Standing Ovations Are Optional
Years ago, a few friends, fellow students and I had a subscription that let you go to the cinema as often as you liked for a fixed monthly fee. And we made good use of it: on weekday evenings, preceded by a regular visit to the local American specialties restaurant. On weekends, when we had time. And even on Fridays, squeezed between an early and a late lecture, catching the morning show.
Often enough, those same friends would recommend a film I absolutely had to see. One they'd already been to multiple times, and where you were considered borderline insane if you didn't buy a ticket at the earliest possible opportunity. In 2012, that film was Cloud Atlas, a science fiction epic based on David Mitchell's novel, spanning six time periods with intertwined characters. Complex, epic, magnificent, my friends said. A perfect ten.
I genuinely hated it.
The film ran close to three hours and went on far too long. The story was too slow, too dull, and on top of that, too complicated. When you're trying to relax between lectures for a bit, a film like Cloud Atlas is the last thing you need. Just to be sure, I went back a second time. Maybe I'd been in the wrong mood. It didn't help. Just as unbearably boring as the first time.
Where one person gives a standing ovation, another couldn't care less. That's just how it goes with films, books, series, games, museums. With all forms of media. With everything in life, really.
I've come to understand that your own opinion and experience are ultimately what matter. In the end, what counts is that you are happy with what you do, not what others expect of you.