Do You Miss Movies Yet?

by Hans A. Carpenter
It’s a simple question, do you miss movies yet? No, not streaming, I mean walking into a movie theater, sitting down, and watching a new release on the big screen. I know I have. Anyone who reads this column on a regular basis can surely tell that I am grasping for straws at this point to fill a column every week considering we’re now months into the pandemic and months removed from the last time movie theaters were open.
It’s hard to write a movie column without, you know, movies.
Sure, there’s a ton of great content available to stream. I’ve been reviewing it quite often. Checking out older movies is always a good idea. Well, not always, I was forced to sit through Little Monsters recently. It’s not that there isn’t good content out there, it’s just that it’s not the same as the movie experience.
Over the last few years, a lot of writers, pundits, internet personalities, and would-be profits have foreseen the death of the movie theater. It’s not hard to see why, mom and pop shops have been strangled to death by big chain theaters that are themselves on the verge of calamity. Streaming is cheap and convenient. Concessions and movie prices are ballooning while the average moviegoer only sees tentpole blockbuster events. You’ve heard it all before.
The difference is, now we’ve seen a world without movie theaters and it just plain sucks.
There’s nothing like going with a date, with a group of friends, or with your family and sharing a movie together. It’s a feeling you can’t replicate at home no matter how hard you try. The screen, the sound, the smells, the theater is larger than life, and that in turn makes the movie feel larger than life.
It’s an experience. It’s a social occasion. It’s a feeling you can’t get in your living room. That’s the magic of the cinema. You can’t watch 2001 on an iPad, and I’ll die on that hill.
I’m as chord-cutting and pro-streaming as any other millennial, but I just plain miss the theater. Do you?