I, as a kid, was a perpetual watcher of every movie that ever came out. In the mid-2000’s, that was a celebration where you didn’t have to wait for a festival. Sometimes even the flop movies made sense. I never avoided the slow pacer, or the flashier ones.
Why was the theater a Willy Wonka factory for a kid, especially when it didn’t burst in colours? A dark room with strangers on each side of your chair, and a chatter behind you, was the first time you ever felt rage.
I’ve screeched, screamed to buy tickets for the movies I desperately whined to watch. Now, when I look back, I wonder how we got to know about them pre-release, as there were no million reels back then that just skyrocketed into your feed.
It was a favorite face, some tune on the TV. I wouldn’t know what stuck with us about them.
It was preferably the lightness of life, better films made. There was no internet for you to ever know they were copied — ignorance was bliss.
A few years from now, when you’re a responsible adult and don’t have to force your parent out of the office to the theaters, I cannot put my finger on the last time I went to the theater to watch a movie.
It’s the other way around now. It’ll take an army of people and I volunteer friends who never take a no, to get me into one. With OTT, and movies that captivate no one’s eye now, it’s no more a celebration. You’re wiser enough to check IMDb before you make that decision, and this is a person who once said — and I quote — “even the flop movies made sense.”
As we grew wiser, the lights that reached your pupils dimmed down from larger screens to smaller. Now I want nothing more than to sit on my bed and scroll through Netflix. It’s the sign of the times. It’s just how we’ve traveled.
In a parallel line, I sympathize that the kids now won’t ever know the mystical part that we swooned on. Like they won’t ever know what a PSP was, they will never know the joy of waiting to watch a movie at the theaters.
Unless a special occasion appears, and there’s this great movie making huge noise around it. And maybe it’ll be worth the echo.
But it’ll no longer be a regular celebration. The joy of cinema as we knew has drifted away, and with it, a little piece of life inside the dark room.