Cinephiles like me are giddy that more people are returning to movie theatres. Yes, we’d be even happier if more people remembered they were in public and didn’t show up in their pajamas and toting loads of blankets as they try to recreate their living rooms, but ultimately, we are glad you’re there.
2026 is only five months old, but already three films have crossed the $100 million mark at the domestic box office.
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie sits on top at $402 million. Right behind it: Michael, the Jackson biopic, at $183 million. And then there’s Project Hail Mary, The Devil Wears Prada 2, and A Lee Cronin remake of The Mummy. The fifth-place film, A24’s The Drama, is the only top-ten release this quarter that isn’t a sequel, biopic, remake or recycled intellectual property.
Why this is happening captures my imagination. Looking at the slate so far this year and the films that have been most successful, it seems we are paying to be returned to something we already know.
I get it. I do. We are reaching for something comforting in a world that is increasingly disquieting.
What We See
When gas pushes $5 a gallon in some parts of the country, and grocery prices keep climbing, the math on a Saturday night changes.
A family of four cannot afford a Major League Baseball or NBA game. Local theatre tickets have gone up. Concerts are out of reach. But two adults and two kids can still get into Mario for less than $80, popcorn included.
The movie theatre, long pronounced dead, is suddenly the cheapest seat in the entertainment economy. People are coming back because they have to. And nobody is driving to the multiplex this year wanting to be challenged. We want to be soothed.
The mood at the box office matches the mood everywhere else. We are tired. We are scared. We are reaching backward.
Look at what we are reacting to.
Wars, rumors of war, and war pauses, with their blockades, rumors of blockades, and blockades of blockades stream onto our phones. Federal agents pull neighbors out of their homes and call it law. Children of undocumented parents sit in classrooms wondering if their parents will be there when the bell rings. Lies are told from podiums and re-told from pulpits by pastors who know better. Some believe the American government has decided that cruelty is a policy and grievance is a creed. All the while, the grocery bill goes up. Trust in nearly every institution we used to lean on has cratered.
Of course, then, we want to experience the bond between Ryan Gosling saving the earth and a five-legged rock. We want to believe in friendship, hope, sacrifice and joy.
What We Grasp For
But as a pastor, I want the church to know that, as happy as I am to see full movie theaters, there is a word in our faith for what we actually need this year, and it is not Nicole Kidman reminding us “we come to the theatre…” liturgy right before AMC rolls the film.
It is joy.
What going back to the theatre shows me is that we are reaching for joy. And not simply joy, but joy in the face of division, anger, and hate.
Joy is not a mood. Joy is a discipline.
Joy is what Civil Rights icon, Fannie Lou Hamer, was practicing when she said, “I feel sorry for anybody that could let hate wrap them up. Ain’t no such thing as I can hate anybody and hope to see God’s face.”
Hamer had been beaten in a Mississippi jail until her kidneys never recovered. She had been sterilized without her consent. She had watched friends die. And she would not give the people who did it her hatred. That is not weakness. That is refusal. That is the strongest no a Black woman in 1964 had to give.
Joy is what kept her from being made in the image of the people who tried to break her. Joy is what we reach for when we realize the world we inhabit was not built for us, or when it feels like the world is collapsing around us.
Joy is the early scattered, persecuted church breaking bread at home with glad and generous hearts under an empire that would, before long, kill them for it. Joy is Paul singing in a Philippian jail at midnight. Joy is the woman at the well running back to town to tell everybody. Joy is Jesus setting tables in places where the religious leaders had said no table should be.
Joy resists.
Joy resists the hatred that wants to wrap us up. Joy resists the exhaustion that wants to put us to sleep. Joy resists the lie that despair is the only honest response to a country gone this wrong. Joy does not wait for the war to end or the lies to stop or the prices to come down. It feasts in the wilderness. It sings on the way to the cross. It refuses to give the empire the satisfaction of our despair.
We are going to the movies while the world is on fire. But the church has a different word in its mouth. Joy is what we sing when the world feels too heavy to carry.
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CEO of Sean Palmer Coaching, Homiletician in Residence at Bammel Church in Houston, and co-host of the “Sacred Frames” movie podcast.