The Decibel - The Odyssey and IMAX’s Canadian roots

Episode Date: July 27, 2026

When’s the last time going to see a movie was a cultural event? Director Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has people flocking to theatres for its star-studded cast and action-packed storytelling �� but also because of the way it was made. The Odyssey is the first full-length feature shot entirely with IMAX film and getting a ticket to see it in ‘the best format’ has sent some Canadians on odysseys of their own. Today, the Globe’s Deputy Arts Editor and Film Editor, Barry Hertz, is here. He’ll explain how this movie has become such a box-office phenomenon, what IMAX and its Canadian roots has to do with it, and why he thinks it’s the future of filmgoing. Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

That's a clip from the new hit movie, The Odyssey, directed by Christopher Nolan. People are flocking to see it, with some theaters selling out showings multiple weeks in advance. People are trying to see this movie so badly that they are rearranging their lives around it. Barry Hertz is the Globe's Deputy Arts Editor and Film Editor. They are traveling vast distances, planning weeks, if not months. ahead of time. We have, you know, seen sold out round-the-clock screenings in major U.S. cities. The IMAX screenings in New York and L.A. are sold out until late August in London at the BFI IMAX. You cannot see this film until late September. So this is really

become a buy-appointment-only viewing for a lot of audiences. The reason people are rearranging their lives for this movie isn't just because of the story or the star-setted cast. It's also the way you can see it. The Odyssey is the first feature-length movie ever shot entirely with IMAX film cameras. But only 41 theaters exist in the world where you can watch movies in IMAX on 70 millimeters. And we'll get into what that means in a bit. Even Barry, a professional film critic, had to jump through hoops to see The Odyssey. in its full glory.

About a year ago today, I waited until the clock struck midnight, and I was on my Cineplex app, and I was ready to snap up those tickets for opening weekend at the Vaughan Cineplex to see it in IMAX 70mm. And I did that because I knew it would likely be an event of this size and that people were going to be crowding for tickets, in that if I wanted to see it as soon as possible in the best possible format, this was my way to do it. Very shortly after, I got those tickets, they were all gone. So today, we're going to look at why bigger is better, at least for getting people out to

watch this particular film, the technology with Canadian roots at the center of it, and whether the hype around the Odyssey will have an effect on the broader movie industry. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the Descent. from the Globe and Mail. Hi, Barry, welcome back to The Descible. Hello, thank you for having me. So, Barry, people seem really excited about this new Christopher Nolan movie. Can you give us a sense of just how popular it is right now?

Yeah, I mean, this is the movie event of the summer, if not the year. People have been waiting for a new Christopher Nolan movie since the last one. He is a brand unto himself. So combine that with the fact that he's working with probably the star-y-est cast. of his, you know, very high pedigree career and that you have a story that people are almost around the world, certainly, you know, in the West are familiar with and have been familiar with since, you know, grade school. You have all the perfect elements of a phenomenon. Yeah. Okay. Tell me about that part. Like, who's in the movie. And for those who haven't

heard about this story, give me a sense of what the movie is about. Yeah. So, you know, you may have heard about this guy called Odysseus and he had a real tough time getting home from work one day. And, you know, it's an adaptation of Homer's epic poem. It's about, you know, it's essentially, you know, a story about what a lot of Christopher Nolan movies are actually about, which is a guy burdened by his own creativity and ingenuity creates kind of a nightmare scenario for himself in which he struggles to escape and make it back to his family.

We see this story play out in Inception, in Interstellar, and Oppenheimer to a degree. So it is kind of the perfect marriage of material and vision, and it has the biggest cast of the director's career, I would argue. We have Matt Damon, who is no stranger to Christopher Nolan movies, having appeared in Interstellar and Oppenheimer. We have Anne Hathaway,

also a Chris Nolan vet. We have Tom Holland, we have Zendaya, we have Charlize Staran. Everyone. John Bertha. We got Lupita Nyongo. We have Elliot Page, another Inception veteran. So, yeah, it's just like everybody you could possibly want to see doing everything. You could possibly want to see them doing.

And if you're seeing it in the IMAX, 70 millimeter, they are doing it in a magnificently huge, impossible to kind of escape fashion. Okay. You've actually given me a great segue here because, of course, this movie has a star-setted cast. Basically, every star is in this movie, sounds like. There's this epic story. But people are freaking out about how you can see it, how you can view this movie. So tell me about that part of it. Yeah.

So this film was entirely shot with IMAX 70 millimeter cameras. And that has never been done before. Not for the entire production. Chris Nolan and other directors have shot sequences with IMAX cameras before. It's very complicated. Those cameras are very loud. They're very big. So it's quite a technical endeavor.

