how TV screens made watching movies worse - (2D version)
For 40+ years, we've been watching butchered versions of movies at home—actors cropped out, jokes missing, compositions destroyed—and modern IMAX releases are making the same mistake in reverse by creating "definitive" versions only 1% of audiences can actually see.
Read Original Summary used for search
TLDR
• Pan-and-scan literally cropped actors out of scenes for 20+ years, turning long shots into close-ups and adding cuts directors never intended
• Pixar's 90s solution was genius: manually reframe every single shot for home video so neither artistic intent nor accessibility was sacrificed
• Modern IMAX releases (Dune, Justice League) repeat the same mistake—less than 30 of 6,000 US theaters can show the "intended" version
• Recent streaming disasters (Simpsons on Disney+, Seinfeld on Netflix) prove we still haven't learned the lesson about format compromises
• The answer isn't gatekeeping the "correct" way to watch—it's giving viewers options to choose their preferred experience
In Detail
The transition from theatrical to home viewing created a 40-year war between artistic intent and accessibility that we're still fighting today. Pan-and-scan—the standard VHS/DVD format—didn't just crop movies, it fundamentally destroyed them. Actors were removed from scenes they appeared in, shot compositions lost their balance, and directors' carefully planned framing was replaced with arbitrary cuts and zooms. Spielberg fought Paramount over Indiana Jones releases because pan-and-scan turned his long shots into close-ups and added cuts where none existed.
The best solution came from an unexpected place: Pixar developed in-house tools to manually reframe every shot of their films for 4:3 TVs. Instead of protecting a safe zone or cropping indiscriminately, they went shot-by-shot deciding whether to zoom, pan, or even move characters to make both versions perfect. This was the ideal compromise—neither artistic merit nor accessibility was sacrificed. But this labor-intensive approach died out as widescreen TVs became standard.
Now we're repeating the same mistakes with IMAX. Zack Snyder shot Justice League in 4:3 specifically for full-frame IMAX theaters—but less than 30 of nearly 6,000 US theaters can actually display it that way. Dune's expanded IMAX scenes are completely inaccessible now that it's out of theaters. Directors like Scott Derrickson argue the IMAX experience is fundamentally different and shouldn't be replicated at home, but this creates a new form of gatekeeping where only a privileged few ever see the "intended" version. The solution isn't forcing one correct way to watch—it's giving viewers options, like Disney+ now does with The Simpsons aspect ratios. Artistic intent matters, but viewer choice and accessibility matter more.