The streaming vs theatrical debate has been resolved by the films themselves and we're just not admitting it yet.

There are films that require theatrical presentation: anything by Villeneuve, anything by Nolan, anything where scale and sound are doing narrative work. Dunkirk in a theater is a different experience than Dunkirk on a television. Not a slightly better experience — a categorically different one.

But most films — the character studies, the thrillers, the comedies, the small dramas — do not require theatrical presentation. They're better at home, where you can control your environment, pause for a bathroom break, and watch in the conditions the filmmakers actually mixed for (home theater systems, not the variable quality of multiplex sound).

The argument for theaters isn't really about image quality anymore. It's about the social contract of collective attention: being in a room with strangers who have agreed to watch the same thing at the same time. That experience is irreplaceable. But it's not the right container for every film.