Saw Star Wars 27 Times

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
"She's a cheerleader, you've seen Star Wars 27 times. You do the math."
—Neal Schweiber to Sam Weir, Freaks and Geeks

A Comedy Trope. A character is noted to have watched a movie/seen a show/read a book/etc. on a high enough number of occasions for it to sound geeky, obsessive, embarrassing, and possibly even unhealthy.

Rewatching or rereading one's favorite stories is a very common, very human activity[1] as well as a principal hobby of any fandom. However, whenever an actual number is given for how many times a person has enjoyed a specific work, it's usually never something for anyone to take much pride in having done—even if the work in question is good.

In fiction, such information about a character is usually brought up either by another character, in which the remark is typically intended to be an insult or a put-down, or by the character himself, wherein the character may not show any shame for his devotion for a work, but it's something nobody (be it the audience or other characters) reveres the character for doing all the same.

At its most extreme, this trope can be invoked when explaining how a character came to acquire an actual talent or skill.

Not to be confused with Seen It a Million Times.

Examples of Saw Star Wars 27 Times include:


Comedy

  • From one of David Letterman's Top Ten lists, "Top Ten Excuses for Losing an Election," Number 7 is "Should've kept quiet about seeing Hello, Dolly! 63 times."

Film

  • Beetlejuice has seen The Exorcist "about a hundred and sixty-seven times" (and it keeps getting funnier every time he sees it).
  • In The Muppets Take Manhattan, Scooter takes a job as an usher at a theater showing the 3D film Attack of the Killer Fish. When Lew Zealand heads in without taking a pair of glasses, Scooter follows him in with a pair—and learns Lew doesn't need them because "I've seen this movie ninety-seven times!" His favorite part is when the fish attack, at which point he tosses his boomerang fish around the theater to add to the excitement (the other moviegoers think it's All Part of the Show).
  • In Strange Brew, Bob says that Doug saw Return of the Jedi 17 times.
  • In High School Musical, Chad mentions that his mother has seen The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway 27 times.
  • In Smoke Signals, Victor Joseph tweaks Thomas Builds-The-Fire over how many times the latter has seen Dances with Wolves.
  • In Tropic Thunder, Alpa Chino says he's seen Tugg Speedman's first "Scorcher" movie twenty times when he was in 8th Grade.
  • Played for Drama during the opening scene of Scream. Casey claims to have watched Friday the 13th "twenty goddamn times" in response to being told that she gave the wrong answer to a trivia question about it (which asked her to name the killer) with the stakes being her boyfriend's life. Unfortunately for Casey, the killer was not talking about the series as a whole, but the original movie, whose killer was not Jason Voorhees but his mother. The boyfriend gets Gutted Like a Fish soon after.

Literature

  • Stacey in the Babysitters Club series states that her favorite film is Mary Poppins and watches it at least once a week, adding up to hundreds of viewings.
    • Kristy (at least) makes a similar remark about Dawn's repeated viewings of The Parent Trap.
  • In Bruce Campbell's autobiography If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-Movie Actor, Bruce describes the difference between a mainstream movie and a cult film as 1,000,000 people watching a movie 10 times and 10 people watching a movie 1,000,000 times.
  • In American Psycho, Patrick Bateman mentions that he has rented Body Double 37 times. One chapter follows his train of thought at a video rental store as he picks the movie out "as if he'd been programmed." He also pretends to ignore "the horrified reaction" of a store employee who recognizes Bateman upon being handed the movie box when renting it out for what would be the 38th time. He sometimes likes to describe some of the film's more violent moments to both the reader and other characters throughout the story. "The drill power scene" is Patrick's favorite part.
  • In The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy, Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged asks his ship computer if there's any movie he hasn't already seen "over thirty-thousand times."

Live Action TV

  • The trope name and page quote come from the pilot episode of Freaks and Geeks when Neal is giving his opinion of Sam's chances of going to a school dance with Cindy. Of note, the show takes place in 1980, so Neal would be suggesting that Sam has seen Star Wars (1977) twenty-seven times within three years of its release (and before home video was in widespread use).
    • When Star Wars was in theaters, it wasn't that unusual for kids to go see it almost every day if they had the money (and movies were much cheaper then.)
  • Something of a Running Gag on Scrubs, Turk and J.D. have watched Judge Dredd together on a surprising number of occasions. In the episode "My Déjà Vu My Déjà Vu," Turk invites J.D. to watch the movie at his place at which point they both loudly proclaim in unison, "NINETY-NINTH VIEWING" before high-fiving each other.
    • They and Elliot have also watched Red Dawn together, two at a time or all three of them, many, many times.
  • Fox Mulder of The X-Files reveals in the episode "Hollywood, A.D." that he has seen Plan 9 from Outer Space forty-two times. He claims that the sheer badness of the film numbs his brain, allowing him to make intuitive leaps and solve problems that have him stumped.

