The magic of movies

This past weekend, I did something I hadn’t done in several years.

I went to the movies.

The science fiction film “Project Hail Mary” was playing at the local Starview Theater in Tiffin and I had read the book last year as part of the Inglorious Bookworms book club through the Upper Sandusky Community Library.

We all had loved the book, written by Andy Weir, and we were curious to see if the movie could pull off the book’s challenging premise, so a group of us agreed to go see the film together.

It was wonderful.

Ryan Gosling was spectacular as the lead character, Ryland Grace, who is sent on a long-shot mission through space to try and save the world. I’m not going to spoil the rest of the movie for you because the less you know going in, the better.

It had been far too long. The last movie I saw in the theater was “Deadpool and Wolverine” in 2024 and before that, I’m not sure I saw something at the movie theater since the COVID pandemic in 2020.

The movie experience brought back so many good memories of some of my favorite times growing up, when getting out of a small town and seeing the latest flick at the cinema was one of the few escapes we had from the occasional doldrums of rural life.

One of my first ever memories was watching “The Little Mermaid” at a movie theater in 1989 when my baby brother was being born and I was almost 4 years old.

I used to love going to the movies with my dad, hitting up the drive-in theater on Navarre Avenue across the street from Pearson Park in Oregon, where we’d watch double features.

As I got older, I even used to sneak into the drive-in in the trunk to save a whopping $10 admission.

Once I hit high school and could drive to see movies on my own, a whole new world opened up to me. I was obsessed with movies. My friends and I would drive 45 minutes to the fancy movie theater in Maumee, often stopping for dinner at Fazoli’s beforehand and loading up on the unlimited breadsticks.

We watched everything at the Maumee theater, from “Fast and the Furious” — which caused us to drive recklessly the entire way back home — to my personal favorite, “The Matrix.”

I had an obsession with “The Matrix” during high school, just the premise of our lives possibly being a simulation fascinated me. I learned binary, wrote scribbles of 1s and 0s all over my book covers in school and even had a Matrix-themed wallet. My friends even jokingly called me “The One” sometimes, a reference to the main character of the film, Neo.

When the third Matrix movie came out, “The Matrix Revolutions,” my friends and I all went to see it together. I even grabbed a leather trench coat to wear for the premiere.

I’ll never forget the stupid mistake I made that day. I have no idea how it didn’t give me early-onset Type 2 diabetes, but I drank a full 2-liter of A&W root beer on the way to the theater. Then I drank another full 2-liter of wild cherry Pepsi that I snuck into the theater in my trench coat. While the movie was playing, one of my friends said he couldn’t finish his, so I finished off the last half of his 2 liters of Mountain Dew.

Needless to say, when nature called, it called harder than at any moment in my entire life.

And it just so happened to take place at an extremely critical moment near the end of the movie where important characters were dying and saying their final words.

I had to choose between my bladder exploding and getting to see the pivotal climax of my favorite movie franchise.

I chose my personal well-being.

But by the time I got back from the bathroom, the moment was over. I had missed it entirely, and you can only get so much information from your friends recapping it so I had to go and watch the movie again the next day.

Over the years, movies have meant so much to me, getting an opportunity to see someone’s passion project come to life. A good movie can change the way you see the world. Look at epic space projects like “Interstellar” and “2001: A Space Odyssey” or introspective war films like “Saving Private Ryan,” “Apocalypse Now” and “Full Metal Jacket,” or simply movie you need to reflect on like “Fight Club,” “The Truman Show” or “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.”

I think with all the options available to us at the tips of our fingers on demand, I was starting to take the movie experience for granted. I forgot just how good it felt to see everything up close, to feel the reverberations of the bass, experience the atmosphere of the backing music. That’s something very difficult to recreate at home.

So moving forward, I’m going to make it a priority to get back out to the theater for films that interest me. People are still creating great things and they deserve to be viewed the most optimum way — in front of the big screen.

Hopefully I’ll see you at the movies.