Fake IMAXs exposed by Aziz Ansari?

Hilarious “Human Giant” star Aziz Ansari recently blogged about his experience of seeing “Star Trek” at a fake IMAX screen recently.

To those who don’t know what I mean by “fake”, IMAX has recently been expanding by setting up screens at numerous AMC and Regal theaters around the country. However, instead of building the huge IMAX screens we know and love, they have been implementing a policy called “retrofitting” where they adjust the picture and sound accordingly, put in an IMAX digital projector, and move a pre-existing screen closer to the seats in the auditorium. In short, they are compromising their quality.

IMAX picture and sound is unparalleled, yes, but that huge screen is vital to the IMAX experience. Seeing “The Dark Knight” on that big, IMAX screen has been one of the highlights of my moviegoing career, but had I seen that same film in a retrofitted IMAX auditorium, some of the incredibly, IMAX-shot action sequences of the film would have been cropped off from the non-IMAX screen ratio.

Also disheartening is the idea that IMAX seems to be phasing out 15/70 projection in favor of going digital. I’m all in favor of the wave of digital projection in movie theaters, but it can’t capture the awe of seeing 15/70 film projected on an IMAX screen.

I hope these fake IMAXs aren’t the wave of the future, but when I’m checking “Star Trek” out again this weekend in a real IMAX theatre, I’ll know how good the real thing is.