My local cinema recently closed down – now I really wish I'd visited it more often

You never truly appreciate what you have until it’s gone. It’s true in relationships, it’s true of your own youth, and, of course, it’s true when it comes to novelty childhood snacks. Remember Panda Pops? Sweet, sweet times.

You’ll smirk when I tell you this, but I mean it in all sincerity, that the same truism hit home during the recent coverage surrounding the mediocre, yet wildly popular, fever dream of a blockbuster, A Minecraft Movie.

Few would consider a bearded Jack Black wearing a blue T-shirt and shouting “flint and steel!” to be the basis for a cinematic masterpiece, mainly because it isn't, but it’s not the intrinsic narrative qualities of said brick-based adventure tie-in that have me feeling all misty-eyed.

Instead, it’s been the sense of community, however outlandish and occasionally toxic, that A Minecraft Movie has conjured that has me hankering for a similar experience.

I’ve never played the game or seen the film, but what I have witnessed has been the plethora of videos, memes and news reports covering young audiences getting together at their local cinema and revelling in the delights of communal cinema.

Patrons seem particularly excited whenever there’s a mention of the fabled ‘chicken jockey’ or each time Jack Black pulls out dialogue referencing the original game’s crafting mechanics, invoking rapturous reactions from the real-life, in-house audiences.

I don’t approve of throwing popcorn everywhere or scaring families with young kids, but this explosion of fan-oriented ecstasy following months of anticipation is something I haven’t witnessed since Avengers: Endgame.

It’s people doing what people used to do: going to a cinema and watching a film communally. The multiplexes are dying, nobody leaves the house anymore (apparently), and the high street itself has become some sort of barren anachronism from a bygone era.

I should know: the town in which I grew up has its own leisure complex, which once consisted of a bowling alley, a gym, two restaurants and a cinema. Now, only the gym and bowling alley remain, and I'm not particularly confident regarding the longevity of the latter.

As much as I love nailing a tricky spare and blasting my quads in equal measure, the death of the town’s local Empire cinema feels like a loss whose consequences many of us are only just coming to terms with.

Local cinemas such as these are exactly the kinds of places where such communal experiences are to be enjoyed, yet they’ve become increasingly rare in this age of 65-inch TVs and on-demand streaming. Not that we’d discourage you from buying one of the best 65-inch TVs, mind.

Yes, I missed the boat on A Minecraft Movie, but this is the place where I had my own experiences, the ones that really do form happy childhood memories.

This is the place my parents took me to see Pirates of the Caribbean for the first time, the place that I went on a double date to watch the surprisingly excellent 21 Jump Street reboot as a teenager (my mate and I loved it, our dates were ambivalent), and the place that blew my mind as a twenty-something watching Top Gun Maverick and slightly falling in love with a fifty-something Tom Cruise.

The late great David Lynch made a great point about watching movies on your iPhone which, while it’s a slight stretch, can be applied here. “If you’re playing a movie on a telephone, you will never in a trillion years experience the film. You’ll think you’ll have experienced it, but you’ll be cheated. It’s such a sadness that you think you’ve seen a film on your [expletive deleted] telephone. Get real”.

Ok, so no one’s daft enough to watch, say, Dune: Part 2 on their iPhone and think that it’s the same as watching it at the IMAX in Waterloo, but Lynch’s point is that watching a film is an active experience rather than a passive one, an experience that goes beyond the literal footage that unfolds in front of your eyeballs.

It’s about the screen and the sound, not to mention the building you watch it in and the people you’re with, and that’s not something you can replicate by sitting at home watching Netflix in bed.

I’m of the generation that’s old enough to know just what it’s missing, and to be capable of realising the difference between hearing the thunderous howl of Tom Cruise’s R-72 Darkstar nailing its Top Gun test run in a properly kitted out theatre against my TV’s rather poxy in-built speakers.

Yet for younger viewers, glueing themselves to an iPad or iPhone screen might be all they’ve known and, more worryingly considering the struggles of the modern cinema, all they ever will know.

Now that my local cinema has gone, I wish I'd made the most of it. It's become easy to be complacent, to fool yourself in the manner Lynch describes, into thinking you're thinned-out domestic experience was the same as the full-fat cinema version.

Yes, I enjoyed watching Deadpool and Wolverine on Disney Plus, but it was nothing compared with the pleasure of seeing Infinity War at the Clapham Picturehouse with, oddly enough, another ex-girlfriend. Maybe she wasn't as into Marvel movies as I was.

I miss those experiences, and I hope that they're not going to be consigned to the annals of history along with handwritten letters, in-car CD players and basic human decency.

I still want to watch films with my friends and family, be they young or old, rather than cooping myself up alone in my flat to slog through another lacklustre Star Wars spin-off.

Popcorn chucking aside, then, I'm glad a new generation is getting the chance to enjoy such communal reveries. Be it Marvel madness or Minecraft mayhem, there's nothing quite like seeing a movie at your local cinema.

Now that mine has perished, I wish I'd visited more often when I had the chance.

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