Box office phenomenon "The Odyssey" by Christopher Nolan has been a powerful promotional tool for IMAX cinema technology, but it has also provoked a backlash online about its perceived elitism. Nolan became the first director ever to use the highest resolution 70mm IMAX film with a specially designed camera to shoot the whole of his epic movie about ancient Greek hero Odysseus. With demand high for the best possible viewing experience, some IMAX cinemas have been booked out weeks in advance, with screen owners putting on extra showings in late or even midnight slots.
Only 41 cinemas worldwide can actually project Nolan's special 70mm film print -- while tickets for the standard digital IMAX screens are premium-priced at usually double the cost of a regular cinema place. Over half of all 70mm IMAX theatres are in the United States, while a country as large as India, with its population of around 1.5 billion, doesn't have a single one. "Creating a film in a format that most people can never experience as intended is not how an auteur of world cinema should work," journalist Harsh Tiwari argued in The Print, an Indian online news and opinion site.
Also, because Nolan optimised his film for the larger, immersive IMAX screens, the vast majority of viewers watching at their local cinemas are seeing an adapted, more tightly cropped version of what he intended. IMAX confirmed that its screens revealed "substantially more image than standard theatrical presentations" in a statement emailed to AFP. Only a few people will get to experience Nolan's true vision," social media user @CinemaRythmes complained on X.
On TikTok and Instagram, jokers have been posting videos poking fun at Nolan's supposed format snobbery by showing themselves watching the movie on a small screen or while distracted -- noting sarcastically how that was "as Nolan intended". 'Difficult film' IMAX, a Canada-headquartered company, produces high-resolution cameras, large-format screens and top-end sound systems that are designed to give theatre-goers the best possible experience. Nolan, the British-American director of "Oppenheimer", "Interstellar" and "The Dark Knight", has been using IMAX cameras for some scenes in his films for nearly 20 years.
For "The Odyssey", IMAX developed a new camera called the Keighley Film Camera, a 200-kilogramme (440-pound) behemoth with so…
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