I think it is safe to say that most of us in the US have seen a movie. In fact, I think it is safe to say most of us have seen a double-digit number of movies. They are a staple in entertainment and have been around since 1878, and have gotten both longer and more technologically advanced since then. 

Whether it be in the theater with rows of other people, on the couch past midnight with a bowl of popcorn, or even on your phone on the subway; movies can be watched nearly anywhere nowadays.

Hop on Netflix, HBO Max, Amazon Prime, Disney+, or any of the other available streaming services to browse for a good selection of entertainment. What do you pick? Will it be a Marvel Movie? Cooking Show? Sports Program? Simpsons Episode? Could it be a Pixar Movie? Thriller? Soap Opera? If you can’t tell, there’s a stupid amount of options to pick from.

Back in the early to mid-1900s, there wasn’t close to this availability or selection; you could go to the nearest drive-through theater to watch a several-minute comedy sketch or turn on a cowboy movie on your tiny box tv back at home. But at that time everything was in black and white and CGI wasn’t an abbreviation yet.

It is sometimes hard to imagine that the first technical movie ever was 2 seconds of a man horseback riding. Animation required almost all the scenes to be hand-drawn by a team of artists, actors were relatively sparse, and nearly everything on the screen looked dull due to there being no color. Yet, everyone was blown away. Nowadays, if a fully colored, computer-animated, beautifully designed character has an animation mistake or says something just a little bit out of character, it ruins the movie.

If Walt Disney had never run away from home and started his film business, imagine where the world would be right now. It’s a fun thought.