Beautiful renders throughout this thread, nice job!
It's probably a single line of code to change the color of the Menu Bar, I venture that Apple has the resources to do that. This is the company that once invented a "remote disk" software that could run (*on Windows!*) to let 1st Gen MacBook Air users feel better about the fact that the laptop didn't have a dvd drive... So I doubt they'll be daunted by the task of making the menubar white.
FWIW, I'm using a 14" MBP as a temporary machine and, while I dislike a lot of things about this laptop (the weight, the thickness, the retro-useless ports) the one thing I truly like is the notch. In fact, if there was a way to make the menubar pale grey currently to make the notch stand out more, I would use it. When I'm not in fullscreen mode, I select pale color backgrounds to emphasize it. Just saying -- I know this is not everybody's opinion, but not everybody hates the notch either.
As for watching movies, sure, but that's hardly what a laptop is for, especially an ultraportable. Apple may well say that you could buy literally any other device in their lineup if that's a problem for you. But, you know, they used to sell iPads with white bezels (I had one) and people used to watch movies on them without trauma. I suspect people would get used to the white notch too. But I agree it's not ideal.