Quirkbag Collection #10 – 18.07.25
Why do movies matter?
It’s 2025. The world has only become more technologically obsessed with AI and easily entertained by political drama. It’s like everyone’s so easily distracted now.
Gone are the days of old-fashioned storytelling as a past-time. Even rarer are those who enjoy a good film, an original film, that relates to everyday life and then some.
Modern Influence of Movies
Movies can be mainstream and can be acquired tastes. They know no boundaries in their storytelling capabilities. Limited only by its audience, even with all its influence, movies are becoming less charming and accepted by new generations.
This generation prefers 10-second videos of people dancing to some snippet of questionable audio and music.
It’s strange, really, when you take this perspective: people would rather be distracted by strangers dancing for 10 seconds to some odd music and scrolling 50 consecutive times than sit and enjoy 100 or so minutes of a movie which has a start, middle and end.
If you’re still reading at this point, where your attention has not yet been drained, you are welcome to read on. You are one of few individuals who can withstand long-form content.
What Else Can Movies Be?
Movies have always been an avenue for a fraction of the human experience to be shared with the world. It lets audiences recognise the themes and values of the story.
Sometimes it served to teach, remind, warn, share and perhaps simply entertain. But any movie worth its salt serves to connect emotionally.
Richard Curtis, the celebrated screenwriter and director of well-loved movies like Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), Notting Hill (1999), and one of my personal favourites, About Time (2013), was described by others in an interview as having injected good-natured themes into his films.
They even attributed his successful creation of movies to this style of storytelling: portraying what really matters in life in his own raw and witty manner.
His stories resonated with people because the characters’ experiences and little moments sprinkled throughout the story mattered. They mirrored the real struggles and conflicts and heartbreak that exist all too commonly.
Arnold Schwarzenegger grew up with idols of bodybuilders and eventually looked up to movie stars – the ‘male lead’ as some would say. He made it his mission to become a movie star after being a world champion bodybuilder.
He aspired to be on those awesome posters he saw in his everyday life. And we all know what happened after that in Terminator (1984) – a film I personally look back on with fond memories.
To think that one of the most famous action-movie stars in history was once inspired by movies is a refreshing thought. He would then make the very same movies, which went on to inspire and entertain the kids of the 1980s, just as he had been previously.
A certain fulfillment with a tinge of wistfulness seems to accompany this observation.
What Of The Characters That We See?
I have always found inspiration in movies from a young age. Motion pictures in general. It started with local television series, then slowly included mainstream action movies, before Netflix introduced a whole other world of storytelling to me.
I drew much inspiration from the heroes in the dominating film franchises of my time – Tony Stark, Ethan Hunt, and Harry Potter. To a young kid and (ageing) teenager, these people were practically superhuman.
They represented everything that was ‘good’, something to strive for, someone to look up to.
These were role models whom you could aspire to become because they were vulnerable, but courageous; afraid, but persistent; constrained, but resourceful; alone, but never lonely.
Almost like a North Star, if you would, they guided children and adolescents who dared to learn and take inspiration from them. They helped those who let the storytelling move them and change them for the better. They inspired those who needed hope through the characters’ experience.
If the impressionable audiences really studied and embodied the values and virtues shown throughout these movies, and were taught to appreciate storytelling in the world of movies in general, tremendous merit would be granted to them.
Undoubtedly so. I’d chalk it up to what Charlie Munger called ‘Worldly Wisdom’.
Would Movies Remain Relevant?
Some call movies escapism. Some call them entertainment. Then again, some people choose to play golf. We all make our choices, and we all have to make peace with them.
It matters little what movies mean to others as compared to what they mean to you or maybe to some past version of yourself.
I used to be obsessed with Cars (2006) and the sequel when I was 6. When I watched the latest one in 2017, it felt like no time had passed since my childhood. Ironically, it also felt as if so much of life had happened.
Movies have this strange capability where you can learn and see different perspectives of the story when you watch it at different points in life. Some movies are historical icons – enshrined and protected by their fandom.
Movies mean something to people who relate to them. They did and would always continue to do so as long as audiences hold them dear.
Just imagine how many people crave old storytelling like Jerry Maguire (1996), Happy Gilmore (1996), Casablanca (1942), and Rocky (1976) (the original Rocky was indeed an original film).
Millions more grew up with The Terminator (1984), Ghostbusters (1984) and Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977). Theme parks were even built around them.
Modern culture squeezes these iconic stories and movies out of the way because they might have ‘outgrown their time’.
But have they?
Movies are as timeless as the stories they tell. ‘Sleepless In Seattle’, ‘About Time’, ‘Notting Hill’ and the like portray the same emotions between strangers today as they did all those years ago.
In other words, the emotion of ‘love’ has not yet faded – maybe just the way we prefer to express it (hopefully not in the form of a 10-second dance to some random music track).
Are Movies Timeless?
All this to say, I was raised on movies and stories. So did millions of others. Watching them helped make us who we are, and for the most part, left us better than before we watched them. This change is fundamentally timeless.
Surely these movies, regardless of age, should be shared so long as they remain and relevant. If they helped us through the timeless awkward teenage phase and the stumbling twenties, why won’t they help those who are in that era of life now?
This is not a case for watching films. This is a case for those who believe and once believed in movies. Don’t give up hope on movies and storytelling because of modern culture. Movies that withstood the test of time have taught us better than to give in to the fad.
If you love movies and appreciate storytelling, scenes that are watershed moments in the story, then I think you have gotten your answer to my first question.
And to acknowledge that, here are some of my favourite flashback moments, guilt-free:
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