flight of 10+ hours, it might be better to watch something you already know, rather than something you're trying to absorb for the first time.

That way you can fall asleep.

Another issue I've dealt with over the past week, regarding the desire to sleep and the desire to distract yourself with content, is listening to podcasts in order to fall asleep at night. The reason this doesn't always work for me is that I don't actually want to miss the podcast content. So my mind fights to receive it, which it can only do if it is awake and conscious. So even though the actual act of listening to someone talking is the kind of thing that can lull a jet-lagged or sleep-deprived person to sleep, listening to new content you care about undoes most of the value of that.

So perhaps for this guy, Gladiator is a movie he's already seen seven times, and sleeping through it won't be any measurable loss to him. 

You'd think I'd consider a similar thing, considering how many of the movies on this flight I had already seen (possibly as many as 100 of them). But no. I'd rather pause a movie I'm really enjoying -- in this case it was Paddington in Peru -- about 27 times, for two- to three-minute naps.