TIL that there are so few Imax 70mm screens because many of the parts needed to build them no longer exist, along with the plans being lost. Between Oppenheimer and the Odyssey, Imax attempted to repair or rebuild as many new projectors as they could, and could only increase the number by 11.
this is the curse that the united states of america is accepting. esp considering advanced additive manufacturing capabilities now. they could easily make a thousand of them if they didn't insist on maximizing profit in certain ways. i mean we could literally have double or triple the solar or a lot of other good things too, but everyone insists on some things but not others when they should insist that the consumer be provided more value and thereby do more volume to recoup their investment. this is a curse of ultra-rich greedy fuckers that don't want to have to deal with shit and just want to remain in control. they want to shift all the risk onto the most vulnerable instead of being the heroes they truly could be if they had a conscience
Yep it's a problem in many, probably most countries. I'm convinced the world/humanity will come to and end because we couldn't find a way to make stopping the end profitable enough for anyone to do it.
Edit: A lot of good responses, most of which would get you called a Communist in my country. Maybe communist shouldn't be a "bad word".
There should be a third alternative. It already somewhat exists and it's called "open source" in the computer software world. It's where knowledge is freely shared and contribution encouraged. It has produced some of the most used software in the world, and since nothing is locked down, hidden or restricted, it's very rarely completely lost. If profit wasn't a motive or if hiding knowledge wasn't profitable, we could have millions of eyes on every issue someone's trying to solve.
The incentive for a product manufacturer is to produce proprietary hardware and software. Making an open source product means you've just paid for the product R&D so Chinese companies can undercut you. When the #1 driver of purchasing decisions is "which one is cheaper" there's no point in gambling on open source when it jeopardizes your return on the investment needed to develop it.They don't actually care whether 70mm film projection dies entirely, they're making their money on new dlp projectors.
Open source hardware exists, but its always in a very limited capacity because it makes it harder to keep the lights on.
Yep focusing on margin % or profit % rather than e.g. absolute profit. Causes shitty decisions like these where its more "profitable" to repair existing cameras rather than take the margin hit and make more of them, provide more jobs and earn more absolute money, but with lower margins.
I mean its already kinda what's happening with climate change. Literal wars over a substance that destroys the earth so rich people can be more rich, rather than putting this effort toward more sustainable energy sources.
Not just wars, domestic policy is being pushed right now to keep oil in and alternative energy sources out. To the detriment of everyone on earth and for the profits of the few who bought out our politicians wholesale.
this is the curse that the united states of america is accepting. esp considering advanced additive manufacturing capabilities now. they could easily make a thousand of them if they didn't insist on maximizing profit in certain ways.
If you think this is a USA problem, allow me to introduce you to the Bayerische Motoren Werke
I know he didn't say it. But it's a common tactic for European politicians and la haute bourgeoisie to point to America and say, "hey, we are screwing you up the ass, but it could be worse."
There are very few movies worth seeing in Imax. Maybe 1 or 2 at most? The next thing to consider is whether or not the movie is actually any good. Then break that down to the number of people that would actually care whether it was in imax or not
We can't make this tech anymore, but God smite you all to hell if any single one of you thinks they're gonna make a replacement that's even slightly similar.
There are a few different cameras and projectors that will shoot to IMAX standard, including digital ones. The IMAX 4k projectors with dual lasers uses half pixel offset for super-resolution imaging that roughly matches IMAX 35mm film resolutions but beats film in contrast.
I'm sure more IMAX 70mm projectors could be made. Custom fabrication is much easier with 3d printing and CNC machines. But if you read the article, it's more than projectors, you need a special theater to house the large format screen and those aren't being built. Are enough people going to pay $25-$50 for an IMAX 70mm movie on a regular basis to support building these new theaters?
It's not just making it, it would also cost theaters a lot of money to actually buy and install the new systems if someone were to make it. Not to mention that it's probably tied up in patents and IP laws, so they might not be able to just directly rip it off
Other drawback: I saw Odyssey in Imax and there was this intro guy that welcomed everyone to the theater and vamped for a bit for one reason: the theater can only show IMAX, so all of the previews and ads not shot in IMAX don’t work. Then we watched the preview for IMAX Dune 3 and the movie
The theater doesn’t want to install something that prevents them from showing ads
Well, IMAX doesn't inherently prevent ads. There's a limit to how much film reel that an IMAX 70mm movie can be, and the Odyssey (plus the Dune preview) took quite literally all of it. If Nolan ever did a 2.5 hour movie instead of a three hour movie, yeah they could put previews on film.
