---

Back in May, a blogger who writes under the handle A Middle Aged Geek posted an article titled “The Old Days” about his on-again, off-again relationship with the theatrical experience. It hit close to home for me because, when I was a kid, I went to the movies all the time. Now? Almost never. I’m not even sure what the last movie I saw in a theater actually was.

Well—that’s not entirely true. I saw Uncharted in an IMAX theater aboard a Carnival Cruise Line ship. I could probably dig through old posts and figure out roughly when that was, but what’s the point? It’s been a while. I also saw Wonder Woman in the theater because my granddaughter Taylee insisted my wife and I go with her. According to Taylee, it was “the best movie ever made,” and obviously I couldn’t ignore a recommendation like that. I wouldn’t rank it quite that high myself, but I did enjoy it.

After that, the timeline gets fuzzy. Since I subscribe to Disney+, I usually just wait for the latest Marvel Studios or Lucasfilm release to arrive on streaming. The television in my living room is probably three times larger than the biggest television my parents ever owned, complete with high-definition resolution and all the standard modern bells and whistles. Home viewing has become very easy to justify.

But when I was growing up, movies were different. Television certainly was. Back then, you were largely at the mercy of the three major networks and maybe a couple of local stations. There was no endless streaming buffet waiting for you at the push of a button. We didn’t watch Hee Haw because we were passionate devotees. We watched it because that was what happened to be on.

I remember going to the theater with my parents a handful of times. I’m fairly certain I saw The Horror of Frankenstein in Puerto Rico with them, which, in retrospect, was probably not an age-appropriate choice. I just discovered that David Prowse—who would go on to become the man in the Darth Vader suit—played the Monster in that one. I remember seeing The Poseidon Adventure at a drive-in theater, along with that Rosey Grier movie about the two-headed man. I watched a steady stream of The Walt Disney Company films, too—animated and live-action alike. Love bugs, darn cats, Apple Dumpling gangs, and all the rest. Most of those I saw alone. The older I became, the more solitary the experience grew.

I spent most of my formative years in Lancaster, South Carolina, and movies played a major role in that chapter of my life. My favorite theater was the Crown Cinema, one of those then-modern multiplexes that felt impossibly futuristic at the time. Mostly, though, I loved it because it was close to home—maybe a thirty- or forty-five-minute walk away. And I walked there often.

I rarely rode my bike beyond the neighborhood because drivers on the main roads were completely unhinged, even back then. Walking felt safer. Besides, I could follow the railroad tracks for part of the trip, which kept me away from traffic. Only the terminally stupid can’t hear a train coming.

Crown Cinema was where I saw many of the movies that permanently altered my internal landscape: Jaws, Star Wars, The Deep, and The Black Hole. I also saw The Empire Strikes Back and Superman there, now that I think about it.

And yet, in some ways, I preferred the old downtown theater.

Part of it was atmosphere. That place felt ancient in the best possible way. It smelled like dust, worn carpet, stale popcorn, and decades of spilled soda soaked into the floorboards. Walking inside felt less like entering a building and more like slipping through a doorway into another era. That’s where I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark, along with an endless parade of low-budget horror movies that I became far too obsessed with for a while.

I’ve always loved movies, though I wouldn’t call myself a cinephile. Story has always been my primary addiction. Movies were one supplier. Books were another. Comics, too. Music probably belongs on that list as well.

There’s something faintly church-like about the theater experience when you really think about it. We sit in curved rows facing forward, waiting to receive the message. The film becomes the sermon. Buttered popcorn and oversized cups of Coca-Cola serve as ritual sacrament. Music swells. Light descends from above. Images flicker across a massive white screen while an unseen hand tells us what to feel and when to feel it.

And for a couple of hours, we surrender ourselves to a communal dream.

For the duration of the runtime, we become psychically linked to the strangers around us—except, perhaps, the couple who somehow decided bringing a teething infant into a crowded theater was a reasonable life choice. Then the credits roll, the lights come up, and everyone quietly returns to being whoever they were before they walked inside.

Sometimes I miss it.

Partly because homemade popcorn never tastes quite the same. But also because movies were designed to be seen that way. The theater is an experience unto itself. It’s an event. You leave the house. You participate in something larger than your living room. And regardless of how enormous your television may be, the screen in Theater #8 is still larger.

More importantly, theaters eliminate the small distractions that fracture the experience at home: phone calls, wandering attention spans, asynchronous bathroom breaks, one person becoming deeply invested while the other scrolls through their phone pretending to watch. You know the drill.

Of course, part of my reluctance may simply be lingering post-pandemic agoraphobia. Not entirely because of germs, either. Maybe it’s my imagination, but public spaces feel more volatile now than they once did. Leaving the house increasingly feels like the riskiest thing I do all week.

And then there’s my undiagnosed—and possibly imaginary—ADHD. These days, I rarely watch a movie in one sitting. Most films get consumed in twenty- or thirty-minute increments spread across several days. Streaming technology makes that effortless.

An AMC theater, on the other hand, tends to frown on intermissions that last until Thursday.

---