When I was a kid I loved going to the movie theatre. What happened?
There was something special about watching a movie on the big screen, sitting in a room built entirely around the experience of watching it and eating popcorn that somehow tasted better than anything I would get anywhere else.
I was also lucky enough to grow up during what I consider to be the most GOATed era of movies. I got to experience the peak of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Disney and DreamWorks — and 20th Century Fox when they were still a thing.
At the time, I watched movies that I still think about years later because I loved the emotional impact high-stress or sad scenes gave me in the big theatre.
The first movie I ever saw in a theatre was Kung Fu Panda 2 at a Cineplex in Toronto when I was five years old. Obviously, I don’t remember a lick of my experience there 15 years later, but it is still a movie I will occasionally put on just to relive the nostalgia.
I felt lucky to watch Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame in theatres, sitting in a room full of people as characters we had spent years getting attached to die, come back and eventually fight through one of the biggest battles the MCU had ever created.
That is what I thought going to the movies was supposed to feel like. An experience that takes you through a roller-coaster of emotions and you come out feeling pumped to discuss it with others.
At one point, my dad even bought the Cineplex pass, which gave him several free movie tickets every month.
I trusted the theatre experience. If I saw a trailer for a movie I liked, I was excited to eventually sit down and watch it, counting down the days until it was released in theatres.
But somewhere around early 2022, that changed.
I walked out of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Then Thor: Love and Thunder. I came out of those theatres extremely disappointed, asking myself what the heck I’d just watched.
But there was a newfound feeling of unsatisfaction, one that I have never felt walking out of a theatre after a Marvel movie.
At first, I thought it was just the MCU starting to make bad movies. But then I was having the same feeling about other studios.
New Disney and Pixar movies weren’t giving me the same excitement anymore. Elemental doesn’t work for me, and gosh, neither did Wish. Even though I have heard good things about movies like Elio and Hoppers, I haven’t had much motivation to see them (though I actually heard that Hoppers is rather good).
In fact, when I saw the trailers for those movies in the theatre, my parents whispered over to me, “that’s a Disney Plus movie,” as if to say that we won’t waste our time going to the theatre and instead, will watch it for free on a streaming service — because I guess at that point, the movie wasn’t worth purchasing a ticket.
Looking at specific Disney movies that have been coming out lately, public ratings have not helped improve my motivation to watch them.
The list is a bit mixed, with some movies like Zootopia 2 and Hoppers sitting at 92 and 94 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes respectively, while Elio sits at 83 per cent. But others, like Captain America: Brave New World, Mufasa: The Lion King, Tron: Ares and Disney’s Snow White have received much more mixed responses, with scores ranging from 43 to 61 per cent. I watched the live-action Lilo & Stitch, and though I thought it was alright, it hasn’t necessarily been enough to bring back that feeling I used to have about watching new movies in the theatre.
I still know there are good movies out there, and that’s what actually makes this more frustrating. I don’t think Hollywood suddenly forgot how to make movies; I just don’t trust that a movie I’m excited about will actually be good anymore.
Instead of seeing a trailer for a movie that seems interesting and setting that date on my calendar, I now wait until I see what everyone says about it first.
However, with the new influx of bad movies coming out and given the fact that people can now wait for movies to be put on streaming services, just like we did, movie theatres that were the heart of my childhood are taking a huge hit.
According to a 2025 Telefilm Canada study, Canadians bought an average of 1.6 movie tickets per person in 2024. In 2019, it was almost twice that much with three tickets being bought per person — which is interesting because I thought 2019 was a great era in movies. The study also found that audiences don’t consider movies released in theatres to be better than movies released directly to streaming.
That’s a pretty substantial change, but it makes sense.
Why spend money on a movie ticket and popcorn when you can wait a few months and watch it from home? Why take a chance at a movie that might be good when you can watch it for free later? And if it’s a bad movie, then at least you didn’t pay a lot of money for it, right?
But the thing is, I don’t think the problem is simply that people don’t like movie theatres anymore. I think we’ve, especially me, lost trust in what we’re paying to see.
In the first quarter of 2025, Cineplex reported that attendance fell 14.5 per cent compared with the same period a year before, really showing the decline in how many people are going to theatres now.
But I don’t blame Cineplex. Theatres can give me a giant screen, surround sound, sometimes comfortable seats and a bucket of delicious popcorn. But those can’t make me enjoy the movie.
That’s Hollywood’s job.
Movie lovers have been underwhelmed and underfed by projects targeted to obviously just make money, disregarding any motivation to make a story genuinely good.
All I want is that old theatre experience back.
I want to look at a list of upcoming movies and feel excited instead of skeptical. I want to see a trailer and immediately start planning which showing I’m going to.
The first time I felt that again with Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Walking out of the theatre having genuinely enjoyed what I had just watched reminded me why I loved going to the movies in the first place.
But one good experience isn’t enough to make me blindly trust new releases again (on that note, I hope and pray that they don’t mess up Avengers: Doomsday).
For now, to my disappointment, I’ve become the person who checks the reviews first before watching a movie. I don’t go to the theatre because a movie is new anymore. I now only go when I trust that it’s going to be good.
And maybe that’s the real problem movie theatres are facing.
The theatre itself hasn’t lost its magic.
I’ve just stopped trusting the movies.