What I Don’t Miss About Going to the Movies

Call it ennui, quaranfatigue, sign of the times, or what have you, but I haven’t been super inspired to write an article for a while. I’m still watching stuff, new and old, fine and good, sometimes really good. And I think if this was more of a space for streaming shows or albums even, it could roll along fine. But it’s anchored in the movies, and it’s hard for me to separate the filmgoing experience from trips to the movie theater, which seems like less of a palatable option for the conscientious citizen these days (of course some of this is me, life stuff before and after this whole thing even hit).

I remember seeing a goofy article back when this whole thing started about what the Oscars would look like in 2021. It had movies like Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (which I admittedly enjoyed) and the new Bad Boys movie as serious Best Picture contenders due to the lack of new movies probably coming out this year (apologies to Will Smith and Martin Lawrence). I couldn’t tell if it was a serious article or not, and remember wondering or maybe just don’t have the Oscars? Everyone complains about them in good years anyway. A similar level of misguided prognosis came at the beginning of the baseball season- maybe someone will hit .400, I recall a commentator saying, as if hitting that mark over 2 months in empty stadiums would be a memorable feat. At the end it was enough just to finish the season, and even then you couldn’t ignore the specter of why the whole enterprise almost didn’t happen in the first place. It was as if nothing would be different when of course everything was.

As society slowly phased in non-essential businesses and we got used to this new normal, I followed the opening of movie theaters with a mild interest. In the grand scheme of things it didn’t seem like that big of a deal to sit out the movies for a chunk of time, yet if a place had low enough case numbers and there were enough social distancing and sanitation measures to alleviate the concerns of people who still wanted to go, then it seemed alright to me to have them back. In early October I was waffling on whether to go see Tenet and do my part to help save the movie theaters (as if they will never exist again), but I balked almost purely for financial reasons and somewhat to get some fresh air on a brisk autumn day. I imagined the movie in my mind based on a mashup of the trailer, post 1990’s James Bond movies, and Inception and that sufficed (at least I think I did). And time went on as it has during the strange chrysalis, into and out of the maw of election coverage, before I really thought much more of my mild movie theatergoing dreams again.

Until I stumbled across an article from USA Today that twisted whatever I had left in my brain devoted to processing this issue into even more of a pretzel than it had already been in. The piece is called “Remember going to the movies? 15 things we miss most about theaters,” and it read like a laundry list of things I don’t particularly miss:

• There’s an art to date night: One of the few moviegoing dates I can remember involved seeing the subtitled film Senna from the back row of the theater. It did not go well.
• Debating the coming attractions: Clocking in at…a half hour (!), and usually just recycling the same types of genre and franchise fare, trailer runs for new mainstream movies are objectively terrible. I love sequels to enjoyable blockbuster fare as much as the next person, but the lengthening of these trailer packages has gotten absurd.
• Sticking it out to the bitter end: I actually like seeing the credits for their own sake, as there’s something relaxing to me about listening to music and seeing an endless scroll of names (and neat to think how many people contributed in a different way to the movie), not just because there’s some Marvel spin-off thing there at the end.
• Dressing to match the occasion: No thanks.
• Experiencing old movies on a big screen: On one street corner of my heaven there’s an old moviehouse, with a ticketbooth out front and a big marquee overhead, with rotating posters of movies through the ages, statues of animals and ancient Greeks inside, and an infinite array of movies through the ages, catered to whatever I happen to be in the mood for. The few times a year showing of a random classic is solid, but far from this vision.
• Snagging the perfect seat: This has become less a thing now that you can reserve seats beforehand, but these systems are not designed for the solo moviegoer (trust me, I know), as they wouldn’t let you take a seat if it left one empty seat beside you, essentially cornering you to the aisles or to where other people were already sitting, rather than, you know where you’d want to be sitting (in other words, these reservation systems are designed more for groups of people, not solo moviegoers). I’m also a long-standing procrastinator so this further complicates things, especially considering when I know getting there early means I’ll be watching a bunch of ads.
• Whispering about post-movie plans: “Good sir what say you upon the morrow of this filmic endeavor?” “Why dost thou even ask, I shall be strolling along the streets, getting on the subway, perhaps a beer if I’m feeling frisky, but probably nothing, nothing at all!”
• Eavesdropping on exit chit-chat: To each their own opinions and what have you, but for whatever reason I’m always irked when someone talks down on a movie that I just enjoyed. I want to argue with them and throw any remnants from my “absurdly large containers of popcorn” or “magical soda machine” offerings.

You get the point. I’m not trying to demean the USA Today writers or those who like those sorts of things, as a lot of what makes life great is those small, often ridiculous details to a given experience, the things you don’t really expect to enjoy but can’t imagine living without thereafter. But clinging to an old flawed version of reality also seems like a bad idea, and probably symptomatic of a greater creative crisis we have in the world. And look, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life streaming stuff either, but that doesn’t mean we have to rush back to something that could be improved on anyway.

The last movie I saw in theaters was Onward, on the eve of the pandemic. It was Fine, a perfectly solid way to spend an evening. But as I sat there that night I realized I didn’t really feel much about the movie one way or another and I slipped into that old comfortable state of emotionless cruise control, sitting silently, smiling occasionally. The art had ceased to move me, the water from the proverbial spring gone dry. It was flowing for me there in the movie theater once, and maybe one day it will flow again.