But if you are able to do it and if you're able to do it for the whole movie, it creates just so much of a deeper image. It's rich textually. It's a high image that takes up the entirety of this specialized IMAX screen. So it feels like you're truly immersed in this world. So the fact that Nolan was able to do this and present it as such for the entire film means that it is an unprecedented way of watching a movie. You've never been able to see a movie like this before, which I feel is definitely driving a lot of that interest and sold out screenings.

Okay. So if I'm understanding this correctly, like there's more captured here. So does it feel like you're kind of inside the movie almost? I mean, it does. And, you know, there have been a lot of screenshots going around online showing the differences between watching this in a proper IMAX screen versus, you know, your traditional multiplex screen. And you do, you are missing a lot of the image that is captured. Now, you can certainly watch it that way. And, you know, Chris Nolan's no dummy. He realized most audiences will indeed watch it in the standardized fashion. But if you are lucky enough to see it in this presentation with IMAX. 70 millimeter, you were just seeing so much more of the frame. And you are getting that's, you were, you were getting lost in that world just that much more. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So a couple of things I'd want to step back and explain here. I'm going to start pretty basic, but just explain very briefly, like what is IMAX? So IMAX is, it's a proprietary system of high resolution projectors,

stadium seating, large, deep, curved screens that are, wall-to-wall, floor to ceiling with a tall aspect ratio. And the other half of that is the IMAX camera. So this is a stock of 70-millimeter film with 15 perforations per frame. So that creates an image roughly 10 times larger than standard 35 millimeter in the old days when people shot movies on film and digital. And it is loaded horizontally rather than vertically. And that's how it's projected as well, which makes it unique. So it basically ensures that every frame has clear, sharp images, bigger, more defined images, sophisticated surround sound. It is kind of the high watermark for blockbuster filming right now. Right. Okay. So it sounds like you have to, as a director,

and Christopher Nolan, as you said, is the first one to do this on 70 millimeter, which we'll get into in a second, but you have to make a decision before you start shooting a movie that you're going to do it in a very difficult or different way than films are usually done. Oh, totally. So that's why you see a movie like The Odyssey is being marketed as shot in IMAX, whereas a lot of other movies that will play on IMAX screens throughout the rest of the year, they'll say shot for IMAX, which means they're just shot in a kind of traditional fashion, but with an eye toward that big spectacle of image and sound and they're projected on an IMAX. screen, but they do not fill the entirety of it from floor to ceiling. Oh, so you have like those black

bars at the top and bottom? Well, you don't really have black bars. You just have nothing. I mean, like, it's, you know, ideally if you're seeing in the theater, it will be masked by the curtain and you won't really see it. But if you are seeing it a true IMAX shot movie in an IMAX screen, it will take up that full depth of screen size. Okay, I'm getting the picture now. That sounds very immersive. So, yeah, that's just really interesting. Okay. So, so. So next part to explain is this 70-millimeter film part of it. So Christopher Nolan, the director, has said for the best possible experience, people should watch this movie on IMAX 70-millimeter film. What does that mean?

Why is he saying that? I mean, so most projectors, including IMAX projectors these days, are digital projectors. They're digitally projecting what's called a DCP, a digital cinema package. The Scotia Bank Cineplex iMacs screen in Toronto, for instance, is an IMAX laser projection. It's not used, there's no celluloid that is involved in that process. But this film was shot on celluloid. And, you know, if you want to be purist about it, like Christopher Nolan does, then you want to see it in the way it was shot. And film, celluloid stock provides just that, you know, texture, that richness, that,

you can almost, you know, it's something you can touch, essentially. And if you want to see that real capturing of the world he was building, that's why he's advocating seeing it on 70mm. Whether that's on IMAX 70 millimeter or, you know, in a regularly projected 70 millimeter theater, that's up to you. But I would recommend it because it just feels more real. It feels a little less crisp, less artificial. than so much film these days is that is captured digitally.

But going to see a movie on the IMAX 70mm is actually very difficult. How hard is it for people to see it on an IMAX 70 millimeter theater? Incredibly difficult. There are only 41 theaters in the world that are capable of showing IMAX 70 millimeter films. Wow. We happen to have nine of them in Canada, but the demand for it is, as we said, very strong and sustained. And people really are trying to, you know, sacrifice time and money to do this. Yeah. Okay. So help me understand something because, I mean, I've seen IMAX movies before.

Aren't there more IMAX theaters out there or theaters that have IMAX screens? I mean, there are more theaters that have IMAX screens compared to, you know, two decades ago, let's say. But a good number of those screens are what cinephiles would call LIMax screens. They're not the total depth that you would get at a place like the Scotia Bank in Toronto or the Vaughan cinemas in Toronto or the Mississauga Cinemas in Toronto. Or famously, the Ontario Sinosphere, the very first IMAX theater ever built. You know, they're branded and licensed and endorsed by the folks at IMAX, but purists would say, you're not really getting the full picture. It's a limax.