Scully: You've seen this movie 42 times?
Mulder: Yes.
Scully: Doesn't that make you sad? It makes me sad.

    • In an earlier episode, the agents ran across a woman who was convinced she'd been impregnated by Luke Skywalker. This becomes even more hilarious when it is revealed she's seen Star Wars 368 times, and was hoping to break 400 by Memorial Day.
    • And in the infamous episode "Home", Scully mentions having babysat her nephew the previous weekend, and claims that he watches Babe "fifteen times a day".
  • In the Friends episode "The One With The Prom Video," Monica says that Roy, her prom date, had seen Star Wars 317 times. His name was in the paper. (At the time of the clip, set in 1984, the movie was only available on laserdisc; however, it had been re-released to theatres multiple times since its original 1977 run).
  • Teal'c of Stargate SG-1 has seen Star Wars ten times. Not that large a number compared to some on this page, but the humor comes from the fact that he's an alien himself.
    • Seconds later the joke is reversed when it's revealed that O'Neill has not seen Star Wars even ONE time and Carter considers him to be the weird one.

O'Neill: Oh, come on Carter. You know me and sci-fi.

  • In The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, when Carlton's ex-girlfriend comes back with a baby she claims is his, Will explains to Phil and Vivian that the baby belongs to "a young man who has seen The Little Mermaid 8 times."
  • Humorously used in this scene in The Wonder Years episode "Eclipse" where Chuck, who is uncomfortable with the creepy man who picked him up while he was hitchhiking, tries to lighten the mood by sharing how he's reminded of an Alfred Hitchcock Presents story about a man with "a big butcher knife" who was picking up hitchhikers. Getting creeped out by the man again, Chuck decides to drop the discussion, leading to the following exchange:

Chuck: Nevermind, probably didn't see the episode... Did you?
Creepy Guy: 27 times! [creepy stare]

Chuck quickly leaps out of the moving pickup truck.
  • In Top Gear, the Stig's African cousin has seen The Lion King 1,780 times.
  • In Lois and Clark, Perry White mentions having seen Godzilla '85 on cable over a hundred times because he liked seeing Elvira, Mistress of the Dark present it.
  • Glee has a moment like this with one of their new characters, Sam, who, up till that moment, seemed like just your average jock. When helping him clean up some blue slushie stains that he'd gotten on his uniform, Quinn mentions that it can dye your clothes "Like those aliens in Avatar." Sam's immediate reaction is "I watched that film seven times! Lor menari," (apparently, it's "you have beautiful eyes" in Na'avi.)
  • British comedian Toby Hadoke played a character in Holby City who shamelessly boasted how many times he had seen The Matrix, the slight irony being that Hadoke himself is famously enthusiastic about Doctor Who.
  • On Saturday Night Live, Tracy Morgan once said he's seen Star Wars 500 times.

Music

My friends are getting kinda worried,
They think I'm turning into some kind of freak.
Aw, but they're just jealous, 'cause I've seen Porky's,
Twenty-seven times this week.

  • From the song "Nineteen Something" by Mark Willis:

Saw Star Wars at least eight times, had the Pac-Man pattern memorized.

Newspaper Comics

Snoopy as Joe Cool: I see they're showing Citizen Kane again… I've only seen it 23 times.

    • Charles Schulz used Citizen Kane for this a few times. The strip where Lucy spoils the ending for Linus has her say she's seen it "about 10 times", and there's another strip where Sally is in the movie theater line behind Linus talking about how she's pretending they're on a date, until Linus gets to the box office and says, "One, please!" Cut to Sally in front of the TV.

Charlie Brown: I thought you were going to the movies.
Sally: I am. I'm watching Citizen Kane for the eighth time.

