My favourite Julia Roberts scene was from the film Pretty Woman (1990), where she walks into a luxury store and is refused service by a snooty shop assistant because she doesn’t “look rich”. She comes back the next week, looking rich this time, and the scene insinuates that the snooty, elitist assistant gets fired.
Such petty satisfaction.
While the looks and the culture and the sheer artistry of “The Odyssey” is being talked about left and right, a whole conversation about whether Christopher Nolan just did something similarly elitist with how he approached his new masterpiece is also becoming increasingly relevant. The internet says yes. But every good criticism should consider all aspects, and so before indulging in the “petty satisfaction” of doing so, one must explore the artistic side of it all.
What’s all the buzz about IMAX?
The IMAX 70mm is the largest and highest resolution theatrical format to exist. The film used is twice the size of the standard 35mm, and it takes a floor-to-ceiling screen rather than the usual rectangular screens. Other than its payouts, the IMAX is uniquely difficult to work with as well. IMAX film cameras are famously huge, heavy, footage reels alone can weigh 270 kg, and critically, extremely loud. “Like a Cuisinart in your face” according to Matt Damon and it made them historically unusable for dialogue scenes. Nolan and his team built a new, quieter camera system for this film, reportedly nicknamed “the Keighley,” with a noise-dampening housing called a “blimp”, specifically to solve that problem, which is what let them shoot 100% of “The Odyssey” on the format– a first for any narrative feature. That “first ever” claim is the single most repeated fact in all the coverage and the entire spine of the marketing.
The most hilarious part of this article is that IMAX’s own origin story is close to the opposite of exclusivity. It was born at Expo ’70 in Osaka and Expo ’67 in Montreal, and for its first 30 years (1970s–1990s) it lived almost entirely in science museums, aquariums, and planetariums, showing short educational documentaries and space-shuttle footage shot with NASA. It was, functionally, a public-institution technology: the kind of thing school field trips and science-center memberships gave working families access to, not a luxury product.
Did we really care about IMAX before Nolan made us?
As historic as it all sounded, to the general crowd, the film format was not the most appealing aspect of this movie. As the marketing campaigns begun their rounds, cinephiles were gushing over the fantastic cast lineup that included Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o and many other crowd pleasers. Even beyond the fans, Odyssey had its own charm, as did Christopher Nolan. One of the greatest stories of all time that has been presented, acted and told through centuries being adapted into a movie, that too by a director famous for his obsession with realism and directive creativity already placed “The Odyssey” towards the top of the list of the 2026 movie lineup: which says a lot, considering fantastic movies like Project Hail Mary, Spiderman: Brand New Day, Avengers: Doomsday, Dune 3, Devil Wears Prada 2 were all on that list.
But the marketing campaign for the movie was deliberately shifted to use the IMAX factor as the headline of the campaign from day one, and there’s a clean paper trail. Universal’s own announcement described the film as shot “using brand-new IMAX film technology” before a single frame of casting news existed. Tickets for IMAX 70mm screenings went on sale a full year before release, an almost unprecedented presale window compared to a normal theatrical run, deliberately generating scarcity-driven hype. Multiple outlets compared it to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour presale frenzy. Cast members gave format explainers as press-tour content: Matt Damon and Lupita Nyong’o both delivered on-camera breakdowns of perforation counts and aspect ratios for the film’s official site. Nolan himself did extended, quote-heavy interviews (Globe and Mail, Empire) specifically about “letting the screen disappear” and giving audiences “a feeling of 3D without the glasses”. IMAX Corporation itself treated the film as a business event, not just a release: their CEO gave investor earnings calls crediting the film with record ticket sales ($1.4B projected for the year) and used the film to justify IMAX adding new 70mm installations. Major outlets (CNBC, Forbes, Variety, Today) ran format-explainer journalism that functioned as free advertising, Forbes literally wrote “The Odyssey could have been titled “The Odyssey” Featuring IMAX.”
Major outlets (CNBC, Forbes, Variety, Today) ran format-explainer journalism that functioned as free advertising, Forbes literally wrote “The Odyssey could have been titled “The Odyssey” Featuring IMAX.”
