The Odyssey in true IMAX is a completely different movie, and Nolan just took a shot at AI on his way out the door

[Priya_39]

Engadget's Devindra Hardawar says he thought The Odyssey was already a masterpiece seeing it on 70mm film in a regular theater, but that experience wasn't close to seeing it in genuine IMAX. As the first Hollywood movie shot entirely on IMAX film, the opening shot of the Trojan Horse buried on a beach towers above the audience, and an aerial view of Odysseus's cliffside home took his breath away

The key word is immersion. At a standard theater the film stays neatly framed within the screen, but a true IMAX screen, 60 feet tall and 81.5 feet wide at the Regal Mall of Georgia location he visited, fills your entire field of view, making details visible in IMAX that were barely perceptible at a regular showing, like Telemachus training along a cliff in the opening scene. The sound system matched the scale too, letting him distinguish specific weapon clangs during battle scenes and feel Ludwig Göransson's score pounding into his spine

Beyond spectacle, the larger canvas makes the sheer physical effort behind the film obvious, real ships were built and sailed, a full sized Trojan Horse was physically moved off a beach, and 2,000 extras were cast for the siege of Troy, all lugged around with heavy IMAX cameras rather than shot against LED volume walls the way recent Star Wars and Marvel productions have been

That practical, human-effort angle is exactly what put Nolan in a testy mood about AI in a recent interview with AFP. Nolan, who doesn't use a smartphone, said he'd never seen a technology so successfully adopted by Wall Street, investors and tech companies that the public has so thoroughly rejected, adding that the idea AI replaces human creativity wholesale is, in his word, nonsense. The contrast with Odysseus: The Fall, a completely AI-generated feature already circulating, makes his point for him, since that project has all the hallmarks of slop, inhuman looking characters and environments pulled straight from a video game. Hardawar's advice is blunt, real 70mm IMAX screenings are scarce and selling out weeks ahead, but it's worth the effort, much like Odysseus's own journey

The Odyssey in IMAX is worth a long journey of your own - Engadgetwww.engadget.com

[Arthur86]

Nolan's line about AI being the one technology Wall Street loves that the public has thoroughly rejected is such a sharp, quotable way to frame the current backlash

[Shane_77]

2,000 real extras and an actual full sized Trojan Horse moved by hand versus an LED volume wall is exactly the kind of tangible effort that's becoming rarer in big budget filmmaking, glad it's getting noticed

[Always_Shane35]

The detail about barely seeing Telemachus training in a regular theater versus clearly seeing him in IMAX is such a concrete illustration of why the format actually matters beyond just being bigger