'The Odyssey' sparks IMAX stampede -- and a backlash

PARIS: 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.

The catch? 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.

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“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.

“This isn’t fair. 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”.

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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 sound-proofing to make it as quiet as possible.

“It was a difficult film. It should be difficult: it’s the Odyssey, it should be hard, 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 “extraordinary, and with it we’ve seen tremendous interest in IMAX technology across the entire filmmaking process”.

The group added 11 new 70mm theatres worldwide in anticipation of demand, each capable of projecting the film reel, which is 18 kilometres (11 miles) long when unspooled and weighs 270 kilogrammes.

Ticket revenues at IMAX theatres broke a record at $52 million on the first weekend.

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The move into the premium IMAX format is part of a broader industry trend in which cinema owners are seeking to make a night out at the movies as comfortable and luxurious as possible.

Improving the user experience is seen as necessary in order to tempt people off their sofas and away from their home cinema systems and streaming sites.

“The Odyssey” has already grossed an estimated $320 million worldwide since its release on July 15 – more than its blockbuster budget of $250 million.

The two biggest movies of 2026 so far, “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” and Michael Jackson biopic “Michael”, have each grossed just over a billion dollars.