There are people who fly to see the same film.
In the United States, one article featured an audience member who drove three hours to seek out a specific theater.
It is the same film and the same running time. What could be so different?
3-line summary
1. *The Odyssey* is the first film in history to be shot entirely on IMAX film.
2. Its aspect ratio is 1.43:1, while standard theaters use 2.40:1.
3. Korea has no film theaters, making Yongsan the best option.
August 4, Yeongdeungpo
According to reporting by Marie Claire Korea, director Christopher Nolan attended the Korea premiere of *The Odyssey*, held at Times Square in Yeongdeungpo, Seoul, on August 4. It was his first official visit to Korea. Producer Emma Thomas and actors Matt Damon and Charlize Theron also came.
At a press conference the previous day, the director said, “I had hoped to meet Korean audiences directly through film and speak with them, and I have realized that dream with *The Odyssey*.”
Its Korean release is August 5. In North America, it had already surpassed $900 million in worldwide cumulative revenue just one month after its release.
But the story is not the film—it is the film stock
What makes this film unusual lies elsewhere. It was shot entirely with IMAX film cameras. That is a first in film history.
Here, “IMAX” refers not to a theater sign but to a camera and film format. Nolan had previously shot certain scenes in IMAX, but there had never been a commercial feature film shot in this format from beginning to end.
It used 210만 feet of film—where 만 is a Korean unit meaning ten thousand. That is approximately 640 km, enough to travel from Seoul to Busan and back with distance to spare.
You see more above and below
What changes with larger film can be summed up in two numbers.
| Aspect ratio | How it looks | |
|---|---|---|
| IMAX film | 1.43:1 | Nearly square |
| Standard theaters | 2.40:1 | Wide and horizontal |
It is not that the image gets wider; it gets taller. Even when watching the same scene, the sky extends higher and the ground reaches farther below. This is where the feeling of being overwhelmed comes from: the image fills the edges of your field of vision.
70mm film contains far more information than the commonly used 35mm format. In other words, it becomes less blurry even when enlarged.
Why had no one done it first?
It was not because no one knew how. IMAX cameras are loud. Their mechanical noise made it difficult to record actors’ voices on set at the same time, so they had previously been used only for scenes without dialogue.
This time, the equipment was newly designed and deployed so that simultaneous sound recording would be possible even for dialogue scenes. This is what made shooting an entire film possible.
This is where the problem begins
To screen the film as it was shot, a theater needs a projector capable of running that film. Only 41 theaters worldwide have one. 25 of them are in the United States.
Korea is not among those 41.
It once was. The 63 Building IMAX operated from 1985 to 2015, while the theater at Daejeon Expo Science Park operated from 1993 before the two closed in succession. Every IMAX theater in Korea is now digital.
That is the context behind articles about overseas viewers making such trips that they delayed them even through pregnancy.
A handful of screens account for one-fifth of revenue
This unusualness can also be explained in business terms.
According to figures published by The PR, *The Odyssey* earned $1억2450만 in North America during its opening weekend and $2억6410만 worldwide upon release; 억 and 만 are Korean numerical units. Of that, approximately $5200만 came from IMAX, or roughly 20% of the total.
Considering the share of IMAX theaters among theaters worldwide, that is an unusual figure. It means audiences deliberately seek out those auditoriums and buy more expensive tickets.
This is the part I find most noteworthy. As a way to make people go to a theater to watch something they could watch at home, this director chose not image quality but the shape of the screen.
So where should you go in Korea?
Not all digital presentations are the same. The dividing line is aspect ratio.
CGV Yongsan I’Park Mall IMAX is the only place in Korea that can screen it in the full 1.43:1 format. Its screen is 31m wide and 22.4m tall, the largest in Korea.
Most other IMAX theaters show it in 1.90:1. It is not film, but there is still a difference between a version that preserves the vertical image and one that crops the top and bottom. Some theaters, such as CGV Cheonho, have a 1.43:1 screen but can show it only in 1.90:1 due to projector limitations.
In short, the options in Korea are as follows.
| What you want to see | Where to go |
|---|---|
| The full original aspect ratio | Yongsan I’Park Mall IMAX |
| A large screen and good sound | Other IMAX theaters, Dolby Cinema |
| Film itself | It is not available in Korea |
What to check in the booking window is not the auditorium’s name, but the ratio at which that auditorium is showing this film.
Will you see what was cropped away above and below?
The fact that it was shot in a format available at only 41 theaters worldwide also means that most viewers cannot see it exactly as the director shot it. The most interesting part of this work is that he shot it that way despite knowing that.
For Korean viewers, one question remains: will you see what was cropped away above and below, or not?
Sources
- Marie Claire Korea Christopher Nolan’s first visit to Korea, *The Odyssey* comes to Seoul
- Hankook Ilbo “Delayed travel to see a film during pregnancy”… The secret behind *The Odyssey*’s IMAX filming
- The PR The IMAX ticket war created by *The Odyssey*
- Financial News The *Odyssey* team in Korea: “It felt like making a different film at every location”
- NamuWiki IMAX/South Korea
The screen aspect ratios of Korean theaters and their closure histories refer to NamuWiki’s compilation. Screening formats may change depending on theater circumstances, so check before booking.