It's a limax. And to understand what's a Linux and what's not, you'll have to do some of your own kind of independent research. Okay. But yeah, so there are more IMX screens out there,

but to another point to that is coming up right now, is there, it's hard to make more IMax 70 millimeter projectors to actually show this that aren't laser. You know, Rich Gelfon, the chief executive of IMAX, has been making the rounds,

you know, very pointedly saying that, you know, a lot of this technology, it's kind of been lost to time. You know, the parts are hard to source. The original plans for these projectors are not exactly decipherable. The engineering aspect of it is incredibly complicated. I believe for Oppenheimer, when that came out three years ago, which was kind of, you know, was Chris Nolan's previous film and another one that really emphasized the IMAX 70mm capabilities, there was about 30 or so iMac screens around the world that were capable of doing this. So in the interim, they've managed to up that number to 41, not a heck of a lot. And that's very challenging to do. So the other aspect of it to note is that, well, there's not that much of a market or demand for this outside of one or maybe two films a year that shoot this way, that demand to be seen this way.

So to invest all that money for, you know, a Chris Nolan movie that comes out once every three years or so, it just doesn't make financial sense. And this all goes back into why there's so much hype and so much excitement about this exclusive viewing that people can see in very few places around the world. How much does it cost to get into this type of viewing? I mean, you know, you're looking at a premium price. What of the kind of trends in theater going right now? now is what's called PLF viewing or screenings. That's premium large format. So that could mean IMAX.

That could mean screen X in which you have kind of side panels on the theater showing extra footage, which I find incredibly annoying. It could mean 3D. It could mean 4DX in which your seat kind of rumbles as if you're on an amusement park ride. So, you know, going to the theaters, you know, is often cited as the. most affordable kind of entertainment that you can get in terms of the live space, you know, versus a concert or something like that. But you still will be paying a premium for this. Now I know it to expense the globe for my ticket.

We'll be right back. Barry, let's talk about the cool way Canada is connected to this moment. Can you walk us through how IMAX got it start? Yeah. So I mean, IMAX is a made in Canada success story. The germ of IMAX happened at Expo 67 in Montreal, where Canadian filmmakers, Graham Ferguson, Roman Coyter, and Robert Kerr attended and they participated in, you know, they saw this multiple screen film experiments that were going on in which images were projected on several different screens to create a whole one. And they got the idea to create something bigger, immersive. That was a single screen experience. So they bought the rights to a rolling loop film movement system from an Australian inventor. And that tech allowed IMAX's massive film stock to be projected onto a giant curved screen, giving viewers a sense of real immersion.

1970 was the first time that a IMAX commissioned film was played. And that was at another Expo, Expo 70 in Osaka, Japan. It was a film called Tiger Child. And then shortly thereafter, the first IMAX theater was built, and that is the Sinosphere in Ontario, which is sadly currently inaccessible. And we can blame certain people for that. But at that moment, because the image was so immersive, the technology was complex, it was mainly used for documentaries, educational nature films. Eventually NASA became a collaborator. to do space films.

And so you would see... I remember going to the Ontario Sinosphere, actually, as a elementary school student watching a nature documentary or something like that. I have this image or memory of that. So, yeah, that tracks. I did that as well. And I actually have a distinct memory

because I think there was one scene in whatever film it was in which the camera goes under the water and like a beaver kind of enclave. And at that moment, I was like, wait, did the whole synosphere just like dip into Lake on Ontario? Like, are we? I mean, I was young and stupid. But that's, you know, that's the impressive kind of thing, the sheer size and spectacle of it that it can do. But because it was mostly working in the documentary space, the theaters were mostly built, standalone near museums,

science centers and the like, not traditional movie theaters. Okay. So how does IMAX break into Hollywood? So in the late 90s, IMAX was based in. acquired by a investment company headed by Richard Gelfand, who is the current CEO. He's an American. And he started really making the push into Hollywood, reaching out to high spectacle directors and showing them the potential that IMAX could give for mostly action set pieces. So, you know, there was certainly some challenges with that because it was kind of like a chicken in the egg situation for iMacs and Hollywood. Like Hollywood saw the potential, but they were like, well, are there enough theaters in real

movie theaters that will play this if we commit the money to shooting that way? And then for theater owners who are thinking about building IMAX screens inside of their venues, they were like, well, should we invest in this? Because is there enough Hollywood product to show on those screens? So eventually that game of push and pull subsided. and, you know, Nolan became the first director to use IMAX for, you know, sequences of a major Hollywood feature. I think, you know, a lot of people who remember the Dark Night, that opening heist sequence was shot in IMAX 70mm. It was adopted by, you know, James Cameron, Denisville Nouve, Ryan Coogler famously used it in Sinners last year.

