If there is a multiverse, which one am I in

Every so often I see a film or a TV show for the first time and somehow it feels wrong that I'm only seeing it for the first time. Not in that it's a shame it took till now to see it, but that something went wrong in the timeline.

This happened with Elvira: Mistress of the Dark. I saw that a few years ago because there was a three for one bluray sale on somewhere and we only wanted two things, so we threw her in as the third, which I'm sure she'd appreciate. And when I watched it, it just seemed so strange that I hadn't seen it before. So incorrect.

It made me feel like an alternate, somehow. Like I'm not the canonical Janina. Janina-prime would never have made it to her thirties without seeing this film; this film was supposed to be on a regular rotation in her Matthewson household.

Janina-prime still knows by heart all the ads that played in the copy that had been taped off TV2 one fateful Saturday in 1989.

In all likelihood, it was a distribution thing. New Zealand's a small market, Elvira was kind of a niche thing. It seems perfectly reasonable for it not to ever get licensed, but that doesn't make it feel less wrong.

It's possible a similar distribution issue stopped me from seeing 1993's Heart and Souls, starring Robert Downey Jr as a man beset by his own personal bevy of ghosts, but the reasons really don't matter as much as the fact that I should have watched this movie every time I was home sick from school.

This one I just used in the I force my mum and sisters to watch a movie I like while I'm in New Zealand night, because surely, it must be true for them too.

I'm deeply bored of multiverses and at this particular moment in history there's something even more uncomfortable about the thought of them for me. Like, surely this can't be the correct reality? This? Is where we live?

However...

If there are other fun movies missing from my childhood, I want to know what they are.

It's such a specific thing. Mostly the movies you're (the general you, you get it) supposed to have seen during your childhood end up being shit. They end up being beloved simply because a lot of people watched them when they were children. Sometimes they're still good if you got on board when you were five, sometimes you should never revisit them, but you should never watch them for the first time as an adult.

And it's not just discovering a new movie when you're an adult. That happens all the time.

It's disappointing to be in the timeline where young me missed out on Elvira and Heart and Souls but this is where I am, so now I want to know what else have I been denied?

I need to know!