First Impressions

Which matters more, your first impression or your analysis after prolonged exposure?  If we were talking about people, I’d say the second one. You can’t sum up a person based on a first impression. People have bad days or you can catch them at the wrong moment.

But what about entertainment media; books, tv, games, movies? These are things that exist purely for entertainment. On one hand, they are entirely superficial, on the other, speaking as an author, their creators livelihood is tied up in the hope of you enjoying their product. Should they be casually dismissed with just incomplete information?

For example, there are many shows out there, I won’t bother watching because the premise sounds stupid. There are also books that I’d been excited to read that I couldn’t get back the first few chapters. Should I judge these things having not fully experienced them?

Take Twilight, I’ve not read the books, but based on what I know about them, believe they sound pretty stupid. I’ve seen the first movie, but only enjoyed the first experience thanks to Rift Trax.  Based on a movie (which we all know means squat when judging the book it’s based on) and other people’s opinions,  I feel confident I would hate the Twilight books. But is that a fair assessment? Does it matter?

What about the other way? Have you ever really enjoyed something the first time you read/saw it, but on repeated viewings, thought, “this is crap”? Which is more important of an assessment?

Take the Star Wars prequels. Initially, I enjoyed all of them. After thinking about it, I identified many of the flaws and was mostly ambivalent. Cool special effects, good lightsaber battles, the heart of a decent story, but poor dialogue and iffy acting. Over time, even that has dwindled. I watched Episode 3 not long ago, the one I usually consider the best of the prequels, and was amazed at how stupid it was that Palpatine took down 3 Jedi Masters in seconds. And how jarringly whiny Anakin was about not being made a master.

Many things I originally loved, after viewing them years later or multiple times, I’ll start to see glaring flaws in. But should that matter? I originally enjoyed them. Do they now suck? Have they always sucked and I just didn’t notice?

As a writer,  I hope people won’t reject my book out of hand, simply because something insignificant strikes them wrong. But as a reader/viewer, I do that all the time.  First impressions matter, but they also aren’t definitive.