So since starting this thread, my wife and I watched both the first and second Godfather. Since we have limited time at night and since those two movies are so long, it took up like 4-5 days to complete them. There are so many different characters that are introduced and so many that get casually referenced that are barely introduced, that I have no idea how people kept up with this story when it came out. My wife and I had to keep pausing it and looking up character names to fully follow all the subplots of what was going on. It took me a couple scenes before I realized it was Robert Duvall. I did not recognize Al Pacino at first and then was really surprised when I did, mostly because of how Michael is initially introduced. I also never knew Dianne Keaton was in this and, had I not seen that when it shows the characters in the scene when you pause it, I could've gone the entire two films without realizing that was her.
As far as the story, it's interesting the contrast between Vito, who had more pure motives, and Michael, who was introduced so unsuspectingly and ended up becoming such a gigantic POS. We still haven't seen the third one. Based on all accounts, we're not missing much. I'm familiar with the general plot. I'll eventually get around to it. I do remember when this came out in 1990, though, as it seemed to have a large amount of hype and I remember my parents seeing it but being told it's not a kids' movie.
My familiarity with The Godfather, however, really comes from seeing The Freshman (1990) very early in my youth, and multiple times. For those not familiar, it's a Matthew Broderick film where he plays a college student who unsuspectingly gets tied up in the mob and Marlon Brando essentially plays The Godfather. While it's parody and a comedy, it's not spoof comedy. I've always liked this movie but having never seen The Godfather, I couldn't fully appreciate some references. This film has one of my favorite quotes of all time by Carmine Sabatini (Brando's character): "Every word I say, by definition, is a promise." It's one of the films I introduced my wife to right after we got married, just shy of 18 years ago. She honestly didn't remember seeing it back then but we watched it the next night after having seen the first two Godfather films and my wife really enjoyed it, probably also because it's a huge contrast and she's more of the comedy/romcom fan and action and violent drama isn't really her thing.
This year for Christmas I'll be certain to watch It's A Wonderful Life. Perhaps this is the same patter as The Godfather as I always loved The Freshman, which contained Godfather clips and was my only frame of reference for it, and I've always enjoyed Christmas Vacation and my only familiarity with clips from It's A Wonderful Life come from Christmas Vacation.
