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Wednesday
09Dec2009

'Twilight: Eclipse' Will Run in IMAX Theaters

DateWednesday, December 9, 2009 at 5:11PM
The third Twilight film, Eclipse, will open in IMAX theaters the same day it arrives in conventional megaplexes next summer. This is seriously good news for people dying to see cheap visual effects at their most transparent and uninspiring.

The logic behind the move is simple: Money, money, money. The Hollywood Reporter quotes IMAX Filmed Entertainment chief Greg Foster as saying the large screen exhibitor is "poised to take advantage of the rapidly growing fan base devoted to this dynamic, cutting edge series."

Meanwhile, Summit's Richie Fay believes Twihards "will have a whole new way to experience this next installment of the series, with the enhanced image and sound quality of the IMAX experience." Now if only those images were up to par. Actually, the cinematography was pretty good in New Moon, but that werewolf CGI is about as believable as the Minnelli-Gest marriage.

This brings up a bigger point, namely that for every Dark Knight and Harry Potter that can conceivably justify a trip to IMAX, we are bound to be inundated with movies like this that have not proven they're productions of a similar visual or aural quality. IMAX once stood for something, a type of immersive experience you couldn't get anywhere else. The stories, primarily science and nature documentaries, were made more compelling through the use of the magnificent IMAX camera, which gives us a fuller, richer, more pristine picture.

When it comes to Hollywood movies, fewer than can be counted on one hand have actually employed the IMAX technology, to the best of my recollection. An overwhelming amount of the footage ever shown from a studio film on the football field-sized screens was shot using traditional methods and gear, and was later upconverted to IMAX digital. That's akin to taking an old album out of the plastic for the first time and transferring it to a 320kb wave file so you can play it on your really boss home stereo system with surround sound.

For some movies, like The Dark Knight, IMAX is an understandable next part of the process. They're movies meant to be seen and heard in the theater, they're painstakingly crafted, and whenever feasible, the production even shoots scenes (or parts of scenes) with the IMAX technology, giving the film an advantage of the version playing in theater 11 at the mall.

But, with no offense meant to the Twilight series, the teenage vampire movies don't qualify. If anything, they're an example of the type of movies that shouldn't be shown in IMAX, because they're rushed productions made on the cheap with very little attention paid to the visual aesthetics that IMAX should be sticking to for some kind of standard. Twilight movies are designed to be fast food, not a gourmet meal.

This is a bad deal for moviegoers, because I fear it's just the beginning of the complete dilution of a formerly great product.

AuthorColin Boyd | | in , | Print ArticlePrint Article | | CommentPost a Comment |

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