On Easter Sunday, I was, fittingly enough, seeing Sinners. The Waterfront AMC was packed for the Southern Gothic vampire movie’s opening weekend, when it debuted number-one at the box office, a rarity for an original horror film. Sinners was also a must-see in IMAX after director Ryan Coogler released a 10-minute viral video explaining why he’d shot the movie on IMAX film and the importance of the format’s larger aspect ratio.
Of course, Coogler was preaching to the choir here. I’ve long lamented that there’s been no true IMAX theater in Pittsburgh since 2019, the result of various pandemic-era market forces. We’re stuck with the so-called LieMAX at AMC Waterfront 22. The retrofitted theater earned the derisive nickname since it retains the IMAX branding — and premium ticket price — despite using a lower-resolution projector and a downsized version of the seven-story IMAX screen. As Coogler himself points out, film footage shot for IMAX will be cropped on a LieMAX screen, meaning you’re missing huge chunks of the frame.
And yet, it’s the best we’ve got; and I’ll take it, especially with a transfixed Sinners audience. So imagine my horror when the Waterfront’s IMAX theater, the last in the region, abruptly closed the next day. The closure came as part of a multimillion-dollar makeover of the Waterfront announced last fall. After signing a lease extension, AMC Theatres pledged a full remodel of Waterfront 22, which first opened on the site of the abandoned Homestead Steel Works in 2000. Promised upgrades included a downstairs AMC MacGuffins bar, fresh carpeting and paint, new reclinable seating, and a renovated IMAX, details to be announced.
For me, the closure raised the perennial question of what the movie-going audience really wants, or what movie theater chains think we want, particularly in a post-pandemic world. The baffling timing of the IMAX shutdown cut off Sinners’ extended theatrical run and curtailed Pittsburgh’s summer blockbuster season. We’re talking about the release of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, the end of a 30-year action franchise with scenes filmed exclusively for IMAX. As with all the MI movies, Tom Cruise almost died for film fans, and actively promoted seeing the series’ finale in IMAX. F1 the Movie — filmed for IMAX and directed by Joseph Kosinski with the format in mind — got dumped from the Dolby Cinema, the Waterfront’s other premium theater, to show Jurassic World Rebirth. Movie fans pointed out that the Waterfront’s last IMAX upgrade to a laser projection system in summer 2023 deprived Pittsburghers of seeing Oppenheimer in IMAX (which I planned an out-of-state trip around).
On a friend’s recommendation, I saw The Final Reckoning at a popular suburban multiplex that shall go unnamed. In what’s been described as an arms race to dilute IMAX’s market share, every theater chain and audio/visual company now has its own premium large format (e.g. Dolby, Cinemark XD, Regal Entertainment’s RPX), betting that filmgoers largely want to stick to our local cinemas and won’t be too discerning. While I hoped for the best, I contend that we should be more discerning, because my Final Reckoning experience was borderline insulting. Unlike IMAX, which had transparent standards for its format for nearly 60 years, I don’t believe this Anonymous premium large-format movie was any bigger than the theater’s standard fare, and I couldn’t believe how garbled and tinny the sound was. Also, no Coke Freestyle machine.
An important tangent: I don’t want hear about the “luxury” recliner seats anymore. Recliners are a diversion and a scam, and we’ve traded too much for them. While I like kicking back as much as the next rube, moviegoers climb into these faux-leather recliners, bliss out, and forget they’re paying top-tier prices for a standard, or even subpar, theater experience. Ask yourself: are the sound and picture quality any better? (No.) Or is every theater chain nickel-and-diming me with its trumped-up premium format? The recliners remind me of the old loss leaders on Black Friday: get people in the door for a $69 flat screen TV or a $.99 toaster (ah, my first apartment), and they’ll forget they’re not really getting a good deal.
Compared with a true IMAX experience in a stadium-style auditorium, it all seems cheap. We’ve sold out the immersive and the spectacular for a piece of Wayfair furniture. To make a long story short, it’s enshittification, and it will come for absolutely everything.
Before I finished this article, the Waterfront IMAX quietly reopened on July 11 after three months of construction. Though I’m eagerly going to see Superman at the new “IMAX,” Pittsburgh Redditors were surprised to find the upgraded theater has “rocker” seating rather than everyone’s favorite cushy recliners. According to AMC Theatres, the IMAX now also boasts an “upgraded 12-channel sound system that brings immersive audio to life.”
The full theater remodel is slated to be completed by late fall 2025. I hope, in that time, we can follow Ryan Coogler’s lead and figure out how to restore the primacy of the IMAX and recapture some multiplex magic. Though few things could part me from my AMC Stubs membership, it would be nice to feel some residue of the old Loews Cineplex, which Pittsburgh can proudly claim, back when the building had a gilded mezzanine and movie theaters were considered palaces.
This article appears in Jul 9-15, 2025.
