I (along with seven other raucous third-graders) bounded down the red-brick alleys of Old Town all the way back in 2018, racing into the IPIC theater for the limited run of The Nutcracker and the Four Realms. It was my best friend’s ninth birthday party, one of my fondest memories. Rushing through the door and down the escalator, we arrived just to gape at the cavernous lounge tucked underneath Pasadena: bowls of colorful lollipops greeted our eyes amongst the background of clacking pool balls and a bustling bar, with soft, ambient lighting setting the scene for the kind of magic that could only come from the cinema.

The bright colors and sheer scale of the big screen created an immersive atmosphere that I was barely old enough to appreciate. Looking back, the thing I loved most was the ability to share the experience with a community—because no matter whether I was chuckling, crying, clapping, or cowering, everyone else was doing it too.

On the car ride home, I remember telling my mom that I never wanted to see a movie at home again.

I came back to IPIC over and over—for Marty Supreme, Twisters, The Fall Guy, and even The Eras Tour (in which I brought along the same friend who had once introduced me to the fun). Each new film, each order of fries, each ride on the escalator taught me that going to the movies—any movie, really—was an experience that couldn’t ever be replicated at home. It taught me that movies were magic, so long as the magic came along with a reclining chair. 

But on February 25, 2026, the IPIC movie theater chain filed for bankruptcy, with its location in Pasadena set to permanently close its doors. Unfortunately, IPIC’s story is just one of many.

Movie theaters as a whole have been steadily declining in visitorship since the COVID-19 pandemic—one Harvard Gazette study found that the percentage of moviegoers who frequently visit theaters declined from 39 percent in 2019 to just 17 percent in 2025. Three-quarters of Americans surveyed admitted that they had recently opted to stay home and stream a movie rather than visit a theater. A PEW Research study found that ticket sales for movie theaters in the United States and Canada are less than half of what they were twenty years ago.  

The answer to these declining statistics lies in streaming services, which have erupted in popularity since the pandemic. Additionally, with movie theatrical releases decreasing from a standard 90-day blockbuster run in theaters to only 30 days, waiting for a movie to arrive on your TV might just be easier. Why would you make the trek all the way to your local theater and pay the ticket prices (which themselves are growing more exorbitant) when you could just pop some popcorn in the microwave and settle onto your couch?

I’ll tell you why. This past April, my family and I went to see Project Hail Mary in March for IPIC’s swan song, and, strangely enough, it was this final movie in my favorite theater that actually gave me hope. 

If you haven’t seen Project Hail Mary, in simplest terms, it’s a science fiction drama in which a millennial-coded Ryan Gosling befriends an alien rock and saves the known universe. I laughed, I cringed, I cried, and I rated it five thumbs down on Letterboxd. (If you know, you know.) 

The movie’s been a smashing success globally, pulling in over 600 million dollars, but what really made it special was the theater. Watching scenes such as the already-iconic “fishing sequence” on a dazzling screen was an experience that truly could never be replicated at home, because all of us—my parents, my little brother, and the strangers around me—were completely and collectively immersed. 

I was reminded of that day seven years ago, when my friend showed me what movies could really be. Suddenly, I felt foolish for spending afternoons splayed out in front of a computer open to Apple TV, constantly adjusting the brightness in a battle with the distraction of my own reflection. That wasn’t how to watch a movie. It was always meant to be with a theater full of people and a silver screen three times my height. 

As Nicole Kidman once put it, “We come to this place… for magic. Because we need that, all of us, that indescribable feeling we get when the lights begin to dim. Our heroes feel like thе best part of us, and stories feel perfect and powerful. Because here, they are.”

No matter what I’m seeing, no matter what I’m going through, and no matter who I’m with, I’ll always hold that decade-old sense of awe in my heart every time I’m told to sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. I’ll always be dazzled by the exuberant colors and stunned by the immersive sound. I’ll always feel that satisfaction when I’m inside a cavernous theater, full of people reveling in the same shared paradise.

So my advice to you? Go to the movies! 

Don’t wait until things hit Netflix; call your friends, make the trek to Regal or your favorite indie theater. Buy some popcorn, fill up an ICEE cup, or just settle into your seat; watch the trailers, silence your phone, and wait for the lights to dim. 

And what better time than this summer? Summer blockbusters are perhaps the most exciting time of year on the cinematic calendar—just in the last few years, we’ve gotten the iconic Barbenheimer, Across the Spider-Verse, and my personal favorite, Top Gun: Maverick. But there’s still so much more to come with movies such as Backrooms, Disclosure Day, and The Odyssey set to release this summer. 

Personally, I’ll be looking for you at the anniversary screening of Top Gun and wearing my most fashionable outfit at The Devil Wears Prada 2, because, like Nicole, I’ll never get tired of the magic.