No, it's not just about upscaling, please re-read what I wrote. iMovie can upscale. You just have to trick it into doing so, because you can't set the resolution. Also, you are limited to the 720, 1080, 4k etc. If you want to export a square movie you can't. Best option is to export from iMovie and crop it in iPhoto.
You keep saying that, but you can set the resolution though. I set the resolution every time I export from iMovie. You’re telling me it doesn’t have an option I’ve used every single time I’ve opened the app.
Your complaint is not that you can’t set the resolution, your complaint is that it doesn’t have the options you want.
Okay so how do I set the resolution of an output video to 100 x 100 in iMovie?
(The answer of course is that you cannot)
And yes, my complaint is that it doesn't have the options I want, which makes it a deficient video editor -- the same way an image editor not having history makes it deficient. I want to set arbitrary resolutions on the output video, not be relegated to 540 720 and 1080, and I don't want to have to do gymnastics to get it to upscale.