Christopher Nolan’s box-office phenomenon Odyssey has been a powerful promotional tool for IMAX cinema technology, but it has also sparked an online backlash for its perceived elitism.
Nolan became the first director ever to use the highest-resolution 70mm IMAX film with a specially designed camera to shoot his entire epic about the ancient Greek hero Odysseus.
With demand high for the best possible viewing experience, some IMAX theaters are booked weeks in advance, with screen owners showing extra late-night or even midnight screenings.
Get Updated Faster & FREE: Download the Gulf News app now – just click here.
The catch? Only 41 cinemas worldwide can actually screen the special 70mm print of Nolan’s film – while tickets for the standard digital IMAX screens are priced at a premium usually double the cost of a regular cinema.
Over half of all 70mm IMAX theaters are in the United States, while a country as large as India, with its population of about 1.5 billion, has none.
“Making a film in a format that most people can never experience as intended is not how a world cinema auteur should operate,” argued journalist Harsh Tiwari in The Print, an Indian online news and opinion site.
Also, because Nolan optimized his film for the larger, more immersive IMAX screens, the vast majority of viewers watching in their local theaters are seeing an adapted, cut-down version of what he intended.
IMAX confirmed that its screens revealed “substantially more image than standard theatrical presentations” in a statement emailed to AFP.
“This is not fair. Only a few people will get to experience Nolan’s true vision,” social media user @CinemaRythmes lamented on X.
On TikTok and Instagram, pranksters have posted videos poking fun at Nolan’s supposed snobbery of the format, showing themselves watching the film on a small screen or being confused — noting sarcastically how it was “as Nolan intended.”
‘Difficult Movie’
IMAX, a Canadian-based company, produces high-resolution cameras, large-format screens and high-end sound systems that are designed to give theatergoers 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 Movie Camera, a 200-kilogram (440-pound) behemoth soundproofed to make it as quiet as possible.
“It was a difficult film. It has to be difficult: it’s Odyssey, it has to be difficult, and that’s fine,” Nolan told a select group of media, including AFP, earlier this month.
The New York-listed company told AFP that audience response to the film had been “tremendous, and with it we’ve seen tremendous interest in IMAX technology throughout the filmmaking process”.
The group added 11 new 70mm cinemas around the world in anticipation of demand, each capable of projecting the film reel, which is 18 kilometers (11 miles) long when unrolled and weighs 270 kilograms.
Ticket revenue at IMAX theaters broke a record at $52 million in its first weekend.
The move to the premium IMAX format is part of a wider industry trend in which cinema owners are looking to make a night at the cinema as comfortable and luxurious as possible.
Improving the user experience is seen as necessary to tempt people off their couches and away from their home theater systems and streaming sites.
“The Odyssey” has already earned an estimated $320 million worldwide since its July 15 release — more than its blockbuster budget of $250 million.
The two biggest movies of 2026 so far, “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” and the Michael Jackson biopic “Michael,” have each earned just over a billion dollars.