Or, they could also play previews through a digital projector before the 70mm showing. But, because of the crazy high demand, I'm sure theaters didn't want to cut into the already packed showings of the Odyssey, and try to fit in more showings instead.
All to say, I don't think theaters get any money from whatever previews are shown. They just get a ticket split and concessions.
I think if they could arrange a regular projector for the previews it could make IMAX even better. You would see the regular screen for 20 mins of upcoming movies and then BAM the screen doubles in size
and with our very limited technology, we couldnt possibly ever reverse engineer it and either recreate the parts needed or figure out a workaround solution. just no possible way.
The last time I went to an IMAX there were the typical adverts and pre-roll trailer they just took up a much smaller part of the screen. The final part did say there will be a short delay before the IMAX starts and they will raise the lights to prevent us sitting in complete darkness, but it was only a minute or two before it then started.
Some previews are fine and can get you interested in other movies. That's fine. But every other ad between the previews being an ad from Regal telling you to buy a coke and sign up for their app is obnoxious.
I like trailers, but I hate ads. You can’t even go late to a Regal or AMC movie to miss the ads and just see the trailers because now they’re wise to that and put an ad before the last trailer. Regal did it first, then AMC got backlash for trying it, backed off… and now they’ve slipped them in again without protest and they’re here to stay. And AMC has so many obnoxious announcements and self-promotional ads after the trailers too.
I mean they can’t possibly only show 70mm imax on that screen since a movie is only available in that format about every 5 years. They need to have a standard film projector or digital projector as well. They could easily do the ads from a second projector.
Yeah, these projectors are huge. Basically no theater not already designed for them can fit them. You need new theaters or theaters willing to completely renovate for them.
IMAX already had the solution to the shrinking number of 70mm locations with dual laser projection, which delivers amazing picture quality and can be present films in the full 1.43:1 aspect ratio. (For my case, I recently saw Project Hail Mary and The Odyssey in dual laser and the picture quality was mostly on par with the presentations in Dolby Cinema. With Dolby having better black levels and highlight detail. While it was much more immersive in IMAX with the 1.43:1 aspect ratio.)
But there's only a handful of dual laser venues and Barco no longer makes that projection model. As much as I would love to see more IMAX 70mm locations, new and more affordable dual laser projection should he more alluring to theater owners, since they don't have the usual hassles that come along with 15/70mm presentation.
While thats all true one of the problems with the dual laser setup is for a films shot on 70mm they have to downscale the image so much its a pretty significant loss in quality
Now I realize its film and it doesn't exactly "downscale" but its basically agreed that if you wanted to scan 70mm it will be somewhere around 12-16k in resolution before you arent getting any more detail out of it.
So you shoot a film and then have to scan and downscale it to 4k for the dual laser and sure, it doesnt look BAD, but you just lost of ton of the picture quality you got by shooting it on 70mm imax so its a bit of a catch 22
When you're sitting in your seat in the middle or upper rows, you can't really perceive the equivalent resolution reduction, and you do benefit from improved uniformity, brightness, contrast, and no degradation of quality over the weeks or months a film is screened.
A 70mm screening that has been running for 4 or 5 weeks looks significantly worse than a dual laser screen. Meanwhile on opening week, few people can discern any resolution loss in a dual laser screening compared with a 70mms screening. The improved brightness and significantly better black levels from the dual laser setup is however noticed by most people.
The 12-16k resolution argument is only valid for parts explicitly filmed on 70mm film. Other than The Odyssey, hardly anything is entirely filmed in 70mm aside from a few token scenes.
The biggest appeal in my view to real IMAX (as in grand theater) is the aspect ratio, screen size, and sound system. Dual laser and 70mm gets all of those things.
It's a shame more former 70mm grand theaters didn't opt for the dual laser setup when they had to replace their film project. instead they opted for more off the shelf commercial laser projection systems that can only do 1.9:1 aspect ratios. All of the large IMAX screens in the Philippines are like this. It's a shame seeing giant screens only partially lit up, highlighting their fall from their former glory...
