I took my 68-year-old dad to Top Gun: Maverick on a random Thursday, and when the crowd erupted at the carrier landing he grabbed my arm like a kid. He talked about that night for weeks, not the movie, the night. That is what the ticket buys, and it is something streaming cannot stock: a room full of people all feeling the same thing at the same time, phones forgotten for once. My living room is comfortable and my TV is fine and neither has ever given me a memory like that. Theaters are not selling pixels. They are selling the rare modern experience of undivided collective attention, and that is worth twenty bucks a few times a year.
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