Who Says You Need to Watch New Movies at the Cinema?

When’s the last time you went to the cinema to see the latest and greatest movie releases? It’s been a while for me too! Going to the cinema is just too expensive, inconvenient, and if the movie’s coming to my home shortly after its theatrical run, what’s the point?

Well, I have actually been going to the cinema more often than before in recent months, but it has nothing to do with new movies. Instead, I’ve been walking those sticky floors to see old movies again.

Cinemas Might Be Dying

Cinema attendance (as reported in the LA Times) is looking pretty bleak. In the age of the streaming service, with the death of the physical rental business, and with physical media on life support, cinemas have been on notice for some time.

The money to make movies are now in the hands of big streaming companies like Netflix and Amazon. Unless these content producers care about being technically eligible for awards like the Oscars, they don’t have much incentive to send their films onto the cinema circuit. The goal is to grow subscriber bases, and the strategy is exclusive content.

So theaters get fewer films, farther between, and those films are becoming available for rent or streaming sooner and sooner after their theatrical runs. Notably, DC’s 2025 Superman film was barely in theaters for a month before you could rent it to watch at home. It’s an extreme example, but it does show that cinemas can’t bargain on a decent buffer between their shot at making money and that money going to streaming platforms.

A cinema is a business with daily operating costs and razor-thin margins. With no butts in seats, and no movies to show, how long can they last? It means they need to get creative, and one way to do that is by having throwback screenings.

My Local Cinema Hosts “Throwback” Screenings of Classic Movies

While I’m sure many of you have local cinemas that have been doing this for decades, the theater at my local mall has for some time now dedicated one of its venues to only showing ‘throwback” movies.

So far I’ve seen the original The Terminator, Gremlins, and Back to the Future using this opportunity. One neat thing they use this for is putting the earlier movies for an upcoming sequel back into circulation, so you can see the earlier films in the same cinema you’re going to watch the latest movie. It’s a pretty smart idea!

The Tickets Are Cheap

One of the reasons I don’t go to the movies often is that it’s just too darn expensive. I guess it’s not that bad if you’re going by yourself (if a little sad), but if you have family and friends who want to watch it with you, the total cost can quickly become ridiculous. It’s much cheaper just to rent a digital copy at the first opportunity, and enjoy the movie at home. Especially if you have a nice setup.

However, these throwback tickets go for about $3 apiece where I live. Sure, the popcorn is still the same price, but that’s a big reduction in price for a cinema experience.

I Missed So Many Movie Cinema Runs

One reason I’m so taken with this whole idea is that I missed out on seeing so many movies I love in cinema. Mostly because I was too young to see them. Seeing The Terminator in theaters would have been impossible, because I did not yet exist when it came out. So my only other alternative would have been a time machine.

The prospect of seeing Alien, or 2001: A Space Odyssey in theaters is very appealing, even though I own high-qualiy copies of those movies and have seen them both many times. Now, it’s not entirely authentic, of course. They’re not running film projectors and the original prints of these movies or anything.

When I want to see The Terminator it was pretty much the same director’s cut version I own on Blu-ray, but now I’m just nitpicking, and actuallly that might be the best of both worlds when you think about it.

I’m Watching Old Movies When Out and New Movies at Home—Go Figure

It feels pretty ironic that I feel so little incentive to watch the latest movie releases in a cinema, but put something like The Neverending Story back in theaters, and I’m first in line. Sure, pricing is one factor, but I think there’s more to it.

Somehow, I feel like many of these older films are just more cinematic for lack of a better word. They feel like they should be seen on a big screen in a dim theater. Those sorts of movies are few and far betwee in the modern movie world. The last two films I considered “must-see” in cinema were Dune: Part II and Avatar: The Way of Water.

Everything else can wait for my small OLED TV at home.