The Odyssey turned me into an IMAX believer
The Odyssey turned me into an IMAX believer
《奥德赛》让我成为了 IMAX 的忠实信徒
Seeing the film’s most impressive monsters in a larger format is a completely different experience. 在更大的画幅下观看这部电影中最令人震撼的怪兽，是一种截然不同的体验。
After seeing Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey for the first time early last week, I came away impressed, but somewhat conflicted about two of the film’s more fantastical set pieces. While those scenes were beautifully crafted and tremendously acted, there was something a little bit off about the way they hit my eye. I spent days wondering what, exactly, wasn’t quite working for me during that first theatrical viewing, and I thought that might have just been splitting hairs. But it wasn’t until I saw the movie again over the weekend — this time in IMAX — that the issue became crystal clear. 上周初，在第一次观看克里斯托弗·诺兰执导的《奥德赛》后，我感到印象深刻，但对片中两个更具奇幻色彩的场景感到有些纠结。虽然这些场景制作精良，演员表现也极其出色，但它们呈现给我的视觉效果总觉得有些不对劲。我花了几天时间琢磨第一次观影时到底哪里出了问题，当时我还以为自己是在吹毛求疵。直到周末我再次走进影院——这次是在 IMAX 厅——问题才变得豁然开朗。
Though I’d heard all of the buzz about The Odyssey being the first feature shot entirely with 70mm film IMAX cameras, I thought a lot of it was clever marketing hype meant to activate Nolan’s cinephile fan base. I hadn’t considered how watching the film in larger format would make for a markedly different viewing experience. But The Odyssey really is a movie that needs to be seen in IMAX if you want to get a true sense of the story Nolan is telling. 尽管我听过很多关于《奥德赛》是首部完全使用 70mm IMAX 胶片摄影机拍摄的长片的传闻，但我原以为这大多是旨在调动诺兰影迷热情的营销噱头。我没考虑过以更大的画幅观看电影会带来如此显著的观影体验差异。但如果你想真正领会诺兰所讲述的故事，那么《奥德赛》确实是一部必须在 IMAX 影院观看的电影。
Spoiler warning: This story contains spoilers for The Odyssey (which, to be fair, is an adaptation of Homer’s almost 3,000-year-old epic poem). 剧透预警：本文包含《奥德赛》的剧透（平心而论，这毕竟是改编自荷马那部近三千年前的史诗长诗）。
There are many scenes throughout The Odyssey that look perfectly fine when the film is displayed in the 35mm format. Majestic, wide shots of Odysseus (Matt Damon) and his men at sea make you appreciate the Mediterranean’s expansiveness, and you can feel the soldiers’ claustrophobic tension as they hide within the Trojan horse. Even though you can see that the film is cropped, Odysseus’ disastrous encounter with the Laestrygonians gives you a sense of how gigantic they are compared to the wandering Ithacans. But The Odyssey’s scenes involving some of the story’s more gargantuan monsters take on a different gravity when they’re displayed in IMAX because of how much more visual information there is to take in. 在《奥德赛》中，许多场景在 35mm 画幅下看起来已经非常完美。奥德修斯（马特·达蒙饰）及其部下在海上航行的宏伟广角镜头，让你能感受到地中海的辽阔；当士兵们躲在特洛伊木马中时，你也能感受到那种令人窒息的紧张感。尽管你能看出画面经过了裁剪，但奥德修斯与莱斯特律戈涅斯人那场灾难性的遭遇，依然让你感受到这些巨人与流浪的伊萨卡人之间巨大的体型差异。然而，当涉及片中那些更庞大的怪兽时，IMAX 带来的视觉信息量让这些场景展现出了完全不同的分量。
When I saw The Odyssey in 35mm — which is projected in a widescreen, 2.39:1 aspect ratio — I knew that the Cyclops Polyphemus (Bill Irwin) towered over the humans who marched into his cave searching for food. But when I saw a standard IMAX screening of the film — whose 1.90:1 aspect ratio is smaller than the 70mm’s 1.43:1 ratio — I had a much clearer understanding of the creature’s stature and the subtle nuances baked into Irwin’s physical performance. Because the IMAX screening projected a taller image, I was able to spend more time taking in details that were easy to miss the first time around, like the way Polyphemus has to hunch in order to keep his head from hitting the cave’s ceiling. 当我观看 35mm 格式（以 2.39:1 的宽银幕比例放映）的《奥德赛》时，我知道独眼巨人波吕斐摩斯（比尔·欧文饰）比那些闯入他洞穴寻找食物的人类要高大得多。但当我观看标准 IMAX 场次（其 1.90:1 的画幅比 70mm 的 1.43:1 要小）时，我对这个生物的身材以及欧文肢体表演中蕴含的微妙细节有了更清晰的理解。由于 IMAX 投影的画面更高，我有更多时间去捕捉第一次观影时容易错过的细节，比如波吕斐摩斯为了不让头撞到洞顶而不得不弯腰的动作。
