Nobody Streams Their First Kiss: In Defense of the Movie Theater

Let me tell you about the best movie experience I've had in years. It wasn't on my couch. It wasn't on my phone, paused while I answered a text. It was in a packed theater in the summer of 2023, watching a nuclear bomb explode while a man in a wide-brimmed hat adjusted his tie—and then, twenty minutes later, watching Margot Robbie roller-skate into a pastel dreamworld.

Yes. Barbenheimer. And no, I will not be apologizing for treating it like a national holiday.

The Death Report Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

Every few years, someone declares the movie theater dead. Streaming killed it. The pandemic killed it. Rising ticket prices killed it. And to be fair, the numbers haven't always cooperated with my optimism. Theater attendance has never returned to its late-nineties peak, and streaming platforms have genuinely, permanently changed how Americans watch things.

But here's what the obituary writers keep missing: attendance isn't the only metric that matters. What people are showing up for has fundamentally shifted. Audiences no longer go to the theater to watch a movie. They go to the theater to experience one.

Look at what actually works now. Top Gun: Maverick became a global phenomenon because Tom Cruise understood the assignment—make something that demands a big screen and a loud room. Oppenheimer sold out IMAX screenings for months. Horror films like Sinners and the Conjuring universe thrive in theaters because fear is contagious and laughing at a scary movie with strangers is half the fun. Even Wicked proved that musicals, once considered a dying theatrical genre, can absolutely dominate if the spectacle justifies the trip.

The Communal Thing We Keep Undervaluing

There's a reason every streaming executive worth their stock options is quietly terrified of the word "communal."

When a theater full of people gasps at the same moment, laughs at the same joke, or sits in stunned silence as the credits roll, something happens that no algorithm can replicate. I've watched audiences cheer at superhero cameos, and I've sat through a quiet indie where you could hear two hundred people breathing. Both were transportive. Neither works alone in your living room with your laundry folded on the couch next to you.

Streaming is wonderful. I'm not here to pretend I don't binge entire seasons in one weekend. But streaming is a relationship with a screen. The theater is a relationship with a room full of strangers who have agreed, for two hours, to feel the same things at the same time. That's not nostalgia. That's a genuinely irreplaceable technology for shared emotion.

The Theaters Are Evolving, Not Just Surviving

The smart exhibition chains figured this out. Why do you think every suburban multiplex suddenly has reclining leather seats, a full dinner menu, and a bar? Why do you think Alamo Drafthouse built an entire brand around "no talking, no texting" and made it a feature instead of a bug? Why do indie theaters across the country host sing-alongs, quote-alongs, and repertory screenings of The Big Lebowski that sell out weeks in advance?

Because the theater stopped competing with streaming on convenience. It leaned into everything streaming can't do: event status, quality projection, decent food, and the radical act of leaving your house.

The Star Problem—And Why It's Fixing Itself

Here's my most contrarian take: the movie star isn't dead. The movie star is just unemployed until the movie earns it.

For a while, the industry convinced itself that streaming had made movie stars obsolete—that audiences would show up for any recognizable face on any platform. Then the data came in, and it turns out people don't watch movies because an actor is in them; they watch because the movie gives them a reason to care. When a star takes on a role worth leaving the house for—Cruise, Zendaya, Timothée Chalamet, Denzel Washington—the star power works exactly like it always has. The theater just requires the product to be worth the trip.

That's not a failure of star power. That's accountability. And honestly, as someone who's spent a lot of time watching this industry from the inside, I think accountability makes for better movies.

So No, Streaming Didn't Kill the Movie Star

What it killed was the middle—the forgettable, in-between films that used to fill theaters in February and now fill streaming queues instead. That's a real loss. Some of my favorite movies of all time are exactly the kind of mid-budget, adult-oriented dramas that now premiere on a platform with no marketing budget and vanish into the catalog.

But the theatrical experience itself? It's not dying. It's contracting down to what it does best: spectacle, community, and event. The theater is becoming a place you go rather than a place movies merely play.

And if that means I have to put on real pants and drive somewhere to watch a three-hour biopic about the atomic bomb followed by a Barbie movie, then so be it. Some things are worth the drive. The theater is one of them.