Ivan Donaldson

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

I'm hard of hearing and theaters are genuinely miserable for me. The volume is calibrated for teenagers, the dialogue gets buried under the score, and half the chains still treat captioning devices like a favor instead of a right. At home I have subtitles, I control the volume, I rewind the mumbled line. The theater industry spent decades ignoring accessibility and then acts shocked that disabled viewers built their movie lives elsewhere. Comfort isn't a luxury feature. For a lot of us it's the whole decision.

Publishers also spent a decade giving content away free and failing to build subscription products. Google did not force that strategy. The monopoly is real, but the industry's own mistakes deserve some of the blame.

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Maybe the compromise is standardized minimums with room above. A floor that guarantees equal treatment, plus discretion for genuinely exceptional commercial cases. Floors are easier to defend than ceilings.

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