The substantive difference between the two screenings became exceedingly obvious once I saw the Cyclops chasing Odysseus and his men down a mountain for a second time. In 70mm, you can see more of the monster’s upper body as it lumbers through trees in a fitful rage, which brings an added sense of danger and urgency to the chase scene. I had a similar experience seeing the soldiers rowing past a whirlpool not knowing that they were drifting directly into the sea monster Scylla’s reach. The 35mm screening shows you that Scylla’s humongous, but the IMAX screening’s added real estate makes it easier to understand how she’s able to snatch her victims up before any of them realize that she’s lurking in the cliffs above them. 当我第二次看到独眼巨人追赶奥德修斯及其部下下山时，两种放映格式之间的实质性差异变得极其明显。在 70mm 画幅下，你可以看到更多怪兽在愤怒中穿过树林时上半身的细节，这为追逐戏增添了额外的危险感和紧迫感。在观看士兵们划船经过漩涡，却不知自己正漂向海怪斯库拉的攻击范围时，我也有类似的感受。35mm 格式让你知道斯库拉体型巨大，但 IMAX 增加的画面空间让你更容易理解，为什么她能在受害者意识到她潜伏在上方悬崖之前，就将他们一把抓走。
By shooting The Odyssey completely in 70mm, Nolan crafted a film whose size and visual detail could make it feel immersive in ways that most modern features aren’t. But he also chose a format that makes it difficult for most theatergoers to see the movie in its most impressive form. Because there are only about 40 theaters globally (25 in the US) that are able to screen 70mm IMAX films, the vast majority of people will probably never get a chance to take The Odyssey in as Nolan intended. This and the fact that standard IMAX screenings are more expensive than standard movies have prompted some to accuse the director of being anti-art and contributing to the culture of obsessive format purism. 通过全程使用 70mm 胶片拍摄《奥德赛》，诺兰打造出了一部在规模和视觉细节上具有现代电影罕见沉浸感的作品。但他也选择了一种让大多数观众难以体验到电影最佳呈现效果的格式。由于全球仅有约 40 家影院（美国 25 家）能够放映 70mm IMAX 电影，绝大多数人可能永远没有机会按照诺兰的初衷去欣赏《奥德赛》。这一点，加上标准 IMAX 票价高于普通电影的事实，导致一些人指责这位导演反艺术，并助长了对格式纯粹性的偏执文化。
One could also argue that Nolan is using The Odyssey to show IMAX and theater owners that there is a genuine public demand for films shot in 70mm. The current shortage of 70mm screenings of The Odyssey is due to the fact that IMAX hasn’t been able to produce new projectors. Speaking to Variety, IMAX CEO Richard Gelfond explained that the company has largely been focused on retrofitting old projectors, but there aren’t many movie exhibitors willing to take on the construction costs it would take to build the 1.43:1 screens necessary to display 70mm films. If IMAX and various theater chains were willing to pony up the cash for projector part development and venue expansion, 70mm screenings could become more common. But for the time being, the industry seems comfortable using the format’s scarcity as an effective marketing tool. 当然也可以认为，诺兰正利用《奥德赛》向 IMAX 和影院老板证明，公众对 70mm 拍摄的电影有着真实的需求。目前《奥德赛》70mm 场次的短缺，是因为 IMAX 公司一直无法生产新的放映机。IMAX 首席执行官理查德·格尔方德在接受《综艺》杂志采访时解释说，公司目前主要专注于翻新旧放映机，但没有多少影院经营者愿意承担建设 1.43:1 银幕所需的昂贵成本，而这是放映 70mm 电影的必要条件。如果 IMAX 和各大院线愿意投入资金进行放映机零件开发和场馆扩建，70mm 放映可能会变得更加普遍。但就目前而言，业界似乎很乐于将这种格式的稀缺性作为一种有效的营销工具。
That marketing strategy has worked for The Odyssey — a highly anticipated project from one of the world’s most revered filmmakers. But Nolan’s star power clearly has a lot to do with the movie’s box office success. There aren’t that many other directors who could get people journeying across the country just to see one of their features. It also helps that the movie is actually worth seeing, especially in IMAX. 这种营销策略对《奥德赛》确实奏效了——这毕竟是当今世界最受推崇的电影人之一带来的备受期待的项目。但诺兰的明星效应显然与该片的票房成功有很大关系。没几个导演能让观众为了看一部电影而跨越全国。当然，电影本身确实值得一看，尤其是在 IMAX 影院，这也功不可没。