Christopher Nolan's monumental epic The Odyssey has created much excitement among movie lovers with IMAX tickets for thousands of rupees in a few cities. But even with the high ticket price, in India not in the same way Nolan intended.
The Odyssey is one of the first feature films shot in IMAX 70mm film cameras, and more than 2.1 million feet of IMAX film. Nolan also used the latest IMAX film cameras developed in Keighley, England for unparalleled image quality, detail and immersion.
The biggest limitation for Indian audiences is that there is not an IMAX 70mm film projection available. The movie's 15-perforation/70mm (15/70) IMAX format can only be projected in a very few theaters worldwide. A total of 41 theatres around the world are equipped to show the movie in full IMAX 70mm. 34 are in the United States and Canada, and the remaining seven are in the UK, Australia, Belgium and the Czech Republic.
However, India does not currently have a theatre that is capable of showing films in IMAX 70mm (15/70). In the country there are some digital IMAX screens but they are digital projection systems rather than 70mm film projectors.
As a result, Indian audiences will see a digital IMAX version of The Odyssey. Although it will still offer better picture and sound than standard theatres, it is not the original presentation captured by Nolan’s IMAX film cameras.
And the difference goes beyond projection technology. The original IMAX 70mm version has a very tall image with considerably more visual information. When it is converted to digital IMAX and other premium formats, portions of the top and bottom of the frame may not appear exactly as they appear in the native 15/70 presentation due to the screen aspect ratio and projection system.
That means that we won’t see every detail of Nolan’s carefully composed visuals in full-scope in India. Large scale sequences, from Odysseus’s journey to the sea, to epic battle scenes inspired by the Trojan War and encounters with mythical creatures and mysterious forces, were conceived to take advantage of the huge IMAX 70mm frame.
On the other hand, the digital IMAX version is still expected to deliver a very special cinema experience with better brightness, sound and clarity and better contrast to the traditional theatres. The cinematography is the same, but the presentation is very different from the very few IMAX 70mm screenings available for a handful of theaters worldwide.
The only way for cinephiles looking for the highest-quality version of Christopher Nolan’s vision would be to go overseas to one of the limited IMAX 70mm venues. For everyone else, including a few viewers in India, the digital release will be the closest to Nolan’s ambitious visual spectacle.
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