  • In a series of FoxTrot strips, Roger gets concerned over Andy watching Titanic way too many times. She even admits going all the way to the cinema and watching it twice in a row.
    • In another series of strips, Peter gets a job as a theater cashier on the eve of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. After rattling off all the showtimes to a kid in a sith costume, the kid asks for 6 tickets.

Peter: To which showing?
Star Wars Fanboy: One of each, obviously.

    • Another strip has Jason camping out (on his computer server) to get tickets to see Attack of the Clones.

Jason: Guess who has eight tickets to see Star Wars?
Paige: Who's going with you?
Jason: My friend, Marcus.
Paige: I'm confused.
Jason: Guess who has tickets to four consecutive showings of Star Wars?

    • An early strip has Peter renting the movie Raising Arizona, which Paige says Peter has seen about four zillion times. He explains it's because Holly Hunter is in it. Paige says "Oh, that's a reason". However, it turns out the video store screwed up and gave Peter a tape of Dirty Dancing. Paige wants to watch it, and Peter says she has seen it eight billion times. Paige explains it's because Patrick Swayze is in it, resulting in the Ironic Echo of Peter saying "Oh, that's a reason."

Print Media

Western Animation

  • On South Park, Eric Cartman claims to have seen The Passion of the Christ 34 times (in movie theaters) in the episode "The Passion Of The Jew."
  • In The Simpsons episode "Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie," Milhouse brags about seeing the Itchy & Scratchy movie 15 times and Nelson brags that he saw it 17 times. Bart (who has been grounded from seeing the movie after failing to watch Maggie) tries to joke that the two must have been sick of seeing it and ends up getting chased by Nelson and Milhouse.
    • In "Co-Dependents Day", after the latest Cosmic Wars movie "The Gathering Shadow" is a disappointment, Comic Book Guy makes the following comment.

Comic Book Guy: Worst Cosmic Wars ever! I will only see it three more times. Today.

Real Life

  • According to some stories, Alec Guinness (Old Obi-Wan Kenobi) was once asked for an autograph by a fan who claimed to have watched the first Star Wars film a hundred times. Alec gave him the autograph but only under the condition that he never watch it again.
    • Guinness' autobiography A Positively Final Appearance confirms that the story did indeed happen. Guinness, however, states that the boy's mother dragged her crying son away after Guinness' request, and he never mentions actually giving the autograph. To elaborate, Guinness was becoming very religious at the time, and was worried about the boy's quasi-religious obsession with the movie. He was (perhaps unneccessarily) worried that the boy would treat Star Wars as like a religion, rather than as a movie.
  • The 2009 film Avatar spawned many examples of this. Several [dead link] threads [dead link] exist on one Avatar forum relating to how many times each poster has seen the movie. The second even has photos of ticket stubs as proof...
    • Conan O'Brien saw the film five times during the first three weeks of release and even learned Na'vi (which he demonstrated on one of the last episodes of his run on The Tonight Show).
  • Fans of The Rocky Horror Picture Show are well known for this. Somebody who's seen the film twenty times is still a neophyte. A few fans claim to have watched the film over 1,000 times, equivalent to once a week for twenty years.
    • If you see it with a live cast, it's never the same show twice.
  • In the first of his autobiographies, Moab Is My Washpot, Stephen Fry stated that in his schoolboy days, he and a few friends went to see A Clockwork Orange, The Godfather and Cabaret over and over, each one having different elements that appealed to him at the time. He ended up cutting a lot of school to do it, however, and was eventually expelled.
  • Apparently, a fan once approached Edgar Wright and asked him to sign his ticket stubs for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World... all 55 of them.
  • The writer of this essay on IMDb claims to have seen Beauty and the Beast a grand total of three-hundred and eighty-one times, as of 2003.
  • A San Francisco youth made national news when saw the movie Rocky 81 times (and possibly more) during its first-run release in 1976 and 1977. After the 27th viewing, the theatre started letting him in for free.
  • Christopher Lee has stated that he has read the Lord of the Rings trilogy all the way through every year for decades. It was for this reason that he was one of the main consultants for the Peter Jackson films.
  • Alas, John Hinckley, Jr. watched Taxi Driver 15 times in a row and got the entirely wrong idea from it, stalking an actress in it, and attempting to assassinate the President (something like in the movie) because she wasn't impressed.
  1. ↑ Especially made easier over the decades, thanks to advancements in home viewing technologies and The Internet.
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