Colleen McGuire

Are movie theaters dead, or is the big screen irreplaceable?

Soooo strongly against. A film finished for IMAX 70mm, like Oppenheimer, is a completely different object than its streaming version. The resolution, the dynamic range, the sound mix designed for a calibrated auditorium... Compression for home viewing (streaming) discards most of that information. Watching it on a laptop isn't just a worse version of the same experience. It is a different thing entirely. It's like looking at a postcard of a landmark instead of the landmark itself. Directors like Nolan and Villeneuve keep shooting on film and demanding theatrical windows because they view their work as an art and know the canvas matters. When people say theaters are replaceable, they're usually picturing a Marvel movie or 50th mindless sequel, which are engineered to watch at home and survive compression. The more original and artistic films were not, and they are the ones worth saving the cinema for.

France's wealth tax failed because it was badly designed, not because wealth taxes are impossible. Spain still has one. Switzerland has one at the canton level. The 'capital flight' story gets repeated like scripture but the design details matter enormously.

Politics · Oct 6, 2026 · Should billionaires be allowed to exist?