From VHS to IMAX: Classics Are 2025’s Hottest ‘New’ Releases

Standing in a packed cinema in 2025, watching teenagers gasp as John Williams’ score for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial soars through a pristine Atmos sound system, feels both surreal and telling. These screenings aren’t dusty anniversary nods. They’re full-blown cultural events, complete with limited edition posters, themed cocktails, and queues that snake around the block. The past is no longer a memory—it’s the hottest ticket in town.

For decades, studios wheeled out familiar titles when anniversaries rolled around, often with little more than a new trailer or a Blu-ray tie-in. What’s happening now is different. Today’s reissues aren’t simply about timing; they’re about transformation. Restorations recover lost detail, but it’s the framing of these screenings as experiences that electrifies crowds. Add to that a wave of streaming fatigue, and suddenly audiences are hungry for something tangible, something communal, something that feels earned.

Take Jaws. Nearly fifty years after its first release, Spielberg’s shark is terrifying anew. The latest 4K HDR transfer does more than sharpen the image; it recaptures the humid dread of Amity Island. Seen on an IMAX screen, the water seems to glisten with menace, and every swell of John Williams’ score rattles the room. Screenings have doubled as themed nights—beach gear in the lobbies, lifeguards patrolling for selfies, cocktails called “Quint’s Revenge.” The film becomes more than a viewing—it’s an event you want to be part of.

With The Godfather, reverence takes the stage. Coppola’s mafia saga has long been fodder for academics, but its 2025 release was crafted as a pilgrimage. The new grading intensifies shadow and silence alike, while the carefully built 5.1 soundscape changes how we inhabit those hushed, threatening spaces. Some screenings opened with rare footage, others included discussions with cast members. Together, these elements framed the experience less as a film and more as an act of cultural remembrance.

Then there’s Titanic. James Cameron has always been meticulous, and his film—dismissed by some as melodrama, adored by others as a technical marvel—returns with renewed scale. In IMAX, the ship doesn’t just loom, it dominates. The Dolby Vision HDR transfer reveals textures invisible even to 1997 audiences, from the shimmer of condensation on glass to the detail in steel rivets. Young audiences who never saw it in cinemas are riveted, their emotions breaking open just as fiercely as those of the film’s first-wave fans. And, fittingly, the reissue includes unearthed footage and a new behind-the-scenes featurette, keeping the sense of discovery alive.

I remember renting E.T. on VHS in the early eighties. The image was soft, the colours were murky, and the pan-and-scan format sliced the composition to ribbons. But we didn’t care. It was enough to have it at home. Now, watching it projected in full scope, I realise how much of the film I’d never truly seen. That’s the difference. We're not rewatching these classics—we're finally seeing them.

And this isn’t just a one-season phenomenon. It’s a wider shift in how we value physical, communal cinema. It’s not nostalgia driving these full houses. It’s the thrill of collective discovery. The very thing that home formats diluted: the ritual.

This surge also says much about our shifting relationship with media. Streaming was supposed to bring endless access, yet its glut of options diluted the moviegoing ritual. Faced with an avalanche of content, many viewers crave curation, a sense of specialness. Eventised reissues fill that gap. They remind us why cinema is more than content—it’s ritual, community, and wonder made physical.

There’s an irony here too.

Back in the nineties, I worked at an indie theatre in Amsterdam when Blade Runner’s director’s cut arrived in a fragile print. Today, we romanticise 35mm even as digital restorations are praised as acts of devotion. The truth is, it’s never just about format. It’s about presence: the hush before the opening frame, the collective breath of strangers sharing the same dream.