Clones!

Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones: The IMAX Experience:
The Jeffreview

Less and More

I saw Attack of the Clones on IMAX this weekend. And let me sum it up this way: IMAX is magnificent. Go see it. But this Jeffreview is not all praise. In going to see Attack of the Clones on IMAX, you get both more and less of the Star Wars movie. But before I get into that, let me give you an overview of IMAX. If you know all about IMAX, feel free to skip the next paragraph.

Normally when you go to see a movie at the theatre, it was shot and projected on 35mm film. IMAX is a film format which uses much larger film, so the actual image size is almost ten times the size of 35mm film. IMAX screens are much larger than the standard movie screen. If you viewed a regular 35mm film at IMAX size, it would be very grainy and a little blurry, because it’s blown up much larger than intended. To convert a regular movie to the IMAX format, it goes through a process called DMR, which interpolates greater detail for the larger format. It’s not as good as actually shooting a movie in IMAX format, but it’s better than the alternative. IMAX theatres have only recently begun appearing in normal movie houses. Previously, they existed only in places like museums and science centers. As such, there were only a few dozen venues for IMAX movies, unlike the thousands of regular movie theatres for normal, Hollywood movies. Fewer theatres means less revenue, so most IMAX movies were documentaries, an hour or less long. This kept costs low. Also, the IMAX format aspect ratio is wider than TV (1.33:1), but not as wide as Panavision (2.35:1) movies like Star Wars.

Before the movie began, an announcement was made that some viewers might experience motion sickness. The IMAX screen really fills your view, and it’s not surprising to think that some people might get carried away with the immersive camera motion. While I did feel queasy during Blair Witch and Speed 2, Attack of the Clones on IMAX gave me no problems of this sort. IMAX is intended to be kind of immersive, and the screen appears about 1.5-2 times the width of your normal movie screen. The sheer scale of it is immediately impressive. Even as the 20th Century Fox logo appears, you notice details you never realized were there before.

The next thing that hits you is the sound. I could hit you with numbers, like 12000 watts of uncompressed audio, and 44 speakers, but all you really need to know is that the sound is booming. As Senator Amidala’s flying wing passes beneath you in the opening shot, you can feel the rumble of its powerful engines. But it doesn’t feel like they simply cranked the volume up. It’s loud when it needs to be, but doesn’t overwhelm you with volume.

The size of the screen forces you to look around more, to take in all the action, and minor details become large enough to be interesting. But I don’t think any of this detracts from the enjoyment of the movie at all. In fact, I’d say that IMAX is the perfect way for movie studios to combat the threat of proliferating home theatres and audiences jaded by shrinking screens in massively subdivided multiplexes. If only this movie had actually been shot for IMAX.

Any shortcomings I have to report stem from the conversion of this movie to the IMAX format. About the audio I have no complaints. IMAX theatres use a proprietary sound system, so this is not (as far as I know) THX or SDDS or DTS or any of those systems. But it still sounds awesome. And the DMR enlargement of the image from Lucasfilm’s digital source was mostly quite good, too. There were a couple of shots where the contrast created the subtle edge-rippling (my term, I dunno what others call it) which is so typical of images shot on video, and there were also a couple of shots where a jagged, unaliased edge was visible. But overall it looked really good and smooth. I don’t think it would have looked this smooth had I watched Attack of the Clones in a digital theatre and sat close enough for the picture to be this big.

The two main problems with the Attack of the Clones on IMAX are due to the basic technical limitations of the IMAX medium. First of all, the aspect ratio of IMAX is a little more square than Panavision/Cinemascope. This means that the picture had to be cropped for IMAX. So we were essentially watching a Pan & Scan version of the movie (though not nearly as bad as it would have been on TV). I didn’t detect any obviously mechanical pans or bad composition due to the cropping. Just that as a Star Wars fan, I remember noticing some details on the edges of the frame, such as the Millennium Falcons which appear at the spacedock when Anakin and Amidala arrive on Naboo, which didn’t make it into IMAX.

Second, IMAX has a time limitation. Most IMAX movies are around an hour or less in length. IMAX machines are simply not built to accommodate movies longer than 2 hours. This meant that around 20 minutes had to be cut out of Attack of the Clones for its showing on IMAX. This can be seen as a good thing and a bad thing. On the one hand, the movie moves along quicker, and seems more tightly-paced. On the other hand, scenes are trimmed and in many cases completely removed, and some of the story is lost in the process. I think I would have more faith in the IMAX edit if I had known that Lucas had supervised it, but it was a project handed off to others while he immersed himself in the writing of Episode III.

It might be a reasonable assumption that anyone seeing the IMAX version of the movie has probably seen the regular theatrical version already, but the guy sitting next to me hadn’t. This was his first viewing of Attack of the Clones. And there’s plenty enough action and stuff going on to satisfy the average viewer. In many cases, scenes were simply trimmed. For example, on Naboo there is a scene where Anakin and Padme get out of a little boat, walk across to a stone railing, and look out at the landscape. Padme says something about the little island and sand, then Anakin replies about how sand is coarse and gets everywhere. Then he talks about how nice it is here, and everything is soft and smooth, while touching Padme. Then they kiss. In the IMAX version, Anakin says his piece about sand being coarse, then they go right to the kiss.

In several other cases, entire scenes were removed. Anakin and Padme’s picnic, frolicking out by the waterfalls, was cut. Obi-Wan in the Jedi Archives was cut. And most of Palpatine’s scenes were cut. After Amidala’s ship explodes, we cut directly to the Jedi in the elevator, on their way to Amidala’s quarters. (The moment when Jar-Jar greets them at the elevator is gone, too.) There is no scene of Supreme Chancellor Palpatine slyly suggesting that Obi-Wan and Anakin guard the Senator. So in the later scene when Palpatine tells Anakin that he will be the most powerful Jedi of all, the less-geeky audience members are left wondering who this old guy is. Then later, the crucial scene in which Palpatine manipulates Jar-Jar into nominating him for Emergency War Powers is gone. We go directly to Jar-Jar in the Senate, doing the nominating. I found this cut the most bothersome, given its importance in the greater Star Wars story.

Of course, in the interest of time the end credits were cut. The standard scrolling credits were replaced by a few still slides filling the massive IMAX screen with five columns of names. The music was obviously cut, too, which was a bit of a disappointment, since I was looking forward to hearing the end theme on the kick-ass IMAX sound system. In total, I think the end credits came in under 20 seconds.

In conclusion, I would have to reiterate that Attack of the Clones on IMAX is worth seeing. It’s the perfect movie for such a format. Sure, there are some cuts and cropping, but that’s why you bought the DVD, so you could see all that stuff over and over. If you can manage it, you should see Attack of the Clones on IMAX at least once, just for the experience. Even if you didn’t think it was that great a movie, you’ll probably like it better than when you saw it in the regular theaters.