With Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey now in cinemas I find myself feeling excited, impressed and slightly cheated.
Christopher Nolan is my all-time favourite director. Current listings put the number of IMAX 70mm cinemas capable of showing the film as intended at just 41 worldwide.
That frustration made me think about other films that were never shot for the full towering IMAX frame.
What Other Films Could Have Looked Like
I took screenshots from films and used AI to extend the images above and below. I wanted to see how familiar scenes might feel when changed from a wide cinema frame into something closer to the much taller IMAX ratio.
The changes are incredible.
A familiar shot can suddenly feel enormous. Rooms gain ceilings and the entire composition can become more immersive.
The original filmmakers did not plan these shots, but I wanted to imagine what those cinematic worlds might have felt like with more room above and below the frame...
Slide to see the difference between screen sizes...
In Jaws, the taller frame could've put us right there on the boat when the shark is first seen.
In The Fellowship of the Ring, the statues would have felt truly monumental.
Also in The Fellowship of the Ring, just by adding that little bit, you get a betters sense of the atmosphere.
Raiders of the Lost Ark would have given more context to the temple.
The Matrix's theatrical version already blew my mind, in IMAX... I would have have to be pushed out in a wheelchair because my brain wouldn't be able to comprehend the awesomeness.
Just look what a simple shot like the Neo-Smith fight scene would have looked like. I can't even...
Star Wars would have made the quiet horizon feel even more vast and lonely.
Titanic would have made you feel like you were actually there.
In Mad Max: Fury Road, the taller frame could make the desert feel even more vast and unforgiving.
Ghostbusters would have made the Marshmellow Man feel life-size.
And just imagine 300, this would have been a visual feast to see more of the world.
My obsession with this aspect ratio goes back to the giant IMAX cinema Cape Town used to have at the V&A Waterfront. Its screen was roughly 25 metres wide and 18 metres high. It still sucks that it closed in 2010.
I watched so many documentaries there, but Serengeti is the one that stuck. It was my first IMAX film, and during an early helicopter flyby, I gripped my seat, my body reacted before my brain could remind me I was sitting safely in a cinema. In another documentary, I remember hearing kids laughing near the bottom of a massive waterfall shot and having to lean forward to search for them in the frame.
You didn’t just look at a full 70mm IMAX screen. You searched around inside it.
That scale is why I once drove two hours to Menlyn Shopping Centre in Pretoria just to rewatch The Dark Knight in IMAX, despite having already seen it twice in a regular theatre. The detail in that iconic shot of the Joker hanging out of the police car is etched iinto my memory forever.
That’s why The Odyssey just makes me disappointed that we don't have that true IMAX scale anymore in South Africa. Nolan shot the entire film with IMAX cameras and most of us will never get to see it as intended.
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