"Time Heals All Wounds"- Does that include media, too?

The old saying goes that "time heals all wounds," and lately I've started to wonder if the same applies to movies and television.

Does time heal media, too?

A friend of mine and I have gotten into the habit of revisiting movies from our youth. We see each other every Sunday, religiously, for years now, and lately we've been rewatching the classics. There's our annual revisit of Speed Racer. Our yearly viewing of Tom Cruise's The Last Samurai.

But we also started revisiting films we once disliked or felt disappointed by.

It began with 2007's Spider-Man 3.

Upon release, Sam Raimi's trilogy-capper was met with divisive reactions from fans who wanted more from Venom or took issue with Raimi's handling of Peter Parker's black-suit personality. As a freshman in high school, I loved the film. As I got older, I drifted closer to the popular consensus.

Now, in my 30s, I've come to appreciate it more than ever.

It's funny. It's heartbreaking. It's badass.

Raimi's version of Peter's "dark" personality is hilarious because it's supposed to be. Peter Parker is a dweeb. His idea of being cool and edgy is completely misguided, and that's the joke.

As the credits rolled to Snow Patrol's magnificent "Signal Fire," my friend and I found ourselves wondering: what else did we get wrong?

Next came the Daniel Craig James Bond films. We were preparing for the release of the upcoming 007 video game First Light and decided to revisit the entire run.

I've always carried a torch for 2008's Quantum of Solace, a film I think is deceptively deep and the perfect companion piece to Casino Royale. My relationship with Skyfall, Spectre, and No Time to Die, however, was more complicated.

When Skyfall arrived in 2012, it felt like a breath of fresh air, especially after the turbulent production and mixed reception surrounding Quantum.

For some reason, I soured on it in the years that followed.

Watching it again, I loved it.

The same was true of Spectre, which may be the most shamelessly Roger Moore-esque entry in Craig's tenure. Even No Time to Die, despite a poorly developed villain in Rami Malek's Safin and some undercooked material involving Bond's family, lands far better than I remembered. The action is terrific, and emotional moments like the death of Jeffrey Wright's Felix Leiter still pack a punch.

Then came the Star Trek reboot trilogy.

J.J. Abrams' 2009 Star Trek remains the gold standard for the modern summer blockbuster. That has never changed. It's sexy, funny, thrilling, perfectly cast, and edited with absolute precision. There isn't an ounce of fat on it.

Its sequel, however, was a different story.

Star Trek Into Darkness arrived in 2013 at a time when audiences were growing tired of Abrams' infamous "mystery box" storytelling. Those of us plugged into movie discourse remember the needless charade surrounding Benedict Cumberbatch's villain, "John Harrison," who wasn't Khan until, of course, he was Khan.

It was also the era when every blockbuster felt obligated to be darker.

Everyone wanted to be The Dark Knight or The Empire Strikes Back. From Iron Man 3 to, somehow, even Cars 3, darkness was the trend.

At the time, I was exhausted by it. Into Darkness felt dumb to me then.

Watching it in 2026, I loved it. My friend did too.

When the credits rolled, we looked at each other and asked the same question:

"What happened? Why did we think that?"

This softening with age came to a head this past Sunday with the granddaddy of all modern pop-culture trauma: the finale of Game of Thrones.

My friend and his wife had been rewatching the series from the beginning, inspired in part by this year's excellent A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. I happened to be around as they approached the final two episodes: "The Bells" and "The Iron Throne."

"The Bells," Jaime Lannister's character assassination aside, is a fantastic hour of television.

It showcases everything David Benioff and D.B. Weiss did best, elevated by Miguel Sapochnik's direction. The apocalyptic destruction of King's Landing, Emilia Clarke's full descent into madness as Daenerys Targaryen, Kit Harington and Peter Dinklage delivering perhaps their strongest performances of the series, and the surprisingly moving conversation between Arya Stark and Sandor Clegane about revenge—all of it works.

Seven years removed from the hype, expectations, and online outrage, it works even better.

The finale itself still has major problems.

The election of "Bran the Broken" remains ham-fisted. Several storylines receive rushed conclusions. Some character arcs simply don't land.

Yet the episode's emotional core still works because of Harington, Dinklage, and Clarke.

There are good scenes. There are genuine laughs. There are moments of real pathos.

Watching it now, I wasn't furious.I wasn't offended. I wasn't scrolling through Reddit looking for someone to blame.I was simply... accepting.

The finale wasn't the masterpiece I wanted, but neither was it the unforgivable betrayal I remembered.

If anything, I found myself content. There are plenty of movies and television shows I'd still like to revisit with the benefit of age, experience, and distance.

Maybe we could all benefit from doing the same.

Maybe we should revisit the things that disappointed us, frustrated us, or failed to live up to our expectations. Because sometimes the problem wasn't the movie.

Sometimes it was where we were when we watched it. Time heals all wounds. And maybe, just maybe, that applies to film and television too.

So pick something you were once let down by. Give it another chance.

You might be surprised by how differently it hits today.