Women and men' preferences in choosing movies

When I started my project to build an intelligent agent to help users to choose movie, I spent days and days in the library searching for the articles, essays discussing audience's preferences. Hopelessly I couldn't find one. Too tired of searching, too desperated of finding one, I finally decided to write one myself based on my observations and knowledge in movies. It is of course far from what can be compared to the professional writers. However, it expressed my ideas toward the differences between men and women while choosing movies. It also helped to amuse my classmates in the writing class.

Women and men are biologically and spiritually different from each other. Men are more stable while women are more sensitive. Men are stronger while women are sweeter. Men excel themselves in natural sciences while women are the major in social sciences. They are various in the way they work, in the foods they eat and in the movies they prefer to watch. Even though there are some common ideas about the greatest movies of all time, generally women' tastes toward genres, story and soundtrack of a movie are much diverse from men.

Women prefer romance movies while men are into action, and adventure films. Women like the passion, the emotion and the affection that the romance movies convey while men feel stronger, more energetic after seeing action movies. Men are always eager to discover new and wild experiences which happen to be the central topics of adventure movies. They also want to show that they are brave, strong and heroic as the main characters in every action films. That is why they naturally find action and adventure movies appealing. On the other hand, love stories about the love at the first sight, long-distance love, forbidden love often draw much attention from women as they bring great fantasies to women' imaginative and creative minds. Romance movies not only show women that such fairy tale love stories like Romeo and Juliet actually exists, but also strengthen their sensitivity. As a die-hard fan of romance movies, I find myself much more identifiable with "Sleepless in Seattle", "When Harry met Sally", "Only You" while a male friend of mine who prefer action movies than anything else finds "Appolo 13", "Face Off" and "The relic" much more exciting.

Unlike women who only remember the general feeling that the story of a movie leaves behind, men pay much more attention to its detail and logical flow. Men like movies with the realistic contents while women tend to love fairy tale-like stories. I went to see "Titanic" last week with several friends of mine. After coming out from the theater, all the girls couldn't help but bursting out "Wow, it is the greatest movie We've ever seen" while guys were disappointed to comment "It is not real though". Women tend to "cast" themselves into the characters' lives, thoughts, and feelings. Conversely, men look closely at what kind of weapons the main characters were using, what kind of cars they were driving, even what kind of software they use for searching. I notices that funny fact when a male friend of mine and I were watching a drama movie together; while I was crying for the leading lady role, he quickly noticed that the leading man was using Excite search engine to find information on Web. Men also focus on how logical, wise and technically correct the dialogs were written while women tend to value more how well the feelings were presented by castings through the dialogs.

While women like soundtrack with highly emotional melodies, with nostalgic and sweet lyrics, men tend to be interested in strong, fast-moving melodies and fun lyrics. "Unchained melody" (Ghost), "My heart will go on" (Titanic), "When I fall in love" (Sleepless in Seattle) fascinate female movie goers by likeable, and touching lyrics straight from the heart while "Impossible mission" (Mission Impossible), "Twisted" (Twister) excite male audience by their dramatic, quick and wild melodies. The lyrics of the soundtrack are sought by women quickly when men only remember the technical detail of the melody as to how it is composed. One week after seeing "Titanic", a male friend of mine and I ended up buying the single CD featuring Celine Dion with the main theme "My heart will go on". I am impressed by the sweet and encouraging lyric while my friend loves the way it was mixed and composed.

Men and women various views toward movies reflect truly the differences between two sexes not only in entertainment, but also in life. One prefers touching love stories, concerns with the feelings and enjoys the sweet lyrics while the other loves discovering new lands, acting heroically, listening to fast-moving music. The diverse preferences make the movies more interesting and appealing as you have chances to taste different things and get different views from others.