Will I Ever Take My Kids to the Movies?

If betting on a film’s box office success, a safe practice is to choose children’s and family movies. This genre is often recognized for record-breaking success in sales for the large audiences they draw; for families, it is usually a precious outing (or distraction) that produces a pivotal impression on future film habits and overall development, specifically for the young ones. For almost any cinephile, and certainly for many notable filmmakers, being ushered to the movie theater by your parents is a canonical rite of passage. On the other hand, there are cases such as Guillermo del Toro, who would stay up late to sneakily watch horror pictures when he was a bit too young. Regardless, parental and familial persuasion of our childhood watches stays with us in a plethora of ways and into old age—a persistence of memories that dwell so deeply, they become part of our DNA.

As we navigate our new reality, I wonder will I ever construct the beginning of my child’s cinematic canon? This question, this worry, while absolutely coming from a place of privilege and high accessibility, is also an acknowledgment that extends beyond buying billets and purchasing popcorn. With the rise in censorship and control of the public access to art in all forms (and information and many other things), both nationally and internationally, there are many factors beyond the individual that influence this once undoubtedly possible—even likely—capability of creating a family. The daily news begs the question: is it responsible, safe, and fiscally feasible for me to bring a baby into this world? As the housing market for millennials and Gen Z begets little hope for homeownership, it seems the American Dream order of operations for building a nuclear family is scrambled, through little to no fault of our own. Surely one can see how I quickly snowballed from worrying about society’s slow crumble of what the status quo once provided to my not-so-pressing concerns of missing out on the crucial element of contributing to the continuation of my lineage, genetically and cinematically: a nontraditional form of generational wealth.

For those who are fortunate enough to have easy, consistent access to a movie theater, especially one with special programming, children and family films and their audience’s moviegoing patterns have an increasingly strong impact on keeping cinema doors open—even more so as movie theaters remain a suburban mainstay in third-space entertainment. In her book Children, Film, and Literacy, Dr. Becky Parry notes how contemporary viewing experiences of video-on-demand (VOD) and movie merch, from AMC’s custom popcorn buckets to household items like bedding and toys, have deepened the prevalence of film in children’s lives.

In the book, “Love and Basketball” and “The Woman King” director Gina Prince-Bythewood recalls the various stages and ages of her falling in love with the movies and the possibilities of filmmaking. From being dropped off as a kid on the weekends to teenage years in front of the TV with the family to her years at UCLA’s film school, each of her cinematic explorations are the early-stage butterfly flaps that led to my own silver-screen discoveries.

Similarly, Ethan Hawke, when introducing his director’s pick, “All That Jazz,” at the Telluride Film Festival in 2023, detailed his experience seeing the movie back in theaters in 1979 with his mother. Despite Hawke being too young to fully understand it, the movie’s audaciousness always stuck with him.

In Sean Baker’s self-proclaimed battle cry for cinema-going during one of his recent Oscar acceptance speeches, he directly called on parents to break the perpetual streaming cycle, advising them to “introduce your children to feature films in movie theaters, you’ll be molding the next generation of movie lovers and filmmakers.” This guidance is not given blindly. Baker won four Oscar’s for one film (“Anora”) in one night; he credits his mother for his introduction to cinema at the age of 5.

The writer and cinema-going enthusiast of 11am Saturday, a weekly publication featuring a questionnaire/interview, investigates movie theatre habits, histories, and secret desires. The fifth question always asks the interviewees to recollect the first movie they remember seeing in the theaters. It’s safe to assume that a vast majority of the responses, if not all, include or allude to some involvement of parental figures. I adore hearing budding filmmakers and film friends talk about balancing parental duties with joy for movies by combining the two; I live vicariously through them, making suggestions of what they should take their kiddos to see next.

I’ll never forget going to my local theatre with my father to see “The Incredibles,” spilling my box of Buncha Crunch all over the floor early into the film’s runtime, only for him to lean over and whisper: “You not gettin’ another;” wading out of the Marcus Cinemas, my favorite family-owned, Wisconsin-based theater chain, my mother, Nana, and I a bit perturbed after seeing Denis Villeneuve’s “Prisoners;” being wrapped up in blankets during a rare elementary school snow day when my friends and I secretly watched “The Shining;” or the first guardian-free outing to a PG-13 movie, “Easy A,” a pack of naive middle schoolers turning to one another to clarify “what’s chlamydia?”

While reflecting on these personal anecdotes, many of my movie experiences in my teenage years come to mind, now seeping into my young adult years. Generation Z often uses the phrase “I’m just a twenty-something teenager,” or my most despised excuse, “I’m just a girl!”

I am guilty of clinging to the feeling of youth and yearning for a special connection to the shared experiences with my loved ones, a time of innocence and safety from the real world, collecting more movie content and memories for my mental archives, hoping one day they will be shared with someone who is a piece of me.