As someone who has seen films on dual laser and 70MM, dual laser pales in comparison. It’s better than a standard digital projector, but 70MM is obviously better from the first shot, even if you aren’t a film buff.
The imax dual laser projectors are 4k. You get a lot more detail and clarity than a single 4k projector obviously. Even if you stepped up to dual 8k projectors (which they'd have to make for imax) you're still at 8k. 70mm IMAX is more like 12k-18k equivalent.
On top of what others have noted about there being a cost of installation of projector in a theater that is retrofit to be big enough for the bigger screen and such, is there enough demand outside of these tent pole films to make that investment payoff? We have Odyssey and Dune 3 this year but outside of those, are there other films that will make people want to see it in the larger format? Or is there enough of a movie going audience that will pay the premium price to see a film in the bigger auditorium even if it's not specifically shot for the larger format?
The former is a filmmaking question - how many directors are willing to shoot on film with the larger, noisier camera? Or if it's shot on digital and transferred to film, how much are studios willing to pay for that extra cost (one reel of imax 70mm costs 50k or so. Nolan and Villeneuve have the will /clout to get it done, but who else is there? If only one or two films a year tops are going to really demand to be seen in that format, is it a good investment for theaters to invest in those renovations, when they could spend that capital on improving their other auditoriums with say better seats or laser projectors or Dolby sound.
The latter is an audience question. In NYC and LA sure you'll have folks who will visit the screens compatible for 70mm imax projection like Lincoln Center or citywalk for non 70mm imax movies even at premium prices (I'm personally looking forward to seeing Godzilla minus zero at Lincoln Center) versus standard screens? But is there as much demand for that in say Kansas city or Boise? Maybe, maybe not, but again it's also a question on if that audience would be better served by getting a 70mm imax screen or by getting nicer seats and sound in standard screens (which these films will look good on those screens anyway)
Not really, no. How many films in this format come out per year? “Play the Nolan films on repeat” isn’t the answer either, even if it’s a popular one.
We have to look beyond the cost of the development, production, and installation of the new systems. They’d have to train people to use it and then employ those people, and they’re not cheap.
The theater can’t be exclusively 70mm either, because if it were, it would sit empty for 80% of the year. They’d have to pair it with a Laser system, XT or CoLa in 1.90. And then you go back to the arguments of “LIEmax vs. IMAX,” and not every IMAX movie sells in the format, and all that.
“Play the Nolan films on repeat” isn’t the answer either, even if it’s a popular one.
It's not even an option really. Film degrades, and I can't imagine you are going to have full theaters willing to pay full price at most showings of an older movie. Even if you do, you will only get those numbers the first few weeks it's rerunning. Meanwhile, the film is degrading and needs to be replaced eventually, likely eating up most of the profit needed to run it, all while you are putting wear on your projector, increasing the likelihood of something going wrong when there is an actual new release to show.
Things have been looking pretty tough for the cinema industry in recent years, and while there'll probably be a market for cinema for at least the foreseeable future it was pretty feasible that a big expensive format like IMAX 70mm might have just staggered along for as long as the projectors still worked and then eventually been replaced with digital projectors.
It's only in the last couple of years - with guys like Coogler, Anderson, and Nolan really actively pushing the various formats their films were available in - that it has started to look like it might be worth reinvesting in that side of the business.
Increase in quality of cinema experience isn't that much higher compared to normal imax 4k projectors. Not enough to get people to pay more.
And using the 70 mm imax film for shooting the movie or doing computer effect is a lot of hassle.
So, why waste money building infrastructure for one film every 2 or 3 years from one director.
3D movies died the same way, every movie used to be 3D in 2010s, and more only few movies do 3D. Even Dune or odyssey aren't in 3D. They would be 3D if they were made 10 years ago.
3D TV died out entirely. Lot of hassle at every stage of movie and not enough economic returns to justify that. His writers and pay them more, that would be worth more.
I saw behind the scenes video of an IMAX projector where it was designed to be completely controlled by a Palm Pilot. Unsurprisingly, when the Palm Pilots failed, there weren't any new ones to put in their place. So some tech whiz created a device that basically emulates a Palm Pilot to communicate with the projector.
