It is a Friday night. You feel like watching a movie. You could either put pants on and go to the theater, or you could leave the pants off and snuggle with your blankies while you watch Netflix. I do not blame you for picking the second option. Having said that, I believe the movie-watching experience has lost some of its luster since the advent of such streaming services.

Sure, the theater has downsides. When was the last time going to the movies cost more than filling your gas tank? Take me back to the days when it cost a nickel and they called it the picture show. You also have to deal with other people when you go to the theater. If you are like me, other people tend to be grating.

I asked English teacher and film critic John Bottiglieri to remind me why the theater-going experience is so special and he quickly shot down my quibbles with it.

“Going out to the movies means, besides that fact that you’re going to spend a little bit more money, although that’s good for the economy, that you’re actually getting out and interacting with other people, which is the definition of a society,” he said.

So much for my argument against going to the theater, but he also brought up a much more prescient point, as first said by legendary film critic Roger Ebert.

“‘The movies are a machine for generating empathy.’ […] When you go to the movies you learn about other people and you learn to be a more empathetic person. We’re in a public place, with other people,” Bottiglieri said. “We’re responding to something as a group.”

That really gets down to the whole thesis of why we should value going to the theater. Comedies are funnier when we see them with a group of people. Horror movies, for the most part, are scarier when there are other people seeing the same scary things that you see.

There will always be the odd duck like senior Sam Jasutis, who said, “I don’t really see the point of spending money on something I might not like.”

I pressed him, wondering if that meant he watches movies illegally.

“Sometimes it’ll be through Netflix, but I mean, do they really need my money?” Jasutis said.

Then there will be people like senior Parth Shah.

“I like that I get to hang out with my friends and we get to watch something together,” Shah said.

And, at the very end of the day, that is what makes the theater a special place. Just two weeks ago, “Furious 7” came out and everybody went to go see it. I sat there opening night as a packed theater cheered as a car drove out of a skyscraper through another skyscraper. Then, an entire theater wept as Dom Toretto went on one last ride with Brian O’Conner.

As Roger Ebert said, “The movies are a machine for generating empathy.”