Look, I need to get something off my chest. I hate going to the movies.

There. I said it.

This is a difficult admission for someone who spent the better part of his adult life obsessing over pop culture, writing blog posts about Superman and Star Wars and Back to the Future, and dedicating every Thursday to reviewing twenty-year-old episodes of Smallville. Movies—and by extension, movie theaters—used to be my happy place. But somewhere between the death of MoviePass and my most recent $10.50 small Coke, I’ve become that guy. The curmudgeon who’d rather stay home than venture out to the local cinema.

Before you accuse me of being some kind of hermit who hates fun (which, okay, fair), let me explain. This isn’t about hating movies themselves. I still love movies. I watch them constantly. I analyze them, write about them, and bore people at work with my opinions about them. What I hate is the modern movie theater experience, which has somehow managed to get progressively worse while simultaneously becoming exponentially more expensive.

Let me break this down for you, starting with the most obvious culprit.

The Highway Robbery of Ticket Prices

Years ago, when MoviePass first became a thing, I was living in Blacksburg, home to this impressive movie theater/bowling alley/restaurant hybrid that made going to the movies feel like an event. I bought into MoviePass immediately and took full, shameless advantage of it. We’re talking daily movie attendance here, folks. Any movie. Any time. Multiple viewings if I felt like it.

This setup made it possible for me to see movies I never would have paid actual money for. Take Geostorm, for instance. Under normal circumstances, would I have shelled out fifteen bucks to watch Gerard Butler save the world from weaponized weather? Absolutely not. But with MoviePass? Sure, why not? It was essentially free, and I had two hours to kill.

The flip side of this coin was discovering gems I might have otherwise skipped. The Post didn’t strike me as something that demanded the big screen experience—it’s a journalism drama, not Top Gun: Maverick. But because MoviePass removed the financial barrier, I saw it in theaters and discovered one of the best films of that year. Without MoviePass, I probably would have missed it entirely, assuming it would eventually show up on cable where I’d forget to watch it.

Then, predictably, MoviePass crashed and burned. I mean, how could it not? The business model was about as sustainable as my New Year’s resolution to give up sarcasm. “Unlimited movies for ten bucks a month” sounds great until you realize that’s less than the cost of a single ticket in most places.

After moving back to Roanoke, I tried Regal Unlimited, which was basically MoviePass but limited to Regal locations. It worked well enough until the pandemic hit, at which point I realized I wasn’t leaving my apartment enough to justify the monthly fee. When I finally canceled that subscription, I was thrust back into the harsh reality of paying full price for movie tickets.

And let me tell you, after years of essentially free movies, paying twenty bucks to sit in a theater feels like being asked to donate a kidney.

The Concession Stand Conspiracy

But wait, it gets worse. Have you been to a theater concession stand lately? It’s like walking into a parallel universe where the laws of economics have been suspended and replaced with pure, unfiltered greed.

Last time I went to the movies—and yes, I’m keeping track because these trauma memories stick with you—I bought a small soda. Ten dollars and fifty cents. For a small. The same size drink at McDonald’s costs a dollar, but apparently, the act of carrying it into a darkened room multiplies its value by ten.

Here’s the really insidious part: they price the large at $12.50. Just two dollars more! Your brain immediately starts doing the math. “Well, if I’m already paying ten-fifty for a small, I might as well get the large. It’s basically the same price for twice the soda!” Never mind that you’re watching a two-and-a-half-hour movie and your bladder has a finite capacity. Never mind that you’re now paying twelve dollars for something that costs the theater approximately thirty-seven cents to produce.

Don’t even get me started on the popcorn, which apparently is popped with kernels harvested from the moon given what they charge for it. And candy? Forget about it. They’re selling the same box of Milk Duds you can get at Dollar Tree for a dollar, except it’s six bucks because… reasons.

Most theaters now also offer “restaurant quality” food—and I’m using that term so loosely it might snap. We’re talking gas station nachos, roller-grill hot dogs, and pizza that would make a middle school cafeteria worker weep. All marked up to prices that would make a stadium vendor blush.

I know someone reading this in New York or Los Angeles is probably laughing at my quaint complaints about $10.50 sodas. “That’s nothing!” they’re thinking. “Try twenty dollars for a small popcorn!” But that’s exactly my point. Cost is relative to your local economy. When you’re used to a certain cost of living, these prices feel like highway robbery regardless of what they’re charging in Times Square.

Customer Service: An Obituary

Customer service at movie theaters didn’t die suddenly. It was a slow, painful decline that started sometime around 2019 and reached its final breath during the pandemic.

In 2025, I saw exactly two movies in theaters. Two. That’s a record low for someone who’s been going to movies since the mid-1980s when my biggest concern was whether Mom would let me get Skittles instead of sensible Raisinets.

The first was Superman in July, for which I made the pilgrimage to Blacksburg specifically for the IMAX experience. Because if you’re going to watch Superman fly, you might as well do it on a screen the size of a building.

The second was on Christmas Day, maintaining my family’s longest-running tradition of seeing a movie together on December 25th. I don’t even know when this tradition started—it predates my memory and possibly the invention of sound in film. This year’s selection was the new Anaconda reboot/requel, because nothing says “celebrating the birth of Christ” quite like watching people get eaten by giant snakes.