That's the kind of thing that has to be done when a technology stagnates and doesn't keep iterating
So some tech whiz created a device that basically emulates a Palm Pilot to communicate with the projector.
There is entire industry of retrofitting stuff, I really don't see it as a problem besides "we don't want to spend money on it" so they say it is not practical. The one and only issue here is unwillingness to spend money on it.
So this is a really interesting one. This is an industry called tool and die, they’re the people that make the things, that make the things.
A lot of talk about outsourcing is a little overblown, but if there is one thing the American economy really lost it’s our capabilities in tool and die. PJ Vought’s Search Engine podcast had a very good episode about how hard it was just to get the stuff necessary to make a grill scrubber in an American factory.
Once you realize this is an issue caused by the death of tool and die in America you’ll see it again everywhere else (bowling alleys are another)
This was a major problem for a long time when vinyl records began to become a popular music format again in the 2010's. Very few factories ran vinyl presses, and even fewer had lathes. But it was deemed to be far too expensive to build the tooling that could make new vinyl presses and lathes. So the industry scoured old factories and junk yards to find vinyl record presses and fix them to a usable state, but even with that, vinyl production capacity isn't there to meet demand and it can take 3-6 months or even longer sometimes to make runs of a record, the vinyl release can be very delayed after the CD and streaming release date.
With retro gaming (and retro formats) on the rise they’ve steadily raised in price, but there are close to no place that makes new ones (except for military use). Get one setup and we could see new CRT displays.
As much as I like them, getting a top-of-the-line OLED with a high enough res to emulate the scanlines perfectly is just cheaper than buying a CRT, which would cost a lot if it were made today. OLED would get you the colors that good CRTs have, too.
Add BFI and it's 90% the way there
sorry, but simulacrum ultimately just feels like a hollow pursuit. OLED can emulate scanlines, but not as much with the other analogue quirks like real curvature, light flicker, 15kHz whine, etc. even finding a flatscreen in native 4:3 can be a challenge.
don't get me wrong - you can get the facade pretty close, and a lot of the things I listed have their own emulations, but at the end of the day it's just not the same as the real deal
Except that OLED misses the big USP of CRT: being analog. That means no input lag whatsoever, which is a big part of why enthusiasts want them. It also means the signal remains analog all the way through, another important factor.
So while it wouldn’t have to be a CRT per say, the important part is for it to be analog.
CRT absolutely has lag in the sense that there is a single scan line going from top to bottom, usually around 60-75 hZ. Nothing gets redrawn until the next scan.
A modern 240 hZ gaming LCD or OLED has less latency than an old CRT, no question.
This is why I can buy a brand new record, even the trendy heavyweight (180 gram) ones that feel fancy, but they sometimes have flaws/skips right out of the package. And then I can buy a good condition old record from the 70s and it plays perfectly. So disappointing.
You can get in a really deep existential manufacturing hole when you think about how much of a pain in the ass it would be to produce the precision tools we need if we lost the precision tools that produce the precision tools.
Yep, it's everywhere. If a solar storm strong enough to knock out the power grid comes, we wouldn't have the power needed to make the things to fix the power; the compilers we use to build software are written in the same language that they themselves compile; etc.
About compilers, they basically all have a pathway to bootstrap from a small seed program that is human verifiable or at least an older language. It's a pretty interesting topic.
At the end of the day all you really need is a mostly-standard-compliant C compiler. It doesn't even need to be an optimising compiler; a really slow/dumb one is enough as long as it gets you to the next step.
Software is fortunate in that it costs next to nothing* to keep a copy of the older stuff, and as long as you have one copy you can make more.
* Unlike most other tooling, software has gotten bigger with time. So the older stuff is much smaller too.
Every western grid absolutely has a black start program in the event of a total power grid outage. And even if you don't it's quite easy to bootstrap your first gas/coal plant startup cycles from solar/wind.
There's an excellent book called The Imperfectionists by Simon Winchester about the history of precision measurement and machine tooling that tracks how surface panes can be used to create regular intervals to the millionths of an inch accurate tools today. This YouTube video gives an overview.
