At age nine, I was the last boy in the trailer park to see a movie named Star Wars. It was 1977 and there was no such thing a a multiplex in the town, you went to one of the movies in the two movie houses.
I was so proud when I gave the the ticket taker my ten and I got change enough for a soda and a small popcorn.
So, what was/is your first movie experience in a movie theater?
Thanks in Advance - DESK
Them. 1954.
Around that age me and my friend used to take the bus downtown for afternoon matinees of terrible scary B movies. I saw too many to even remember.
But I do remember absolutely loving the experience!
I think my first major “solo” movie was Jaws. As stoic as I was, I was scared shitless of swimming for a year or two afterwards.
solo as in alone, solo as in it’s a movie that all my friends have seen so i was forced to see it alone, or solo as in no parents were around?
all alone in a theater for no reason: depp’s alice in wonderland
forced alone b/c friends had seen it: Point Break on DVD
no parents: She’s All That
Never been to movie theater alone.
Yeah, I’m not quite sure what the OP is asking for, either.
The first movie I saw by myself was “Lost in Translation.”
The first movie I saw with just a friend and no parents was “Edward Scissorhands.”
My folks were quite strict about the PG rating thing; back then, if you weren’t 13, the movie theater wasn’t supposed to let you into a PG movie, kind of like being 18 for an R rated one. We didn’t go to movies that often anyway, but I do recall my first PG one; not alone, but with my friend, and my first NOT WITH THE PARENTS, WHOOHOO!!
It was Grease.
I don’t recall which one was my first theater trip alone without friends, but I spent a couple of summers spending 2 bucks to spend the entire afternoon going from screen to screen…hey, they had AC at a time when most people didn’t!. I think I saw Dreamscape/The Last Starfighter/Red Dawn/Gremlins a couple dozen times each one summer. 
There’s something pretty awesome about being in a nearly empty theater. I love it.
I wonder if that had something to do with my first long-term relationship being with a film-operator at a one-screen theater; mmm, can still remember us being there, being um…teenagers… long after everyone had gone home.
Memories!
When I was a kid my mother used to drop me and my younger brother off at a movie while she went shopping. I don’t know if it counts as a solo movie experience if you go to a movie without an adult.
The first movie I can recall which I went to see by myself was Animal House. It came out when I was sixteen and it was R-rated. My parents were strict about that so I wasn’t allowed to go see it. But it was still playing when I turned seventeen and they let me go to it. (My younger brother obviously was not allowed to go.)
The Peter Sellers “Casino Royale.” Next was “Saving Private Ryan.”
yeah, i’m not clear on what the OP wants, either.
if you mean the first movie without parents/adults or whatever, i remember seeing jurassic park alone with my friends when i was 11ish. not sure if that was the first, but it’s the first i remember.
if you mean the first movie i saw by myself, that was freshman year of high school when i wrote a review for the kids section that the local paper ran at the time. it was some crappy robin williams movie that i don’t even remember the name of.
I’m also unsure what the OP is getting at…
The first movies I remember seeing without my parents were Legends of the Fall and Interview with a Vampire. Mom hasn’t seen a movie in the theater since Beverly Hills Cop II, so my dad would “volunteer” to take us to movies until I could drive. (we still see movies together occasionally: he, my best friend, and I saw all but the first two Harry Potter movies together, for example). That was fine by me because it meant seeing movies without having to be responsible for my brother, who always wanted to come.
I’ve never gone to a theater alone, though.
1973, Behind the Green Door 
Why not? This probably sounds rude, but that’s as alien to me as if you’d said you’d never seen a movie before in your life. I know it’s possible, but it amazes me.
I’m not sure what the first movie I saw in a movie theater without my parents (but with my brother) was. It was either Mary Poppins or uh, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. Both came out in 1964 but I don’t know which came first. Release date doesn’t matter because I lived in a smaller town and the main one-screen movie theater got movies randomly, and sometimes months after a movie had been released elsewhere.
The first movie(s) I remember seeing in the theater without my parents or brother would have been either Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, or a cracking double-feature of Bullitt and Bonnie and Clyde. B&C came out the year before in 1967, but I didn’t see it until the double-feature. Both (well, all 3) movies rocked my world.
[Hopelessly off topic because I love how looking up one thing can lead to other interesting things]I just saw that Romeo and Juliet and Bullitt both came out in October 1968. Also released in October 1968: Night of the Living Dead, Finian’s Rainbow, Barbarella, Star! (with Julie Andrews), Coogan’s Bluff (with Clint Eastwoord), The Boston Strangler (with Tony Curtis) and The Lion in Winter. Wow! 1968 was a great year in film. Some other things that happened in October 1968: Jacqueline Kennedy married Aristotle Onassis, Apollo 7 launched, & Hollywood adopted the movie ratings system we know today.
I think the first movie I went to see with only my friends might have been Ghostbusters. It was in an unusually old cinema (scenes from Roger Rabbit were filmed there), and it was either the last or among the last films ever shown there.
It’s a social thing, a thing you usually do with friends. I’ve never been to the movies on my own. But I think this might be a US/UK thing - US people seem to go to the cinema a lot more than UK people, even comparing big movie geeks on either side of the Atlantic.
The Aristocats
Back in the early seventies, our local movie theatres usually ran a Saturday afternoon matinee that was kid oriented. There was usually a feature film and a couple of cartoon shorts for $.50.
My dad would drop us kids off and give me $5 (I was the big kid at home) to cover admission for four of us, cokes and snacks (two large cokes, two boxes of popcorn and a box of M&Ms to split among us). He would then walk across the street from one theatre to the cigar store / lunch counter to play dominoes and shoot the bull or two doors down at the other to the bar for a couple of beers.
Essentially, he was getting rid of four kids for the afternoon for $5.
Young Frankenstein in 1974
The first movie I ever saw without my parents was Disney’s Hercules. I don’t think I’ve ever sat in a movie theater by myself. Going to the movies is something I do with people as a social activity. If I’m going to go by myself, I just wait until it’s on netflix or whatever and watch it at home where I can pause it to go to the bathroom.
Unless my memory is playing me false, I remember my parents dropping me off to see Goldfinger by myself when I was about 10. It is possible my brother was with me and I totally forgot him. BTW, Goldfinger was and still is totally awesome. I still remember my James Bond brief case with the hide away throwing knife.
My husband travels a lot for business. If I never went to the movies by myself I’d miss 90% of the movies I see. I’m probably weird in that I don’t see going to the movies as a social thing at all. Every now and then I’ll have an extra pass to a free movie if my husband is out of town. I’ll take a friend to keep it from going to waste, but it’s rare. Even then, we don’t sit together. Luckily they’re ok with that. Of course, if they weren’t ok I wouldn’t take them.
I don’t know why going to the movies is seen as a social activity really - it’s really just sitting in a room watching a movie. But then, I often watch movies these days with friends even at home or at least talk about it online.