I think it’s likely the case that the introductions at AMC are my most-viewed piece of content. In 2026 alone, I’m at 40 separate viewings.

So of course I’m sick of them. The couple dancing and driving cuz of Coca Cola runs at least 20 seconds too long, while the different introductions they have for Laser and Dolby Cinema and Prime and IMAX frustrate me because we’re already fucking there having bought the ticket why are you telling me about this thing I’m already here for if it’s so good I will be able to see it myself jfc… also, there has recently been just like 5 seconds of black added between them all, and after 25 minutes of trailers holy cow is that infuriating.

But no one really cares about any of that. None of that’s a meme. Nicole Kidman is the meme:

We come to this place for magic… etc. (I guarantee at least 100 children have used that as an audition monologue.)

And I’m grateful that they’ve cut it down over time: for a while, I would make choose to see something in IMAX specifically because it had a shorter version of the speech than any of the other formats. But god I’m so extraordinarily over it.

And for a while, it seemed like everyone else was too. In the early days, people would cheer because the meme or whatever. And by “the early days” I mean for two solid years, you’d get at least a handful of people genuinely cheering. And it got increasingly grating with each screening, of which there have been more than 300 if I’ve tagged my Letterboxd right (of the 500(!) films I’ve tagged “In Theaters” since January 1, 2021, 321 have been tagged “AMC”).

But by the end of 2023, it had already started to die down. And for the next two years, I heard the cheers only a handful of times. It’s still cringe, but it was kind of interesting to see what movies were the ones that brought in the crowds who don’t otherwise go to movies, because that’s the only way that makes sense: someone has only heard it 1-3 times and hasn’t had time to become super fucking sick of it.

But that also reflected a reality that people going to the theater in 2024 and 2025 were the same people who had gone in 2021 through 2023. Even at movies that appealed to teens and college kids, they were the ones with A List subscriptions.

And that's probably bad for the movie business, even if it has made movie-going more pleasant for me. Throughout 2026, I've been genuinely surprised how not-annoying my fellow patrons have been. The kind of “phone at max brightness in the front row” bullshit I ranted about that one time I haven't actually seen since that recording.

It's not like people are always quiet (or limiting their noise to appropriate reactions) or never looking at their phones, but I'm not gonna lose my mind about a single stray comment here or there and if the screen is at minimum brightness it's a whole lot more tolerable.

I don't even see that many lit-up smartwatches anymore, a deeply irritating thing.

But something interesting happened this week. I went to see two movies — It Ends and Buddy (full thoughts in the next TWIRecap) — which are not the kinds of movies that would seem to draw in a new audience… yet at both people cheered, and at Buddy the kids next to me even cheered when there was a Very Special Thanks went out To The Millions of AMC Stubs Members.

That’s 2021 shit right there… and it can only mean one thing: Movies Are Actually, Truly, Finally Back.

It's been the vibe for months: sitting in the theater huffing the fumes of absolute gosh damn cinema feeling real dang good about this medium and artform I love so much. But movies Being Back also requires that audiences Be Back too. If a movie is projected in a forest and no one’s around, it's not a movie.

And that's where the cheering comes in. Because as of right now, tickets are up 10% year-over-year and revenues are in line with 2019 (though the fact that tickets are more expensive now (and more expensive tickets are now more popular than ever) means those lines don’t quite overlap). The Odyssey got people really talking about going to the movies and what way should they go to the movies and all this stuff that nobody except weirdos like me usually talk about. Spider-Man Brand New Day raked in the cash after a string of superhero disappointments.

But the guaranteed successes of Doomsday (zero hype but I’ve got one ticket) and Dune Part 3 (infinite hype and I’ve got three tickets) aren’t really bellwethers. There were also gonna be some people cheering in those theaters because they’re the movies that people who don’t really go to the movies go to. But It Ends? It’s a “Gen Z Horror Movie” like Obsession and The Backrooms, but it is nothing like their of them, and it cost a fraction of even Obsession’s low budget.

Buddy is utterly demented and definitely speaks to a demographic that grew up on Adult Swim comedy and Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared, but if it had hit theaters one calendar year ago, no chance there’d be multiple groups cheering for Nicole Kidman at 2:15 on a Friday.

And yet here they were.

And after hating it for all these years, this week I’ve been kinda glad to cringe.