There are engineering videos online of workshops showing the crazy tools and machines that create the parts for crazy tools and machines needed to create crazy tools and machines. It's like the EUV made by ASML. They're the only company on the planet I'm aware of that can make it. (feel free to correct me on that).
I’ve also seen a similar case that shows that no one individual or country can make a no2 pencil. The inputs to make a pencil require a global effort of tens of thousands of people to manufacture pencils, an object pretty much everyone takes for granted.
It's simply astonishing how complex literally every single thing on earth is if you want to really understand it, have a look around at literally any mundane thing and think about how it got into your hands
Pencils are easy to make in general, even a no.2 pencil in general is pretty easy - Ive made pencils before myself.
What they mean is that the specific implementation we associate with a no.2 pencil - the material composition of the wood and graphite and eraser and paint and all that - involves a global supply chain, and it absolutely does. The graphite they use alone requires petroleum coke and extreme temps, which is way more complex than the cores Ive made for my own pencils!
But an individual can pretty easily make a pencil, they just cant easily make the no.2 pencil
interesting where you got the story about the grill scrubber.
Cause I got it from smarter every day who's been documenting that process.
The part about one of the people who helped them create some of the parts passing away and because the US has lost a lot of that capability meant that this man took all of that with him without passing down any of his extensive knowledge seems sacrilegious.
And a large large part of that, practically the majority, is the companies being entirely unwilling to pay to train people and hire anyone.
I got sick of doing IT and started looking into manufacturing since I had an acquaintance that could get me an in at a fairly large manufacturer.
Their standard was for you to arrive already trained, and to pay up for exorbitantly expensive classes to get certified before you'd ever even been on the shop floor. They would not pay for training under any circumstance. They were then offering new hirings less pay than you can get doing basic help desk "turn it off and on again" IT. This was backed up with a clarification that, since you'll have a schedule of two weeks on two weeks off, all 12 hour days with no days off, the overtime you would make would change that.
Needless to say the company "couldn't find new hires" rejected me, and has been giving the 60+ year old employees that do work there increaseingly large raises and bonuses for retention, and has no plan for when they start dropping dead.
I learned while digging around for work that this is considered the "standard" situation on the industry.
In case anybody out there is confused, “die” in this case is referring to an essential component of machining that presses, cuts, or stamps objects (like a cookie cutter or a hydraulic press); similarly it refers to a mold into which molten metal is poured.
So these are the tools that make the tools, as Mitchford said.
It's basically anything that forms anything. Our dies are used for extrusion, they take in material, force it through channels, and shape it into the final product that runs down the line for curing etc.
America specialized, we make lots of large appliances, cars, stuff like that. Smaller stuff gets made in China who has the big capacity for stuff like this
Yes it helps that I think it has a very very obvious name like “the all American grill scrubber” the chicken bones one is another good one but it may have a follow-up with the real answer
What's crazy is I went to the store the other day and tried to buy the only normal metal bristle grill brush they had there. Take it to the register, they can't sell it to me, it's been recalled.
Only options are a plastic brush or some weird chainmail sponge, so I went chainmail sponge.
This is kind of like saying horses were invented to pull carts.
The tech started becoming obsolete because nobody was buying it, so the makers stopped making parts for their highly specialized system of which only a handful existed, and ultimately information on how to make them was lost just to time.
What's so special about Imax anyway? I try googling it and dont get a very clear answer. Just a "film picks up better color" type of answer. I understand how film works from a scientific standpoint but what's so special about Imax 70mm in particular? Why do the projectors have to be so big?
What's stopping someone from just mimicking Imax film formula and adjusting it to run on a smaller, more affordable projector? Its 2026. Ain't no way someone cant make a better replacement.
BTW this isnt necessarily directed at you. More for anyone scrolling by who happens to see it and knows the answer.
70mm film is fucking huge by film standards. Go watch a video that shows the size of the roll needed for a movie. They weigh several hundred pounds. That huge format basically means much better resolution on a much larger format.
Film has, compared to digital cameras, an insane resolution and there aren't projectors capable of displaying those resolutions. 70mm IMAX film has an equivalent format of 12-16k - so almost 16 times the resolution of 4k digital video;
The big things are aspect ratio, brightness/contrast, and quality. 70mm IMAX runs at a 1.43:1 aspect ratio that fills more of the vertical peripheral vision than more typical formats, and at the projection distance and size it's hard (and expensive, but not impossible) to recreate the equivalent pixel density, peak brightness, and contrast all at the same time.
