Dates. The time when people go to the movies to “go to the movies” is when they’re on a date. (Not just at first, but also later in the context of a steady relationship where they want to see a movie together “because we haven’t seen a movie together in a while.”)
For me, seeing a movie in a theatre vs. watching at home is a bit like going to a restaurant vs. eating at home. I used to “go to restaurants” to try specific things I’d heard about, when I was single. Now, though, I mostly only go to a restaurant to go to a restaurant, because that’s a nice thing I can do with my wife. With restaurants, this is the difference between choosing by word-of-mouth (“they have great X!”) vs. choosing by reviews (“this restaurant seems like they’d have something we’d enjoy, let’s go and find out.”) Movie theatres don’t really have the same element of diversity (unless you’re going to independent cinemas), so it’s more just a choice of whether to go to “the movies” at all.
On the other hand, everything I said about restaurants applies exactly to the other kind of theatre. There’s a Shakespeare troupe here (Vancouver) that, each year, puts on three of the bard’s plays (several showings apiece.) You can certainly want to “see The Tempest”, and therefore go watch them perform it; but what I hear much more often is people wanting to “go to Bard on the Beach” (the troupe), and so then they look at what they’re putting on this year to see if it’s anything they could stand to watch. In this context, the theatre troupe is exactly like a restaurant: they want to go to it, as long as it has something they’d be okay trying.
For me, seeing a movie in a theatre vs. watching at home is a bit like going to a restaurant vs. eating at home. I used to “go to restaurants” to try specific things I’d heard about, when I was single. Now, though, I mostly only go to a restaurant to go to a restaurant, because that’s a nice thing I can do with my wife. With restaurants, this is the difference between choosing by word-of-mouth (“they have great X!”) vs. choosing by reviews (“this restaurant seems like they’d have something we’d enjoy, let’s go and find out.”) Movie theatres don’t really have the same element of diversity (unless you’re going to independent cinemas), so it’s more just a choice of whether to go to “the movies” at all.
On the other hand, everything I said about restaurants applies exactly to the other kind of theatre. There’s a Shakespeare troupe here (Vancouver) that, each year, puts on three of the bard’s plays (several showings apiece.) You can certainly want to “see The Tempest”, and therefore go watch them perform it; but what I hear much more often is people wanting to “go to Bard on the Beach” (the troupe), and so then they look at what they’re putting on this year to see if it’s anything they could stand to watch. In this context, the theatre troupe is exactly like a restaurant: they want to go to it, as long as it has something they’d be okay trying.