The Dark Knight

While people in the thousands lined up to see the new Batman, I stayed away. I enjoyed the first one, and wanted to see the next installment, but I was no hurry, and would have even waited to see it on DVD.

When I heard, however, that six scenes were shot using IMAX cameras for the IMAX presentation, and later learned that the Anaheim Garden Walk had just opened a new movie theater with an IMAX screen, I suddenly became more interested.

For those of you who don’t know it, most blockbuster movies, when shown on the IMAX screen are simply blown up to fit the screen; there’s nothing special about the presentation except the fact that it’s big...it's not true IMAX. It’s a big step for a director to use actual IMAX cameras for the movie.

The Dark Knight was (big surprise) a great movie; Jokers performance was, of course, chilling; and nothing about the movie fail short—except the IMAX screen. I had never seen an IMAX movie, and now that I have I don’t know what all the fuss is about. It sounded and looked great, but so did the first one when I saw it on a 60 inch TV with surround sound—in fact, I actually think it looked better.

The same markers trying to convince people that Blu-ray is better then a DVD are the same ones pushing this IMAX stuff. Yes, Blu-ray is better then DVD, but if you buy an up-converter DVD player and use HD-def cabling, most people will be unable to tell the difference; if you put then side-by-side, people will say ones better then the other, but when they stand alone who cares? That’s also my view of the IMAX experience.