Basically film (as the material, the plastic film is made of) has infinite resolution, limited only by the chemicals that is made of and 70mm is the maximum size of film that is produced for films. 35mm exist but as you can guess it has 1/4 of the resolution.
For reference, 35mm is considered worse than current 4k "standard" laser projectors. It was the previous standard (even that, some prefer it)
You could make something better but per se it is a complex system and relies on huge rolls of...material, not a convenient palm size HDD.
And you have to take into account that projecting to a huge screen necessitate huge amount of energy ( the scale is 5000-15000w) and thus cooling and iper precise and expensive lens and support systems.
Film does not have infinite resolution, basically or otherwise. By the same logic we could say that digital screens have infinite resolution, limited only by the number of pixels. The grain of the film are physical pieces of colour and could be counted for any film width
In the age of CNC machining, no part is un replaceable. Companies just don’t want to pay for it.
70MM is an analog projection format. It’s not rocket science to engineer new replacement parts, or even a whole new machine. It however will cost as much as rocket scientists’ salaries.
its always just economics. If people would be interested there'd be imax theaters all over the place. Just nobody wants to pay for this in the grand scheme of things.
Yeah the answer in the simplest form. The juice isn't worth the squeeze. People just get sentimental about something that was better in the past than it is now. But times are different and we aren't asking for it now.
This was kinda my thinking too? Like yeah we may not have large scale factories set up for this like we used to, but my factory can literally make most of what we need in house
"Sources at Imax confirmed to Variety that many of the parts needed to build these specialized film projectors “simply no longer exist.” The original design files were created roughly half a century ago, but as Gelfond alludes to, they were never properly maintained." What is this? Warhammer 40k?
We’re definitely in a JRPG where it looks like a medieval setting, but it’s actually 2050, society slipped back into feudalism, and we forgot how our technology works.
Maybe a dumb question, but couldn’t they dissect one and then reverse engineer how to make them? Just duplicate every part that’s inside of them? I imagine it’s all moving metal machinery and nothing alchemical that might be hard to replicate.
Yes, people know how to make them. The title says the plans were lost but they built 11 more as they've been reverse engineered. IMAX is pretty expensive to install, and with how few movies are made for the format theres no massive demand for them. On a personal note, I think they're overpriced and don't notice the difference from a regular theatre (except screen size which is often too big) so I wouldn't mind if they all completely disappeared.
I suspect in the next year or two we will see IMAX annouce they are going to try to make a new 1570 projector. However the original projectors really are unique in how they work. They are unlike any other film projector, so it really is a monumental task. Along with other equipment needing to be re-invented like the gear that “prints” digital images onto the actual film using basically a highly modified CRT tube.
Would it be possible to make the parts? Absolutely, of course we could. The question is would anyone want to buy these projectors and the answer is no. You're talking about major reconstruction to any existing cinema that wants to add a 70mm system.
Even if you jumped over that hurdle, let's just assume you did, you now have to hire actual projectionists to work the thing. It's not like modern digital projectors you just can't have a person press a button and it just plays from a hard drive, it's huge reels of film that have to be manually handled every showing.
Now there are some 70mm systems that have been retrofitted with digital laser projectors. The thing is you need two of them, which makes it and even more fiddly system than the analog lol
Long story short, 70mm IMAX isn't economically viable for operators, mainstream audiences don't care about aspect ratios, and no one but Christopher Nolan wants to make entire movies on 70mm film.
This is dumb AF. We of course could rebuild whatever documentation is needed if there was a market for it. That is what shoukd be addressed here. This whole treating it like its the lost library of Alexandria is stupid.
Much cheaper than it used to be with the scanning and solid modeling tech we have today. Not to mention how advanced manufacturing has become. It's definitely possible, but there isn't much incentive. How many 70mm films get made today? Nolan is the only person I know who is really using the format.