Who did Nolan intend it for, though?
Soon, it became evident that Nolan, indeed, intended his audience to watch this movie in IMAX format for a very particular experience. But his “intended” audience automatically became a selected segment. Geographically, there are only 41 theatres on earth that can project true IMAX 70mm film, 25 of which are in the United States of America. It’s a total of seven countries, all high-income, all Global North; Australia being the sole Southern Hemisphere exception. IMAX Melbourne is explicitly reported as the only true 70mm screen in the entire Southern Hemisphere, meaning all of Africa, all of South America, and effectively all of Asia and Oceania outside Australia have zero access to “the film as Nolan intended.” The disparity isn’t just rich-vs-poor within a country, it’s mapped almost exactly onto Global North vs. Global South.
The price disparity was noticeable as well. National average in US for a standard ticket in 2026 is reported in the $10.75–$16.30 range depending on source. Standard digital IMAX runs roughly 40–70% above base price ($17.80–$22 average, higher in NYC/LA). IMAX 70mm specifically averaged $27.77 per adult ticket on opening weekend, per EntTelligence data reported by CNBC. The format alienated a conspicuous amount of audiences, and yet, not only did Christopher Nolan and his cast and crew emphasize their campaigning efforts for the lesser group that were eligible for their designed “experience”, they failed to address the rest of the audiences at all.
How did the crowd react?
While critics delved into long conversations about differences between accessibility and choice, the public- mostly the GenZ- took to the internet. Over the weeks after the movie was released, people all over tiktok, instagram and twitter started posting pictures of “watching” “The Odyssey” in the worst kinds of screen that has or closely mimics the 1.43:1 aspect ratio of an IMAX screen- a Nokia button phone, a digital watch, in Instagram/Tiktok reel format, the smallest TV in a “backrooms” set, a laptop window the size of a postage stamp- and universally labelled it “as Nolan intended”. The elitist argument soon became loud enough for mainstream journalism to pick it up, and it is no longer an internet discourse. PetaPixel ran a straight news piece: “Gen Z Thinks ‘The Odyssey’ in IMAX 70mm is Elitist,” directly quoting viral posts like “Only 40 cinemas on EARTH could show what NOLAN actually filmed.”Yahoo/Future plc reported fans on X calling the format choice “anti-art” and “beyond disgusting,” with one user asking, “why make it an even more elitist experience when cinema access is already hard for a lot of people?”
Feels familiar, doesn’t it?
The truth is, while this preferential treatment felt unprecedented, it really isn’t. The optics of Nolan’s intention with “The Odyssey” almost unmistakably reminds me of Hollywood’s “Roadshow Era”- from silent films all the way to 1972. Hollywood used a run a distribution model called the roadshow (or “reserved-seat engagement”) specifically for prestige epics like “Lawrence of Arabia”, “Ben-Hur”, “The Sound of Music”, “Doctor Zhivago”. The mechanics map onto “The Odyssey” almost point for point: films were played in one theater per major city, not wide release, causing deliberate scarcity. Reserved seating were booked in advance, sometimes months out, with real scalping problems reported around films like “My Fair Lady”. Premium pricing was the entire point: in the 1960s a regular ticket ran roughly $1–2, while roadshow tickets ran $2–3, a 1.5x to 3x markup. And the scarcity created the exact same “pilgrimage” behavior we are seeing now: “2001” ran for 42 straight weeks in a single Denver Cinerama theater, because that was the only place in the region capable of showing it properly. Roadshows positioned the films as elite experiences inaccessible to casual viewers. Sounds strangely familiar a century later, it seems.
Roadshows positioned the films as elite experiences inaccessible to casual viewers. Sounds strangely familiar a century later, it seems.
Anyway, regardless of how one feels about it, I suppose the IMAX experience is indeed topnotch. Good for you, if you have been able to watch the movie as Nolan intended. If not, I’m sure you’ll find humor in your largely relatable experience of feeling left out on any social media platform, so at the least, I hope you get a good laugh out of it all. And maybe, once we put aside the particulars, a larger conversation needs to be had about accessibility and freedom in art spaces, or the growing absence of it.