Movie theaters aren’t Netflix. That’s a good thing.

I love the movie theater. I love buying my ticket and popcorn and finding a suitable seat, usually in the back-center rows. I love the movie previews. I love packed theaters. I love walking out of a good movie and seeing everyone chatting about it with their friends and family because we all have just shared an experience that has, in some sense, brought us together.

That being said, I also love Netflix. It gives me what the movie theater cannot offer: freedom. I can’t go to the theater in my underwear; Netflix has no requirements. I have freedom to choose what movie I want to see when I’m at the movie theater, but it’s a limited freedom. The movie list is reasonable, but Netflix lets me choose from hundreds of options. One goes to the movies to see a movie; Netflix, though, draws no such boundaries around me. I can watch “Planet Earth,” Jim Gaffigan or “Goodfellas,” and if I don’t like those, then I can exit at any point and watch “Stranger Things.”

The movie theater and Netflix, or any streaming service, are two different and mutually exclusive experiences. The former can offer things, like community, the latter cannot, and vice versa. But if you have been to a movie lately, you have probably noticed some changes. For instance, you probably had to choose your seat while purchasing your ticket. Your seat probably reclined, and you probably had a miniature table, similar to a TV tray, to place your food on. And the theater probably held less people in it because of the size of each reclining seat.

I am not a fan of these changes. It is obvious to me what movie theaters are trying to do: They are trying to compete with Netflix. They are trying to accommodate to a changing customer, one who now does not have to leave her house for the latest movie, or for anything, really. The reclining chair is an obvious accommodation. It is an attempt at translating the movie theater into the living room, at shrinking the gap between the two and making them more alike than different.

Most TVs are in living rooms where families gather together to watch not in stiff-backed chairs, but on recliners and couches. Hence the change in the movie theater seat. The movie theater industry has recognized we, the transcendent consumer, will not pick ourselves up off our couches and endure the hard journey out of our houses unless where we are going is just as comfortable and familiar. The movie theater recognized it needed to coax us off the couch, but also we would not get up unless our destination was soft and cushiony.

I understand the movie theater, in order to survive, had to do this; Netflix and Hulu are quickly supplanting it as the de facto providers of all things visual and cinematic. But I can’t help thinking the movie theater is compromising and giving up on what it is and can do. Netflix can only provide for an intensely private community — if you have a few friends over, or some family. The movie theater allows you to share an experience with strangers. It makes movies a communal activity. That is what makes movie theaters important.

To make chairs reclinable is not to necessarily forsake this communal aspect of the cinema, but it is to start down that path. I fear movie theaters, in their rush to shape themselves into quaint, comfortable living rooms, will forget it is not the first word of “movie theater” that is important, but the second, “theater.” If movie theaters were only useful in regards to their provision of movies, then Netflix and Hulu would be simply better. They offer more options and a wider selection.

But that is not why they are useful. Movie theaters must come to understand what they are, and what they can offer to us. They offer the transcendent consumer, that Netflix cannot. It’s not just a visual experience alone, but a visual experience with fellow moviegoers.

If this goes, then a lot else will be lost as well.

Scott Stinson is a UF English junior. His column focuses on popular culture.