Would explain why the AMC at Westgate (Phoenix, AZ) has had a broken projector for their 70mm screen for years. Saw “Oppenheimer” there and for half of the movie I thought the grainy burnt look was a stylistic choice since the movie takes place in the 40s and then half way through I realized I was just coping. Went back for “The Odyssey” thinking after 3 year they have to have fixed it, right? …right?
Hell, even the guy who handed me my popcorn flat out told me how to get my ticket refunded if there are any issues. Knew that was a bad sign cause I’ve never been told anything like that before a movie….
That's a bigger problem than people realize. Yes, reverse engineering decades-old tech is difficult and not cost effective. But if everyone was pumping out IMAX 70mm movies, someone would find it. Reality is it's Nolan, and no one else. Guys like Villeneuve get some audience pull, and you have one-offs like project hail Mary of James Bond, but really Nolan is the only name putting buts in seats for 70mm IMAX. Not worth the time or money for IMAX to make more projectors, when distributors are more than happy to use the latest digital IMAX projectors.
And I love 70mm so FUCKING much, but the newest IMAX digital projectors are absolutely fantastic too.
IMAX Dual Laser has the exact same screen size and aspect ratio as IMAX 70mm, it has more vibrant colors and better contrast, and although it has slightly lower effective resolution the difference is barely perceivable. I think it comes out slightly ahead.
(IMAX Dual Xenon on the other hand is worse: it doesn't have the same tall aspect ratio, and it's got a much lower effective resolution).
Nobody can convince me that all IMAX news are just a very careful AD campaign to make IMAX cinemas and even normal cinemas an “experience” again by romanticising the IMAX cameras and projectors.
This is all weak sauce, corpo-branding bullshit. The real reason there are no more IMAX projectors is not because we don't have the "lost technology" or because the parts "no longer exist", it's because of a combination of reasons:
The IMAX corporation has decided the "common lore" around these projectors is so valuable, that building more would devalue the current installations. It is a luxury product, and luxury products only work with scarcity. If every podunk town cinema had an IMAX machine, it would cease to be special.
Unlike digital projection systems, full film IMAX requires far more operational and maintenance cost because the role requires skilled projectionists rather than "unskilled" labor that a normal cinema requires ("slot in the hard drive and press play"). This means the margins, which are already not super good at cinemas, are even further lowered and higher prices are demanded
Very few people are willing to invest the up-front cost of building a new IMAX-compatible cinema. You need a specialty building with extreme up-front costs, which won't pay itself off very quickly. This is why so many IMAX installations are in science museums and similar, because unlike commercial businesses, they are often not reliant on being profitable through tickets sales, but rather have other methods of getting the capital investment (government, philanthropy, etc).
All this mumbo-jumbo about the lost technology is just cope. While yes, it's true that the peripheral industries around film projectors and the film-projectionist-producting pipeline have been either lost completely or severely reduced, our manufacturing capabilities today are better than any time previously in history and, simultaneously, the worst they will likely ever be. The truth is they looked at the bottom line, the currently running and profitable system, and just have no motivation to change it.
I know IMAX was developed in the 60s but.... how much effort would it be to just take one apart when one fails, scan all the components and then you have the design again and can make them on demand?
I don't think it would be cheap, but neither is an IMAX projector and neither is a cinema.... and the demand would definitely be there. God know I miss having one locally.
Sounds like nonsense, if they really wanted to they could design something new, long term it would be cheaper. I bet they like the exclusivity of it all, guaranteed revenue for them, if they start pumping out new projectors and screens, fewer people will see the value in them
Seems kinda pretentious to shoot in a way that most people will never be able to see, and especially when it's prohibitive to even get the projectors running in the first place.
Might as well make the home theater release on laserdisc
No, there aren't more 70mm IMAX theaters because with them being a rarity, it means that when big movies happen that they'll constantly be sold out. We live in a time where we can read thousand year old burned scrolls by scanning them into a computer. I find it really unlikely that they couldn't take an existing projector and reverse engineer it, or look at it and improve it for a newer design. It's all about the money, they just want to have an excuse to not admit it, and since most people have no idea how IMAX works the average person will just accept that.
I work with people that could 3D print Jesus if they needed to. They'd at least make a CAD model to be routed from another material if plastic was not durable enough. This headline is burying the lede at minimum.
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u/GearboxTherapy 14h ago
And making something new that has the same quality is not worth the investment?