The other night I watched Mayday on Apple TV.
This is the new Ryan Reynolds/Kenneth Branagh Cold War action comedy in which Reynolds plays a Navy pilot stranded behind enemy lines and Branagh plays the eccentric former KGB agent who may be his ticket home. It was released directly on Apple TV on September 4.
And here’s the annoying part:
It was good.
Really good, actually.
Apple had delivered a handsome, expensive-looking action movie directly into my living room. I had a large television. I had surround sound. I had snacks that didn’t require refinancing my house.
Nobody kicked the back of my chair.
Nobody checked Instagram at maximum brightness during the climax.
Nobody whispered, “Wait, who’s that guy?” despite having watched the exact same movie I had for the previous 87 minutes.
Technologically speaking, I had won.
And yet about halfway through Mayday, I had a disturbing thought:
Am I ever going to remember watching this?
That’s when things got weird.
150 Movies Walk Into a Theater…
A while back, I wrote a book called The Unknown Critic’s Popcorn Bucket List: 150 Movies You Should Watch Before You Die.
I revisited 150 movies for that book—classics, blockbusters, comedies, dramas and films I will defend until somebody removes the paper bag from my cold, dead head.
And watching Mayday made me realize something I had never really considered:
I probably originally saw nearly every one of those movies in a movie theater.
Not necessarily every single one. My memory isn’t that good. That’s why I’m wearing a bag.
But overwhelmingly, the movies that became important to me were theatrical experiences.
And suddenly I wondered:
What if that’s part of why they became important to me?
What if Mayday isn’t inherently less memorable than the movies I grew up loving?
What if I have simply removed the part that makes movies memorable?
The movie theater.
Welcome to the World’s Most Comfortable Cultural Apocalypse
Streaming has solved virtually every problem associated with going to the movies.
Parking?
Gone.
Driving?
Gone.
Waiting in line?
Gone.
Guy explaining the trailer to his girlfriend while the trailer is literally explaining itself?
Gone.
For roughly the cost of one movie ticket, I can subscribe to a service containing more entertainment than a Roman emperor could consume in six lifetimes.
This should be paradise.
Instead, I spend 40 minutes scrolling through 11,000 choices before watching The Office again.
Human civilization has successfully constructed the greatest entertainment distribution system in history, and we’re using it to watch Michael Scott burn his foot on a George Foreman Grill for the 37th time.
But Movies Used to Be Places
Here’s the thing we’ve forgotten.
Going to a movie wasn’t merely watching content.
You went somewhere.
I remember theaters.
I remember marquees.
I remember standing in line.
I remember the smell of popcorn hitting you before you’d even bought your ticket.
I remember walking into a dark auditorium and trying to determine whether that shadowy lump in Row G was an empty seat or somebody’s enormous winter coat.
I remember opening weekends.
I remember audiences laughing together.
I remember applause.
I remember the collective gasp when something happened onscreen that nobody knew was coming.
And most importantly:
I remember who I was with.
That’s the part streaming can’t replicate.
Ask somebody where they watched a random Netflix movie four years ago.
“Couch?”
Correct.
Now ask someone old enough where they saw Jaws, Star Wars, E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, Titanic, The Matrix, The Sixth Sense, The Dark Knight or Avengers: Endgame.
There’s a decent chance you’ll get a story.
“My dad took me.”
“We waited around the building.”
“I was on a date.”
“Everybody screamed.”
“The theater went completely silent.”
The movie gets attached to an event.
And events become memories.
The Numbers Say I’m Not Imagining This
Moviegoing really has changed dramatically.
Pew Research Center reports that U.S. and Canadian theaters sold about 1.23 billion tickets in 2019. In 2025, they sold about 769 million. Meanwhile, an AP-NORC survey found that roughly three-quarters of American adults had watched a newly released movie through streaming during the previous year, while about two-thirds had seen one in a theater.
Even the 2026 theatrical recovery comes with an asterisk. Reuters reported that through early August, U.S. theaters had sold about 471 million tickets in 2026 versus 747 million over the comparable period in 2019. Higher ticket prices and premium formats have helped revenue considerably, but attendance remains well below the old baseline.
So people haven’t stopped loving movies.
We’ve changed where movies happen.
And I’m beginning to think that matters more than Hollywood realizes.
The Refrigerator Is Cinema’s Greatest Enemy
Here’s what happened while I watched Mayday.
At some point, I paused it.
I don’t remember why.
Maybe I needed something from the kitchen.
Maybe the dog wanted something.
Maybe I received an email.
Maybe civilization briefly required my assistance.
Doesn’t matter.
I paused the movie.
Think about how strange that would have seemed during most of film history.
Imagine watching Jaws in 1975.
Brody is throwing chum into the water.
The shark suddenly appears.
“You’re gonna need a bigger—”
PAUSE.
“Anybody want Doritos?”
Spielberg would have personally come to your house and confiscated your television.
A theater takes control away from you.
That’s inconvenient.
It’s also kind of the point.
For two hours, you surrender.
Your phone isn’t supposed to matter.
