Last week, a splashy new trailer for Christopher Nolan’s feverishly anticipated sci-fi epic Interstellar arrived. Along with a wider glimpse of the scope of the movie (which looks fantastic), the newly launched website offers specific details on the six different ways folks will be able to view Interstellar in theaters beginning Wednesday, November 5th.
That’s right—six exhibitions of Interstellar.
Three exhibitions will open November 7th as originally advertised, and will offer the typical array of digital projection options—Digital IMAX, 4K Digital and Standard Digital.
But—lovers of movies on film rejoice—there will also be special advance theatrical engagements two days earlier on November 5th, offering discerning audiences three additional options to see the movie presented on celluloid—35mm film, 70mm film and 70mm IMAX film.
The 70mm IMAX option will offer the purest possible theatrical viewing experience of Interstellar, as Nolan utilized 65mm IMAX cameras to film over an hour of footage (the movie runs nearly three hours and is, thankfully, not in 3D).
For the most part, the average couch potato going to the mall to view Interstellar will not be aware of the subtleties in image quality between the six options, but learned cinema geeks will know the differences and savvy theaters owners are rightfully concerned.
Though the Mom & Pops are voicing their displeasure that Hollywood is making such a symbolic push for film after strong-arming them into converting to digital or face extinction, what I suspect really worries them is the thought that, given a clear and distinct option between film-based projection versus all-digital projection, audiences will finally wake up and smell the coffee: even the standard 35mm exhibitions will show in plain relief the clear superiority of film over digital.
Yes, even with the risk of scratches or torn sprocket holes, a 35mm film projects a superior image than the average 2K digital projector.
And for all the upgrades in hard drive capacities and high-definition mastering, the old-school method of printing a movie on celluloid remains the optimal option for the archiving and preservation of motion pictures.
I don’t think even Nolan himself has any illusions that this stunt will “save” film, but it might be enough of a life preserver to convince the industry to maintain a sufficient manufacturing and processing apparatus indefinitely so that other filmmakers will continue to have a choice between mediums when it comes to shooting their movies on film versus digital.
Three important cases in point: Quentin Tarantino will film his next movie The Hateful Eight in 65mm; J.J. Abrams is currently lensing the new Star Wars on celluloid; and after going all-digital for the production of Skyfall, returning director Sam Mendes and rookie Bond cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema are going back to film to shoot the still-untitled Bond 24.
And if anybody ever manages to snatch away film from Nolan, it will be only from his cold dead hands.
I, for one, will be back row center for the first 70mm IMAX showing of Interstellar on Wednesday the 5th.
Hopefully, the primal thrill of viewing a movie unspooled on a film projector will rejuvenate that part of my brain that misses being teased by the optical illusion of sprocket-fed motion pictures.
Having been forcibly weaned onto digital over the past decade or so, I wonder if the mere experience of sitting in a darkened theater and watching a flickering film in the analog fashion will seem so fundamentally comforting to my brain that I’ll never quite be able to switch back again to digital projection.
I’ll keep you posted.
In the meantime, film as a format is definitely still in decline, and we’re unfortunately stuck with last decade’s inferior digital projection systems in most multiplexes, but so long as filmmakers of the caliber and influence of Nolan and Tarantino keep making and exhibiting their movies on celluloid, the medium isn’t quite dead yet.
