The biggest movie of the summer will create a big headache for film geeks in Seattle who want to see “The Odyssey” precisely as director Christopher Nolan intended.
For a population that has gotten comfortable watching anything and everything streamed on TVs and smartphones, the difference might not be that big of a deal. But the epic picture starring Matt Damon was shot on 70mm IMAX to capture the highest quality image and sound, and seeing it like that in a theater should be considered a treat.
But only 25 theaters in the U.S. can project “The Odyssey” in IMAX 70mm. Axios mapped the theater locations, as well as ones in Canada, showing how far apart they’re spread — unless you live in California, where there are eight.
The true IMAX format is an option in Seattle at what was previously called the Boeing IMAX Theater, located at Pacific Science Center. But earlier this year, The Space Needle purchased the theater as part of a sale of a chunk of the Science Center’s campus.
IMAX at the Center, with the biggest such screen in Washington state at six stories tall and 80 feet wide, switched to showing documentaries, according to Axios, which said the Space Needle has “no immediate plans” to show feature films.
For the record, the theater used to do IMAX 70mm film projection, but switched to an IMAX digital projection system that employs dual 4K projectors. It’s still the only nearby screen capable of showing films shot in IMAX in full frame, such as Nolan’s “Oppenheimer.”
The PACCAR IMAX Theater at the Science Center is showing “The Odyssey,” but the smaller screen is said to crop films that were natively shot for the taller 1.43:1 true IMAX aspect ratio.
So, if you’re willing to drive north to Vancouver or Richmond, B.C., two theaters across the border are showing the big IMAX version. Consider Odysseus’s 10-year journey before complaining about a 2.5-hour trip. Furthermore, if this has you really into distances and measurements, IMAX says “The Odyssey” was shot on 2.1 million feet of film — longer than the distance from Toronto to New York.
If you do decide to stick closer to home, what are you actually missing? The short answer: a lot of screen space. The long answer requires unspooling the technical jargon behind “70mm,” “IMAX,” and the digital formats filling up local multiplex listings:
IMAX 70mm Film (15/70, 1.43:1): The native, uncompressed “gold standard” shot by Nolan. Runs physical film horizontally for massive 18K-equivalent resolution and a towering 1.43:1 screen shape that fills giant 6-to-8-story screens.
IMAX Dual Laser GT (1.43:1): Dual 4K digital laser projection. You lose the analog film grain, but it is the only digital format that preserves 100% of the expanded vertical picture without cropping.
Standard 70mm (5-Perf, 2.20:1): Physical analog film running vertically. You keep the rich color, grain, and contrast of celluloid, but it is cropped to a wide 2.20:1 letterbox shape (available in the Seattle area at SIFF Cinema Downtown, AMC Pacific Place, and AMC Bellevue).
Commercial IMAX Digital (1.90:1): Single-laser or dual-xenon digital systems found in standard multiplexes. Crops about 26% to 40% of the native top and bottom image down to a 1.90:1 aspect ratio.
This YouTube video gives a quick idea of what the full frame and cropping looks like on various formats:
“IMAX is the best film format that was ever invented,” Nolan says on the IMAX website. “It’s the gold standard and what any other technology has to match up to, but none have.”
Nolan spoke to “60 Minutes” earlier this year about the technical aspects of shooting the first-ever feature entirely on IMAX film.
Two non-IMAX versions will be showing at Seattle’s most tech-heavy theater, the SIFF Cinema Downtown — formerly the Cinerama. The theater has 70mm screenings from July 16-26, and July 31-Aug. 2. Digital screenings run July 27-30 and Aug. 3-13.
A spokesperson for SIFF told GeekWire that 70mm provides finer detail and higher resolution in comparison to digital, and that movies shot and projected on film generally have a more natural, organic image than digital pixels.
Alternating between the two formats comes down to operational realities.
“We are currently working with a contract projectionist for these screenings, so we are limited by their availability,” SIFF said. “This is also the first time that SIFF has screened in 70mm on these projectors that we inherited from the Cinerama era. We also have digital screenings scheduled to give both the projectors and our projectionist a break.”
In another Cinerama-related story this week, The New York Times reported on the planned revival of the Los Angeles version of the famed Cinerama Dome. It’s an interesting development that explains in part why people even care about the arrival of “The Odyssey” in theaters.
The key point is that going to the movies in a theater is on the rebound after a retreat during the COVID pandemic nearly killed off the pastime. Domestic ticket sales totaled roughly $5.4 billion for the year to date, up 10% from the same period last year and the highest total since 2019, the NYT reported, citing film data service Rentrak.
“I am constantly having conversations with studio heads, and you can sense an optimism that they haven’t felt in a long time,” actor Seth Rogen told Variety in another story that cited Gen Z’s enthusiasm for going to the movies.
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