Spend Your Flights Watching The Last 10 Minutes Of Movies

There’s too much goddamn content in the world right now. I’m far from the first person to say this, and I certainly won’t be the last – it’s just a fact of life, and it’s only getting worse. And while you surely have your own ways of coping with the unending onslaught of “premium” shows, movies, books, articles and music, there’s one trick that you might not be utilising to its full potential: Skipping right to the end.

Jetstar Airways/Flickr

Specifically, movies. Specifically, movies you are never ever going to watch in full. Specifically, movies that are available on an aeroplane when you have absolutely nothing else to do so you might as well find out what happens at the conclusion of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

The optimal timing here is about 10 to 15 minutes before the end of the film. Let’s Be Cops? How about we just be cops for 10 minutes. Depending on how long the credits run, that should be ample space to get the denouement, and you can always adjust if it seems like you might’ve missed a key moment, or frankly, don’t even need a full 10 minutes of Jobs.

Different in-flight entertainment consoles have different players, but most will let you scrub to the end pretty easily. At worst you have to hit the 10x button and wait for a minute or two. And this isn’t about ingesting as many movies as possible to keep up with the never ending stream – it’s about having fun while killing time on a plane and getting a taste of something without devoting two-plus hours of your life to it. Seriously, you haven’t lived until you’ve watched the last 10 minutes of Chef with no context for what’s happening. I especially recommend doing this when you have a travel companion. You can swap picks, watch together, laugh together, and then try to reason your way through any outstanding questions when it’s all over.

And the next time you’re at a party and someone wants to know if you’ve seen Snatched, you’ll be ready. You saw enough.