With summer’s crop of ultra-mega-outrageous movie blockbusters coming to a multiplex near you, one eventually asks, if I’m spending ten dollars to see the biggest movie of the summer, why not just spend a few more to experience it in its most obscenely large presentation possible?
Once reserved for 40 minute educational programs about endangered bats, IMAX has since evolved into a great reason to drop an extra five dollars to experience this summer’s blockbuster movies in all their mind blowing, sense altering glory.
IMAX theaters aren’t as abundant as their traditional counterpart, considering that the tech specs of the screen read something like seven stories tall and wider than a football field. But, ladies and gentlemen, it is more than worth the extra effort it takes to seek out such a theater. The totally immersive nature of an IMAX means that the sound, picture and mind-fuck created by the format puts you into the film in a way normal theaters simply can’t.
For example, when viewed at the Meteron IMAX, the most recent Star Trek was a ridiculous orgasm for the senses, but the release of this film also raised a critique of mainstream IMAX distribution: it seems that many cinema chains have been transforming traditional venues into “fake” IMAX theaters that are not up to IMAX specs.
Avoid those theaters! Stick with venues like the Meteron, where their IMAX screen is properly (and mind-blowingly) adherent to the same IMAX tech specs you’ll see in museums and science centers.
Night at the Museum was and Tranformers 2 will be released in IMAX theaters the same day (normally) as their by-the-numbers counterparts. If you’re going to go to the trouble to see a nutty blockbuster, spending 5 bucks extra to see it on not just the big screen but the really, really, really, big screen seems like a bargain.
Photo: davitydave
