There has been so much talk about movie theaters shutting down and "The Death of Movie Theaters" that I've pretty much accepted it as fact. With the exception of going to see Taylor Swift and her Eras Tour: The Movie (totally worth the risk of getting COVID), the last movie I saw in a theaters was Spider-Man: Far From Home in July of 2019. So... going on five years now.

It would be easy to blame this on COVID, but I had stopped regularly going to the theater years before. I'd just go to the Marvel Studios movies because the spectacle of it all was better on the big screen. Nothing to do with COVID... I just eventually grew to hate the fucking people you have to watch a movie with. Used to be that people respected the audience and any interruptions to your experience were rare. But then people started becoming bigger and bigger assholes, and you were guaranteed to have loud talking... people on mobile phones... kids running amok... and once I even witnessed a fight because somebody kept bumping the seat in front of them. It's madness. Who wants to pay money to put up with that shit?

For a while I circumnavigated the bulk of this mess by only going to "prestige" theaters or dinner theaters or what-have-you. When you have to pay a boatload of money to see a movie, you tend to get people who are there to be serious about watching the movie. But eventually even that was tainted. When I saw Avengers: Endgame There was a group of grown-ass adults loudly talking the entire time. It was at that point that I said "fuck it" and decided I was done with theaters. I ended up going to Spider-Man: Far From Home a few months later, which wasn't as bad an experience... but it was still bad. Because People. My love affair with theatrical releases was over.

That was pre-COVID.

Then COVID came along and I decided that I can just wait for streaming and view films from the comfort of my own home. It wasn't worth it before and now it really wasn't worth it (except for you, Taylor!).

Which is a darn shame because there was a time I loved the movie theater experience. In my high school and college years, I was going to a movie most weeks. Sometimes twice a week. Didn't even have to be a big-budget affair... I would go see anything in a theater. Aliens one week... Hoosiers another week... Manhunter the next (boy 1986 was a good year for movies — although the worst movie I've ever seen in theaters, Born American, also came out in '86 so there's that).

I don't know what it would take to get me back in a movie theater again. Odds are the answer is nothing. Or maybe Avengers: Secret Wars. I honestly don't know.

To me, movie theaters are already dead. and have been for quite a while.