It's a great effect. So now we kind of are entering the era where studio. are so happy to like, say like shot for iMax or shot in IMAX on their marketing materials, because that signals to the audience that this is something big and that this is something you have to see on the big screen and ideally the biggest possible screen with the highest possible ticket price in some circumstances. And that's how we kind of got to where we are today. Yeah. And so today we have Christopher Nolan with The Odyssey where it's been entirely shot with iMacs cameras. How big of a deal is that? Like, what went into that? I mean, this is,

this is a huge technical endeavor. As I kind of mentioned before, the cameras themselves are very loud, so loud as to, it was hard to use them for anything other than action sequences that don't require onset dialogue. So he, Nolan and his team had to kind of get iMacs to make them like a new camera and a new camera muffler called a blimp to kind of box that in to make it happen. And that's because for actors, it would be so loud, they couldn't even, you know, do their lines. It's just so distracting, right? Exactly. And you'll notice that it's very hard to have, you know, for IMAX camera trained on one shot for very long.

So there are, you know, a number of noticeable cuts, I would say, in The Odyssey. You're never seeing the camera linger too long on one shot. The cameras are also very heavy, you know, upwards of 300 pounds. Wow. They're very expensive. You have to change the film out every few minutes. you know, Tom Holland kind of referred to the process of filmmaking on The Odyssey as like being in a F1 race, like the crew was like a pit team that had to kind of, you know, change out everything

to keep the race going. That's so incredible. Wow. And another interesting point to note is that the camera used was named after a Canadian, the Keeley after longtime IMAX executives, Patricia and David Keeley. And the film is also dedicated to David, kind of IMAX quality control. guru who died just a few weeks after the Odyssey was done shooting. What kind of impact has IMAX had on the way Hollywood thinks about movies, especially

the ones we see in movie theaters? I mean, I think, you know, it's always that bigger is better mentality. They're trying to emphasize to the audience that this is something you cannot experience properly at home, certainly not on streaming or on your phone or anything like that. Okay, so it's competition with the streamers watching a Netflix, being comfortable at their house, but this is something different. You can't watch this at home. Exactly, exactly. And there's that, you know.

But you can, but it won't be the same thing. I mean, you can. Yeah, but it won't be the same thing. So there's that exclusivity kind of angle being emphasized. And, you know, I'd like to say it's working. We're seeing so many people flock to the theater and people who haven't been to the theater at a long time. And I guess the idea is hopefully, you know, once they're in there for something special like this, they'll recognize what they were missing. otherwise and make it more of a habitual thing.

Do you think this excitement for in-theater experiences can extend beyond a Christopher Nolan film? Because of course, he's a very famous director. People want to go see his big movies. But yeah, could this go beyond a Christopher Nolan film and this first in moviemaking? I mean, hopefully it can. But we'll see, you know, again, like there's only so many Christopher Nolan movies and he's just one man as much as.

I'm sure some people are trying to clone him. I think another test of this will be in December when Denisville knows June Part 3 opens. Now, that was not shot entirely in IMAX. There are certain sequences that were shot in IMAX. So we'll see. But, you know, that kind of singular spectacle, well, it's singular. It only comes around once. And I'd love to say that this is going to inspire audiences to just keep going to the movie theater weekend after weekend.

But you really need to put some energy into that, both from the studio side and from the audience side. Reality is attendance is still down from pre-pandemic. Nobody's really building more movie theaters. We're in a war of attrition. Theaters are closing, if anything. This is more of a U.S. problem than it is a Canada problem. But it's still very, very difficult. And one movie can start the conversation, but it can't turn the tide.

So Barry, for The Odyssey, you got your tickets a full year out to see this in IMAX 70 millimeters. For people like me, I feel like you've convinced me that this is a real experience. But let's talk to the skeptics out there who are kind of wondering, is it worth the hype and the weighting and the higher price? So is it worth it? I mean, yes, I think it is worth it. You have not, as a movie goer, had an opportunity to see something like this before. And that does not come along all that often. It is a singular experience.

I feel if you are a Nolan acolyte or not, just the ambition and scale on display is worth making the trek. And then, you know, if you feel you've been wronged, come back and write me a letter or post a comment under one of my reviews. But, you know, I feel like this is a moment that we have to take advantage of. And if we don't, it will signal to, you know, of the producers of film, those in charge, will say, well, you know, we tried. They didn't like it. Back to more Fantastic Four. Sorry. Barry, it's always a pleasure to have you on the show. Thanks so much

for coming on. Thank you for having me. That was Barry Hertz, the Globe's Deputy Arts Editor and and Film Editor. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Today's episode was produced by Ali Graham. Our producers are Madeline White, Rachel Levy McLaughlin and Mahal Stein. Our editor is David Crosby. Adrian Chung is our senior producer and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening.