Comment Be careful what you wish for... (Score 1) 513
I've seen the two Disney IMAX releases (Fantasia 2000 and Beauty and the Beast), and was roundly disappointed, as was my wife, who's one of the biggest Disney freaks imaginable. The big problem for me was that the IMAX screen is so big, you have to make a conscious decision where to look. This works well for most of the IMAX-specific films, where there's either one obvious thing to look at (e.g., the mountain in the middle of the screen) or you're being shown a large panorama where looking around at different things is fine.
But present-day movies are shot and edited from the perspective of a smaller, standard theater-sized screen, where you can take in the whole image at once, and where the director and editor use that fact to design the images you see -- they're deciding what you're going to be looking at and paying attention to. Show one of these movies on IMAX, and it's like watching TV with a telescope -- you've got a great view of a small area, but you miss the whole. If a character comes in from one side of the screen while you're looking at the other side, it doesn't just take a shift of attention to see them, it takes a head movement. And, as happened with the Disney releases, you end up missing more than you see.
Having said that:
* Yes, I'd LOVE to see parts of "Dark City" on an IMAX sized screen, just to appreciate the visuals.
* The real question to ask is "What would do if he/she did a movie that was planned to be IMAX-sized from the beginning?" -- where the screen size and shape is factored into the creative decisions from the beginning. We have one example of this, but I'm doing my best to forget about "Captain Eo"...
But present-day movies are shot and edited from the perspective of a smaller, standard theater-sized screen, where you can take in the whole image at once, and where the director and editor use that fact to design the images you see -- they're deciding what you're going to be looking at and paying attention to. Show one of these movies on IMAX, and it's like watching TV with a telescope -- you've got a great view of a small area, but you miss the whole. If a character comes in from one side of the screen while you're looking at the other side, it doesn't just take a shift of attention to see them, it takes a head movement. And, as happened with the Disney releases, you end up missing more than you see.
Having said that:
* Yes, I'd LOVE to see parts of "Dark City" on an IMAX sized screen, just to appreciate the visuals.
* The real question to ask is "What would do if he/she did a movie that was planned to be IMAX-sized from the beginning?" -- where the screen size and shape is factored into the creative decisions from the beginning. We have one example of this, but I'm doing my best to forget about "Captain Eo"...
