Christopher Nolan fans are embarking on epic journeys to see The Odyssey the way he wants them to
But 1570 is old technology; most cinemas shifted to digital around a decade ago, which means there are now only 41 cinemas in the whole world capable of projecting the format. These include the Imax in Melbourne, Australia, which removed its film projector in 2015 but bought it back two years later when Nolan appealed to Imax cinemas around the world to show his 2017 film Dunkirk on 1570.
Now, ahead of The Odyssey’s release this week, Nolan fans are heading down under from places as far flung as Turkey, Singapore, Malaysia, Germany and Los Angeles to watch the film at Imax Melbourne, which is the only cinema in the southern hemisphere with a 1570 reel of The Odyssey. The enormous reel runs more than 17km, weighs 240kg, and is, as Imax Melbourne’s technical manager Dan Drobik says, “a precious commodity”.
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Melbourne’s Imax is also the largest 1.43:1 cinema screen in the world, measuring 32m wide by 23m high (roughly as tall as a seven storey building). When tickets for The Odyssey first went on sale – a year ago – it sold more than 17,000 tickets in under 24 hours. They have since sold more than 30,000 tickets; The Odyssey is already their eighth biggest film of all time, before it has even opened.
Edit: Re-saved to try and fix image.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jul/14/christopher-nolan-fans-are-embarking-on-epic-journeys-to-see-the-odyssey-the-way-he-wants-them-toOpen linkView original on aussie.zone
8 replies
I consider myself a Nolan fan, but I don't like this thing he has with IMAX. I don't have the time or money to travel halfway across my country to go to one of the few screens of that type that we have here. Cinema cannot be just for wealthy people; it has always been an art for the people, and this unfairly alienates it.
Ironic that the backwater English city I’m from had one, but then Melbourne Museum is the only one for the entire Southern Hemisphere.
In Nolan’s defence I don’t think seeing it in IMAX is that big a deal. I’ve seen at least Dark Knight Rises, Interstellar and Furiosa in IMAX, movie-wise, and don’t feel like it adds that much. The point of IMAX is that you feel like you’re on a space walk from the shuttle, flying down a canyon or whatever, and you can look around and see more stuff. In a movie the action is by both necessity and convention restricted to a point-of-attention within the frame, often drawing your eye with tricks like focus pulls to show what it wants you to see. Transpose that to the IMAX format and you just end up with a lot of peripheral backdrop, none of which you want to be paying attention to when there’s stuff going on.
I didn’t see Oppenheimer in IMAX, and that was mostly close-ups of men looking constipated in rooms. It made more sense when Nolan did the gliding bit in Hong Kong in IMAX, and Interstellar had shots portraying the emptiness of space really well, both of which are like call-backs to classic IMAX reels.
All I know is I once tried SceneX and burst out laughing when they turned it on. No wonder theatres are dying.
IMAX was best done with CDN documentaries in the 70s. Toronto had the first cinesphere and those films were designed to take advantage of the format. Lots of low flying plane shots in the north.
I don't get the hype.
It's a story everyone knows and everyone has probably seen multiple films about.
Meh, I'll probably end up seeing it at some point.
We recently saw the 2024 adaptation called The Return and liked it. It doesn't have the gods and monsters in it. Filmed in a style that feels like a play more than a movie, but not on a stage, in real locations.
yup,
it's nearly impossible to get tickets to anything Nolan at imax melbs, sells out so very very quickly. Imax ( and the museum next door was one of the reasons I moved to Carlton years ago )
so I didn't even try this time, I'm going to my local indie theatre that's showing in 70mm, that's good enough, it's also 1/6 the price
I was in Melbourne in January and was toying with taking the kids to see something at IMAX. There was nothing special on so we didn't bother.
But tickets to July screenings of The Odyssey were all but sold out. People were booking 6+ months ago.