When Christopher Nolan’s ‘Odyssey’ was released, a strange joke circulated on social media. It was a meme about watching this grand epic on an Apple Watch, a refrigerator screen, or a portable DVD player. While meant as a joke, these images capture the entire point of this article. Digital technology has allowed movies to become anything—meaning they can shrink to any size—and IMAX has become the only format that says “no” at that very point.
The moment we could watch movies on refrigerators, the concept of an ‘unshrinkable film’ began to hold real value.
What Digital Did to Cinema
Over the past 15 years, digital technology and streaming have liberated cinema. You no longer had to go to a theater or match a schedule; you could just press play anytime, anywhere. But this liberation came with a price. Movies became something you could pause at will, speed up, glance at while washing dishes, or shrink down to a palm-sized screen. The moment cinema became ‘ubiquitous,’ it also became something that ‘demanded nothing.’
Digital freed cinema to be ‘anytime, anywhere,’ but simultaneously turned it into something that can be paused and shrunk at any moment.
The Essence of IMAX is Incompressibility, Not Image Quality
IMAX is often explained in terms of image quality. 70mm film IMAX offers the highest resolution, which IMAX calls an 18K-equivalent standard. However, focusing solely on image quality misses the point. These days, even smartphones boast 4K, and tablets are incredibly sharp. What IMAX preserves is not the number of pixels, but the frame itself, which is as tall as a human being. It is a physical scale that vanishes the moment it is transferred to a phone—a unique attribute whose reason for existence disappears when shrunk. Therefore, the essence of IMAX lies not in ‘how sharp it is,’ but in ‘how unshrinkable it is.’
What IMAX preserves is not the pixel count, but the ‘scale itself’ that vanishes the moment it is moved to a phone.
Dune: A Film Where Scale is Grammar, Not Decoration
Denis Villeneuve’s ‘Dune’ uses this scale as a storytelling tool. The desert, the sandworms, humans standing before the emperor’s destiny—these images lose half their meaning if they fail to overwhelm the audience. ‘Dune: Part Two’ was shot entirely in IMAX formats, presenting about 40 minutes in a vertically filled 1.43:1 aspect ratio, whereas in standard theaters, a significant portion of that frame is cropped out. In other words, scale in Dune is not a pretty decoration, but the sentence structure that delivers the story. The very sensation of being overwhelmed is part of the narrative.
In Dune, scale is not a decoration but a sentence—if you are not overwhelmed, the story is not delivered.
Two Directors, Two Philosophies: Format as Faith vs. Format as Language
Here, an interesting fork in the road emerges. Nolan and Villeneuve have different attitudes toward IMAX. Nolan is a purist. ‘Odyssey’ is the first narrative feature film shot entirely on IMAX film cameras, for which IMAX even developed a new next-generation film camera (‘The Kailey’) capable of synchronized sound. In contrast, Villeneuve is a practical aesthetician. In ‘Dune: Part Three,’ releasing in December, he introduced IMAX film cameras for the first time, but intentionally left the desert scenes in digital IMAX. His reason was that he liked the “brutality of digital IMAX.” One treats the format like a faith, while the other treats it like a language to choose from. Yet, both converge on ‘the largest frame possible.’
Nolan treats the format like a faith, while Villeneuve treats it like a language, but both converge on ‘the largest frame.’
Scarcity is a Structure, Not an Accident
The reason IMAX becomes an ‘event’ is because tickets are scarce, and this scarcity is structural, not accidental. There are only about 40 theaters worldwide capable of screening genuine 70mm film IMAX. Ahead of ‘Odyssey,’ IMAX tracked down abandoned and forgotten projectors, scraped together parts to restore them, and trained 60 projectionists from scratch. Even so, 70mm tickets for ‘Odyssey’ went on sale a year before its release, selling out even the 3 AM screenings, and 70mm pre-sales for ‘Dune: Part Three’ sold out in minutes. This scarcity cannot be infinitely replicated like streaming. That is precisely what places IMAX on the opposite end of ‘something you can watch anytime.’
Having only about 40 theaters for 70mm is not a mistake; it is the structural condition that turns IMAX into an ‘event.’
What IMAX Actually Restores
Ultimately, what IMAX restores is not image quality, but a contract. A contract to sit in a dark theater with strangers for three hours, unable to pause, speed up, or shrink the screen, fully immersed. It reinstates everything digital stripped away—the irreversibility of immersion, the sharing of time, and the event-like nature of ‘this is only possible here and now.’ And audiences are responding to this contract with ticket purchases. Half of the North American opening audience for ‘Odyssey’ opted for premium large formats, with a significant portion choosing IMAX. In an era when theaters were declared dead, audiences are instead voting to spend their money on the largest screens possible.
What IMAX restores is not image quality, but an ‘unpausable, irreversible contract of immersion.’
Conclusion: In the Digital Age, the Meaning of IMAX is ‘Going Against the Grain’
Thus, the meaning of IMAX in the digital age is defined solely by contrast. In a medium where everything is infinitely, instantly, and minutely accessible, IMAX forces the exact opposites back into cinema—scarcity, scale, awe, and event-status. This is not nostalgia. As seen in Villeneuve’s mixing of digital and film, it is not a regression to the old, but a deliberate choice to go against the grain. The sight of 3 AM 70mm tickets for ‘Odyssey’ selling out a year in advance is a clear signal from audiences to the industry: some things must refuse to shrink, and people are still more than willing to line up for that refusal.
In an era of infinite replication, the meaning of IMAX is ‘going against the grain’ itself—restoring scarcity, awe, and event-status to cinema.
⚠️ The box office, technical figures, and screening information in this article are current as of August 2026. Since release and screening statuses are constantly updated, please verify exact theater and format details through individual theaters or official IMAX channels at the time of booking.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why buy tickets a year in advance?
Because there are only about 40 theaters worldwide capable of screening genuine 70mm film IMAX. This scarcity is structural, not accidental.
Which movies are worth the extra cost of an IMAX ticket?
Films where scale is grammar, not decoration. Dune: Part Two was shot in IMAX formats, filling the screen vertically with a 1.43:1 aspect ratio for about 40 minutes.
How do Nolan and Villeneuve’s approaches differ?
Nolan is a purist; Odyssey is the first narrative feature film shot entirely on IMAX film cameras. Villeneuve mixes digital and film, using the format as a language for storytelling.
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