For about 5 years, I ignored theaters and said the same things as you. Now I’m back to going a few times a year. You don’t have to buy the popcorn - I never have it at home, so why do I need it there? You don’t take a date to a movie to talk during the movie, you go to share entertainment and have something easy to talk about from a shared experience later. There are many new movies, they just don’t get the hype compared to movies with existing universes. It’s not necessarily a bad thing to reuse existing IP, either, because it can help skip the initial exposition and put more action and development in the screen time. Obviously, there are plenty of examples of poor writing and weak attempts to keep some IP rolling.

What brings me to the theater (usually on a Tuesday with a discount) is the immersion. It helps me really get into the characters’ experiences. It’s not required because I certainly get into plenty of movies using my phone on planes (work travel), but it’s something I choose to utilize. I’ll also try to see movies where I expect dramatic cinematography. Movies like 1917, Dunkirk, and La La Land come to mind for originals while I’d include Bladerunner 2049, Dune 1+2, and Mad Max Fury/Furiosa in the reboot list. Anything Wes Anderson, too, if that’s your flavor. I’m indifferent about superhero movies because the CGI is so overwhelming that it’s indistinguishable from a video game to me, so it loses value. I understand your aversion to reboots, but I’d say one I missed and absolutely wish I had seen in theaters is Tron: Legacy because that has become one of my all-time favorite movies. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but it’s a beautiful crossroads of my visual and audio interests at the time with the score by Daft Punk. It’s as if it’s a sequel to Interstellar 5555, their album anime movie.

Pixar has some bangers, too. I realized at some point I was ignoring them because they seemed too hard to get into, when in reality I just wasn’t trying. I thought I was too old, ignoring that I obviously already knew about the deeper themes in my childhood Pixar films. They’re pretty original. Inside Out 1 was an emotional trainwreck and Coco and Soul were enjoyable as well.

I’m not trying to say you’re wrong. It’s your opinion. I’m just seeing what I used to think and want to offer some insight on where I am now. It’s easy to miss the original titles because there’s so much rehash out there. There’s always another formulaic Marvel movie and a shoddy DC film coming up. We’re flodded with content, so it’s harder to get attached to a particular movie. I saw a meme or tweet that said something like “what ever happened to having families develop entire cult followings of some mediocre film because they only owned 15 VHS films?” and it stuck with me. Marvel is flooding theaters with mediocre superheros, Netflix is flooding streaming with mediocre everything, and Disney is flooding their platform with 80s-90s rehash. I get it. I was rolling my eyes when I heard Alien: Romulus was coming because I thought “yet another Alien?” and, when complaining, I looked up the list and found there’s way less Alien movies than I thought. But the gems are still out there, even if you never visit a theater again. I keep a list of loose recommendations, torrent them, and will randomly press play on one and let it rip.