Not every movie opinion lasts forever — tastes and times change, and sometimes a movie we used to love isn’t so great upon a rewatch. Alternatively, sometimes a flick we used to hate grew on us. So this month, we asked the team about the movies changed in our personal opinions.

Justin: Showing some of my childhood favorites to my kids certainly exposed which ones were a little more creaky than others. I used to be a pretty big fan of The Neverending Story, but upon a rewatch, I found it more cheesy than cool. Shrek has transformed into horrible computer animation and bad puns and the criminal responsible for starting the trend that every cartoon movie had to end with a dance sequence. Spacecamp is a really fun camp movie — still a guilty pleasure of mine — but hoo-boy is the drama of blasting off into space rushed and not that believable.

And pretty much every ’90s movie that leaned on CGI slipped in my estimation since due to really awkward visuals that don’t match up with the practical effects. Even The Matrix doesn’t pop quite as hard as it used to for me because of this.

On the upward trending side, I’m a lot more kind to George Lucas’ Star Wars prequels than I used to be. I’m not a huge fan of them, but at least they feel far more “Star Warsy” than most of Disney’s botched projects.

Probably the biggest shift in my own opinion since the start of this site is that I’ve really cooled on all of Kevin Smith’s View Askewniverse flicks. Back in the ’90s, they felt funny and edgy and a step outside the norm. Nowadays, I see them as crude and far too vulgar to be enjoyable. It’s why I haven’t even bothered to watch Clerks III yet — and probably never will.

Sitting Duck: My poorly aged selection is a performer rather than a movie, specifically Robin Williams. When I was a kid, I adored his manic style of comedy. But as an adult, I find it loathsome and have completely 1 Corinthians 13:11ed that nonsense. This realization first came about when I rented the first season of Mork and Mindy back in the days when Netflix was still DVDs by mail. The pain and suffering I experienced was a shock and caused me to reevaluate his oeuvre in a less favorable light.

If I could select one movie that exemplifies what grates my cheese about Williams, it’s Mrs. Doubtfire. Not only does he jack up his most obnoxious shticks to eleven, but the screenplay insists we should be rooting for his character Daniel Hillard, even though he is really a horrible scat pile of a person.

The only movie of his that has held up for me is Popeye. A major factor in that is because director Robert Altman kept Williams on a short leash and reigned in his worst impulses. If only more directors had been similarly resolute.

Mike: I actually have a term for this, or at least a term for realizing a movie you loved as a kid is unwatchable as an adult. I call it Darkman syndrome.

The original Mortal Kombat movie was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen… when I was 17. In the ensuing years, details like the terrible acting, horrible writing, and atrocious CGI have begun to stand out more egregiously. However, fight choreography and the practical effects for Goro still hold up.

ZombieDog: I guess it started in 2005 with the newest iteration of Batman starring Christian Bale. Having lived through Tim Burton’s 1989 version, I wasn’t exactly on the edge of my seat in anticipation. Although, after I watched it, I was completely enthralled and blown away.

Flash-forward three years, and Iron Man pops into the theaters. It was fun, not quite the same tone as Batman, but it was captivating. Superhero movies have been with us for decades and have basically been kind of cheesy low-budget efforts, however this new batch was well-funded, well-directed, and well-acted. What’s crazy is the sequels were just as good. The Dark Knight gave us one of the most iconic Joker performances ever.

The real problem with these movies in my mind is that they were insanely profitable. For an investment of about $200 million, you were guaranteed a billion in return. I guess it would’ve been sometime after the 2010s when they came out with their plan for the future which projected making about 30 of these movies. Around the same time Disney acquired Lucasfilm’s and hinted it was going to run that series into the ground. At the time I won’t lie I was anticipating some of them, and to be fair, some of them were good.

Moving on 15 years, and we’ve been inundated with DC, Marvel, and Disney crap produced for consumers to gorge themselves on. At some point, it just became a blur of what movie was out when and why the universe was going to explode or whatever was going to happen.

I guess my main gripe is that originality was sacrificed for predictability and familiarity. Not because they didn’t think the audiences could handle change but because they didn’t want to deviate from the formula that made money. I understand Hollywood is a business, it’s just that at a certain point the same fast food you have been eating for decades loses its appeal and you become increasingly aware of how desperate you are for something original, that’s made with love, and adds to your life experience.

Drake: This is probably going to be an unpopular opinion, but for me it’s Willow. I saw it when it first came out and enjoyed it. Val Kilmer was great as a dashing swordsman, the brownies were good fun, and Jean Marsh was entertaining as the evil queen. Yes, it was derivative, but it was nice to see someone doing a fantasy flick that wasn’t yet another retread of the Conan movies.

Instead it was a retread of Cinderella and the Hobbit, among other things, but at least it was ripping off something different.

And granted, George Lucas’s cheap shot at The New Yorker’s legendary reviewer Pauline Kael was off-putting,* but then again Kael had no doubt had worse insults than that pointed in her direction.

But seeing it a few years ago, I wanted to strangle Willow (the movie, not the character) just so it would shut up. Loud, annoying, and utterly obnoxious, the film patters on and on endlessly, only catching its breath so that it can launch into yet another noisy tirade that had me adjusting the volume on my TV down on more than one occasion.

Warwick Davis’s seemingly endless whining was off-putting at best and nail-on-chalkboard screeching at worst. Val Kilmer was still decent, even though he appears bored at the best of times, Joanne Whalley is given far too little to do, and Ron Howard shows all the many heavy-handed flaws that have made me dislike pretty much his entire filmography as a director.

So, yeah, it’s safe to say I’ll never bother with this one again. No idea why I liked it all those years ago. Maybe I was just a less cantankerous Mutant back then.

*Kael had panned Star Wars upon its release, saying “Lucas has got the tone of bad movies down pat.” In retaliation, Lucas gave Willow’s evil general the name Kael.