Your refrigerator isn’t available.
You can’t check email.
You can’t decide halfway through The Godfather that maybe you’d rather watch six minutes of a YouTube video about a guy restoring a 1978 lawn mower.
The movie owns you.
At home, the movie is merely one applicant competing for your attention.
And That’s Why the Old Movies Feel Bigger
This brings me back to my Popcorn Bucket List.
I originally thought I was choosing 150 movies because the movies themselves were special.
And they are.
But maybe some portion of their power came from the ritual surrounding them.
A great movie in a theater occupies your entire field of vision.
A great movie at home shares the room with laundry.
That’s an unfair fight.
On a 60-foot screen, Harrison Ford is Indiana Jones.
On my television, Harrison Ford is Indiana Jones while I notice somebody left a Costco receipt on the coffee table.
Atmosphere matters.
Scale matters.
Commitment matters.
Anticipation matters.
We used to wait months for movies.
Then we drove somewhere specifically to see them.
We bought a ticket.
We sat down.
The lights dimmed.
The curtains—or eventually the metaphorical curtains—opened.
And for two hours, nothing else existed.
That’s a surprisingly powerful psychological cocktail.
Here’s the Cruel Irony: Streaming Movies Are Getting Really Good
That’s what made Mayday trigger this whole existential crisis.
This isn’t some disposable movie somebody shot over a weekend in a warehouse.
It’s Ryan Reynolds.
Kenneth Branagh.
Large-scale action.
Period production.
Movie stars.
Dolby Atmos.
A movie that looks perfectly comfortable calling itself a movie. Apple describes it as a genre-bending, action-packed buddy comedy, and the film runs about 110 minutes.
And critics haven’t treated it like bargain-bin television either; Rotten Tomatoes currently lists it with an 83% critics’ score.
Streaming won.
It can deliver theatrical-quality entertainment directly to my couch.
Which raises an uncomfortable possibility:
Maybe the quality of movies isn’t the problem.
Maybe the problem is that we’ve made movies too easy to consume.
Movies Have Become Content
I hate that word.
Content.
A movie used to be a movie.
A television show was a television show.
A book was a book.
A guy falling off a trampoline was America’s Funniest Home Videos.
Now it’s all content.
Lawrence of Arabia?
Content.
Citizen Kane?
Content.
Seven-second video of a raccoon stealing a Pop-Tart?
Content.
Congratulations, David Lean. You’re competing with a raccoon.
Streaming puts everything into the same endless conveyor belt.
Watch.
Finish.
Thumbnail.
Next.
Watch.
Finish.
Thumbnail.
Next.
Eventually movies stop feeling like destinations and start feeling like things we completed.
“Did you watch that?”
“Yeah.”
“Was it good?”
“I think so.”
“What happened?”
“There was…a guy?”
This is not ideal for cinema.
But I Don’t Want Streaming to Go Away
Here’s where I’m supposed to become Old Man Critic and demand that everybody throw their Roku into a lake.
I’m not doing that.
Streaming is incredible.
It has made films more accessible.
It allows smaller movies to find audiences.
It lets people who can’t easily get to theaters participate.
It gives old movies new lives.
And sometimes I absolutely want to watch a movie while wearing sweatpants and eating cereal from a mixing bowl.
Freedom matters.
But maybe streaming and theaters shouldn’t be competing to do the exact same job.
Perhaps theaters should increasingly become what they’re already becoming:
the place where movies become events.
Premium screens.
Repertory screenings.
Anniversary releases.
Cult movies.
Marathons.
Director Q&As.
70mm.
IMAX.
Classic films.
Movies people want to experience together.
There’s evidence audiences still respond to that. Premium formats and event-style moviegoing have become increasingly important to theaters, while younger moviegoers have shown substantial interest in theatrical experiences.
Maybe the future of theaters isn’t convincing us we can’t watch something at home.
Maybe it’s reminding us why sometimes we shouldn’t.
The Popcorn Bucket Test
So I’ve invented a new test.
When you’re deciding whether to see something theatrically, ask yourself:
If this turns out to be one of my favorite movies, where do I want to remember seeing it?
That’s it.
Maybe the answer is your couch.
Nothing wrong with that.
But sometimes the answer should be:
Row H.
Seat 14.
Popcorn in your lap.
Lights going down.
A room full of strangers.
And a screen so large that, for two hours, the rest of your life has nowhere to fit.
Looking back at the 150 films in The Popcorn Bucket List, I’m increasingly convinced that I wasn’t merely remembering movies when I wrote about them.
I was remembering going to the movies.
That’s different.
And it’s something Hollywood should be very careful about losing.
Because Mayday was good.
I enjoyed it.
Ryan Reynolds entertained me.
Kenneth Branagh entertained me.
Apple delivered an expensive Hollywood movie directly into my house with pristine picture and sound.
And somehow…
I still miss the sticky floor.
Long live the movies.
And somebody please charge less than nine dollars for a Coke.
— The Unknown Critic, author of The Unknown Critic’s Popcorn Bucket List: 150 Movies You Should Watch Before You Die available on Amazon