It should be obvious that it doesn't often occur to young people to start keeping track of how many movies they've seen, even if they are like me and grew up obsessed.
So, I thought it would be prudent, given a few recent conversations, to make some back of the napkin, rough estimates concerning how many movies I have actually seen. I was just tired of being asked the question and pulling numbers out of my ass.
So, I'll be thirty-seven the day after tomorrow. I used to love watching Disney movies on VHS and Beta at home when I was a kid. I also had the 1989 Batman effectively memorized. My mom started taking me to the movies as soon as it was possible.
It's almost impossible to account for rewatched movies. Obviously, I'm not gonna count the Imax runs in which I watched films like Jurassic Park or Dunkirk on a loop for several weeks. I watch Minority Report once a year.
Still, when most of the football players in high school were off trying to get laid, I was spending my summers at Hollywood video renting five movies at a time, watching them, and returning them in a couple of days just to rent five more. So, there was a four year stint in high school when I was watching about ten to fifteen movies a week.
I didn't have the money nor the down time to go to the movies as often as I'd like during college; but, I was in film school. That's four years of about two or three movies a week that were either screened in class or that we were required to see. On top of that, I did try to fit a new release in at least once or twice a week. Netflix was also just starting up (yes, I'm that old) and I was constantly cycling through DVDs (again, yeah, old).
So, this is a pretty broad estimate; but, I think 3,500 is a safe number; but, the number is probably higher.