As the courtship between Hollywood studios and virtual-reality start-ups intensifies, it’s pretty clear who is most anxious about being left off the guest list for the eventual wedding: the multiplex.

It’s telling that there wasn’t a suitable space among the traditional Cannes theaters to accommodate “Carne y Arena,” but advances in VR are hardly the only threat to the traditional architecture of moviegoing. Netflix and other streaming services have already landed serious blows. Smartphone owners now carry in their pockets a movie theater capable of showing not just new releases but nearly every movie ever made. This development is in its way as destabilizing to traditional notions of retail architecture, and even city-making, as the success of Amazon has been to brick and mortar bookstores. ... And think about that word, “moviegoing." (Or the title of Walker Percy’s 1961 novel, “The Moviegoer.”) The art form from its earliest days has been inherently architectural: to see a movie meant having a destination. The word cinema means filmmaking; it also means a building that shows movies.

Could the lines to get into The Broad in Los Angeles, where visitors post Instagram and more social media posts, be a place for cineplex owners to look to the future?
Could the lines to get into The Broad in Los Angeles, where visitors post Instagram and more social media posts, be a place for cineplex owners to look to the future? © Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times