The Drive-In Is Back: Avengers: Doomsday at Nite Owl

Nite Owl Drive-In is running Avengers: Doomsday from December 17 through January 4. The holiday film season at a Miami drive-in is the right format for the biggest Marvel film of the season — a movie that is designed to be seen on the largest possible screen, in a setting that makes the experience feel like an event rather than a trip to a multiplex.

The drive-in is one of Miami's most underrated entertainment formats. The city's climate makes outdoor cinema viable year-round in a way that most American cities cannot manage, and the drive-in format — the car as a private screening room, the outdoor screen as a shared experience — is the right container for the kind of film that benefits from scale and spectacle.

Avengers: Doomsday is the kind of film that the drive-in was built for: a spectacle movie, a crowd movie, a film that is better when you are watching it with other people who are also watching it. The drive-in format preserves the communal experience of cinema while adding the privacy of the car — you are part of the crowd and separate from it at the same time.

The December 17 through January 4 run covers the holiday window — the period when Miami's population swells with visitors and the city's entertainment calendar is at its most active. Nite Owl Drive-In is in Miami. The run starts December 17. The film is the one everyone is going to see anyway — the question is whether you see it at a multiplex or at a drive-in under the Miami sky.