It is extremely rare for cinemas these days to run actual film. It’s also extremely rare for movies to even be released on film. For movies like The Odyssey it’s purely a niche format screening market thing. Unless the cinema says they are running it on 70MM or 70MM IMAX, which theres only a handful pf cinemas that are even capable of that, it was filmed in that format but is being projected to you digitally.
Honesty having watched all Nolan 70mm releases and some on digital IMAX as well, even as an enthusiast there are things I appreciate about these theaters far more than the novelties of film vs digital. They just seem to have a higher overall standard of quality in almost everything - the projection, screen size, contrast, sound, even darkness, atmosphere and their limited seating and arrangements.
I don't know if its just IMAX strictly controlling these factors as the 70mm releases are rare and expensive, or the few remaining theaters acknowledging the target enthusiast audience. But across the 5 different 70mm theaters I have been to, not one has had a significant drop in quality for me.
In comparison, I have been to so many regular "IMAX" theaters where likely more than one of those factors are just way below standard. One particular example I always remember is Interstellar, which I have watched in two separate 70mm theaters, and 1 digital IMAX. And the thing I remember most vividly about the digital screening was how on every dark scene I could see a blue glow from the IMAX sign at the entrance, and this movie had a lot of dark scenes lol.
While there are definitely details of analog film I recall from these movies, by far my most overwhelming association with 70mm is just of that proper theatrical experience that is quite rare to find consistently in digital theaters.
It might just be that if you're going through the effort and cost of setting up this very specialized equipment to screen the movie in 70MM it won't kill you to spend up a bit more to make the rest of the experience overall better. It is marketted as a more premium experience after all, meanwhile more common cinemas are just going to cut costs.
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u/Jackomat007 Jul 16 '26
Do cinemas really still work with Giant rolls of Film? I always thought they get like an email with the Film on it or something