‘The Odyssey’ Can’t Be Screened in 70mm IMAX Without Huge, Ancient Projectors. Here’s What It Takes to Keep Them Running
It’s becoming easier, lately, to keep those procedures active, thanks to Nolan films like Oppenheimer and The Odyssey—currently sold out at IMAX Melbourne all the way to Sept. 6—but also a string of recent IMAX 70mm releases capitalizing on audience interest. Dune Part Two, Sinners, One Battle After Another, and Project Hail Mary have all played to packed crowds itching for IMAX 70mm even when the movie itself was shot digitally (the less said about Joker: Follie à Deux the better). Dune Part Three, which features footage shot on IMAX film cameras, will no doubt continue the trend late this year. And the audiences aren’t just boomers nostalgic for the days of film, either. “Some people have never seen film projected,” Ford says, noting that many young movie fans grew up after film projection had died out in the early-‘10s. “I suppose it’s curiosity to see what it’s like.” Ford even fields complaints from some of those patrons, particularly about the flicker produced by the shutter. But the complaints are few and far between.
“There’s something really magical about just the movement of it,” Dobrik says. “That it isn’t so perfect, that it isn’t so flawless. And I think particularly in this day and age, when everything’s so crisp and clear-cut, and we’re all sitting in our phones, and technology’s reaching this sort of perfect apex, you go, ‘Well, something’s sort of lost by that.” Particularly with Christopher Nolan’s films, which are still produced photochemically, with film prints struck directly off the original negative, film projection also creates a more tangible connection to the work of art. Dobrik points out a scene between Menelaus (Jon Bernthal) and Telemachus (Tom Holland) in The Odyssey in which he noticed a black horizontal line near the bottom of the screen. It turns out, every other projectionist he’s spoken to around the world has noticed the same thing, meaning it was likely a scratch on the negative itself. A scar of the production, visible on the giant screen.
“When you see something like this, knowing there’s the little scratch on the film, or maybe a bit of dust blows across the screen, and knowing there’s someone up there, and you’re all sitting there, not on your phones, with 500 people in a cinema, having that shared experience, seeing something real and raw that is just lit by a huge lamp while celluloid flies past the screen, is really magical,” Dobrik says. “You can’t really capture that.” Ford agrees. “There is definitely an interest in film,” he says. “And part of me thinks people didn’t know what they had. I suppose it’s like a steam engine, isn’t it? They’re not practical, but everybody likes to see them running.”
Director Christopher Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema shooting The Odyssey in IMAX 70mm.Universal/Everett Collection
