The official website of ‘The Odyssey’ by Christopher Nolan has a very unusual function: in the Explore Formats sectiona selector allows you to see the same trailer in six different formats, from the almost perfect square of IMAX 70mm to the wide panoramic view of conventional 35mm. It is a promotional decision that reinforces the idea that Nolan is extraordinarily concerned with image and the format of your film. But… what if what this gadget transmits is just the opposite?
The formats. What changes between one format and another is the proportion of the image, the shape of the plane. In IMAX 70mm, the format in which the film was originally shot, a person is in the center of the screen, with “air”, or a part of the image without vital information, above and below; In the 35mm format that most audiences will see in conventional cinemas, that same shot appears cropped from above and below, eliminating that superfluous information. You just have to compare the trailer on the film’s website with the tools that are provided to us: the story is the same but the image is, literally, from two different films.
Aspect Rancio Facts. It is worth clarifying a little what this is aspect ratio, the relationship between width and height of the image. Basically, it determines what the viewer sees and what the director leaves out of the frame. It is, basically, the minimum compositional decision in cinema. And the framing differences can be very noticeable: in the 2.39:1 widescreen version, a considerable part of the image is cropped compared to the IMAX 70mm in 1.43:1. Only a few theaters in the world can show the film in IMAX 70mm, so many IMAX theaters present the films in 1.90:1, which is the second largest format, much closer to the traditional scope. The third in size is the standard 70mm at 2.20:1, which is not very different in height from the traditional 2.39:1 35mm widescreen.
In other words: the IMAX 70mm in 1.43:1 shows up to 40% more image than standard screens. Translated to the plane: what is cut out in the conventional distribution are not the sides (the width is preserved) but the top and bottom of the frame. The 70mm horizontal runs across the projector rather than vertically, creating that monstrous frame size. But it’s not just a question of seeing more or less, but of what is seen and what is not. Or to put it another way: if Nolan assumes that we are not going to see 40% in widescreen… has he included a 40% superfluous image in IMAX? And this affects planning, of course: in a very close-up of a face in IMAX, will we see only the actor’s face in conventional cinemas, without a stage around it?
Cinephile elitism. On July 17, 2026, when ‘The Odyssey’ hits theaters, the viewer’s experience will depend, to a large extent, on where they live. Only 30 theaters in the world are equipped to offer the IMAX 70mm format, and none of them in Spain. There are rooms here that project in 70mm and there are also IMAX rooms, but none have both at the same time. The only cinema in the country that will offer the two options, although separately, are the Palafox Cinemas in Zaragoza: their room 4 will project in 70mm five-perforations, while on July 17, coinciding with the premiere, they will inaugurate a new IMAX room.
Only theaters with IMAX 70mm can reproduce the film exactly as it was photographed. The other versions preserve much of the visual presentation, but crop or reduce parts of the original image, as we have seen. That has sparked a debate that has been going on for weeks. circulating on social networks: There is talk of elitism and that Nolan is turning his back on his audience, and the reason is that the planning, as we have seen, changes drastically from one format to another… and the frames have been planned for a very minority format.
The framing is what you are looking for. Because there is a question that Nolan has not answered: did they compose each shot also thinking about the 2.39:1 crop? When Nolan was mixing formats in ‘Dunkirk’ or ‘Interstellar’ (using IMAX only for certain sequences and the rest in scope), the composition of each scene was planned for its specific format. The visual leap between square and panoramic formats was part of the film’s language: the horizon literally widened in moments of maximum tension.
The decision to shoot 100% of ‘The Odyssey’ in IMAX, instead of the usual 60-70% in his previous films, means that the dialogue shots between two actors are also in 1.43:1. In 2.39:1, those same shots will lose vertical information from the original frame. The premiere on July 17 will reveal, with the support of the public, whether it has paid off for Nolan to shoot, literally, for thirty theaters around the world.
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings