So lately I decided to knock some items off of my "things I should really get around to doing" list and so I've been watching The Godfather. I just finished watching Part II, and I think my big takeaway at this point is that I'm struck by how both familiar and unfamiliar the movies are to me at the same time.
They're familiar in some pretty obvious ways -- the movies are such classics that just about every big thing they do has been a cliche for decades at this point. Not just the extremely quoted bits about daughters weddings and deals that cant be refused, but also a lot of the general moral and thematic tones about family, loyalty, and so on are very, very familiar.
But, at the same time, they don't really tell stories in the form of multiple 3+ hour epics anymore. So, even if all the story beats are nostalgic at this point, the actual feeling of sitting down and basking in these movies for hours at a time still feels pretty fresh.