Standing in line at the concession counter (because the actual box office has been closed since COVID-19 and apparently is never coming back), I witnessed a masterclass in how not to run a business. My mother and I were next in line, about twenty people behind us, when the employee at the next available register just… walked away.

Not “excuse me, I’ll be right back” walked away. Not “let me get a manager” walked away. Just decided that this exact moment, with a line stretching to the door, was the perfect time to wipe down something that had probably been dirty since the Obama administration.

The two remaining employees moved at a pace that would make DMV workers look like Usain Bolt. By the time Mr. Clean finished his impromptu sanitization session and returned to his register, nobody else had finished with a customer yet. So we still got him. After all that waiting, all that watching him actively ignore us, we still had to complete our transaction with the guy who’d just demonstrated how little he cared about our time.

We nearly missed the start of the movie. For Anaconda. If you’re going to make me miss part of a movie, at least let it be for something worthy, like The Godfather or literally anything that doesn’t involve Paul Rudd fighting CGI snakes.

Comfort: A Distant Memory

Remember when I mentioned that Blacksburg theater? The one with reclining seats and tray tables and carpeted floors that don’t feel like you’re walking through a swamp of spilled sodas from 1987? That’s become the standard in most markets. Most markets that aren’t Roanoke, Virginia.

Roanoke boasts one Regal Cinema and two AMC Classic theaters. The Regal is our “nice” theater, having been built a mere quarter-century ago. Those AMC theaters? They’ve been around since the late 1980s, back when George H.W. Bush was president and we all thought the Nintendo Entertainment System was the peak of gaming technology.

Want to guess when any of these theaters last saw a renovation? If you said “when they were first built,” congratulations, you understand the Roanoke theater market. The newest, nicest theater in my area features:

• Seats that would be rejected by a budget airline for being too small and uncomfortable
• Seats that definitely don’t recline because why would you want to be comfortable during a three-hour movie?
• Cupholders that are either too small for modern drinks or so sticky you need a crowbar to extract your beverage
• Floors that make that horrible adhesive sound with every step, like you’re walking through a crime scene made entirely of dried Mountain Dew

Meanwhile, at home, I have an overstuffed recliner that actually reclines. A 50-inch TV mounted on the wall that’s honestly plenty big when you’re sitting eight feet away. A pause button for bathroom breaks. The ability to turn on subtitles when Christopher Nolan decides dialogue should be whispered during jet engine tests. And popcorn made in my air popper that costs roughly twelve cents per bowl and features real melted butter, not some “butter-flavored” powder that tastes like someone described butter to an alien who’d never experienced Earth food.

The Gradual Realization

There wasn’t a specific moment when I realized I’d grown to hate going to the movies. It was more like slowly becoming lactose intolerant—one day you realize that something you used to enjoy now just makes you miserable, and you’re not sure exactly when the change happened.

Thirty years ago, the movie experience was different. Not better, necessarily, but different in a way that made its limitations acceptable. We didn’t know about stadium seating with recliners. We didn’t know about reserved seating that meant you didn’t have to show up forty-five minutes early to get a decent spot. We didn’t know about theaters that served actual food and craft beer instead of nachos that looked like they’d been assembled by someone who’d only had cheese described to them.

But now I know these things exist. I know that forty-five minutes away in Blacksburg, people are watching the same movies I am, but in recliners with their feet up, craft beer in their cup holders, and a burger that won’t give them food poisoning. And yet here in Roanoke, we’re sitting in chairs designed by someone who clearly hated both comfort and the human spine, trying to ignore the fact that our shoes are literally sticking to the floor.

The Exceptions That Prove the Rule

Despite all this complaining (and let’s be honest, this is definitely complaining), there are still movies that will drag me into those terrible theaters. I saw Superman in 2025 because I’m more of a DC guy than a Marvel guy, and some things demand the biggest screen possible. In 2026, I’m planning to see Supergirl and Avengers: Doomsday in theaters.

I’m still on the fence about Nolan’s Odyssey adaptation and the new Spider-Man film. But let’s be realistic—those will probably be the only films that get me into a theater this year. Four movies. Maybe five if something unexpected comes along.

That’s a far cry from my MoviePass days when I’d see four movies in a weekend because I could and because Geostorm wasn’t going to watch itself.

The Christmas Tradition Continues (Reluctantly)

Here’s the thing about that Christmas Day tradition: I’ll keep doing it. Even though the customer service is terrible, the seats are uncomfortable, and the prices are insulting. Even though this year’s Anaconda was exactly the kind of movie that would be just as enjoyable at home (though I’ll admit I liked it better than the Jennifer Lopez original, and the callbacks were fun for us olds who remembered the 1997 version).

I’ll keep doing it because it’s one of the few family traditions we have left, and I’m not about to be the one who kills it by complaining about sticky floors and twelve-dollar sodas. Some things are worth suffering through uncomfortable seats for.

But for everything else? I’ll be at home in my recliner, eating my twelve-cent popcorn with real butter, pausing whenever I want, and not having to take out a second mortgage to afford snacks. The movies themselves are just as good on my TV, and the experience is approximately one thousand percent better.

Going to the movies used to be special. Now it’s a test of patience and a drain on my wallet. And until theaters figure out how to make the experience worth the price—or until Roanoke enters the 21st century and renovates literally anything—I’ll be that old guy who constantly talks about how much better things were back in “my day.”

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to check what’s new on Netflix. From my recliner. With my affordable snacks. Like a rational person who’s learned from his mistakes.