Until now, you’ve never seen everything that is shown in a Marvel superhero movie in IMAX theaters when you’ve streamed it at home. Starting this Friday (Nov. 12), you have that choice for the first time via a new IMAX Enhanced viewing option launching on Disney+ at no extra charge.
What you’ve been missing from 13 Marvel movies being made available Friday, including Avengers: Endgame & Infinity War, Iron Man, Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America: Civil War, Black Widow, and Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings, is up to 26% of additional image at the top and bottom of the film frame throughout the entire running time of each of those films, all of which were shot entirely with IMAX cameras in the 1.90:1 aspect ratio, according to Bruce Markoe, senior VP of post-production for IMAX. Almost all non-IMAX films are created in the shorter 2.40:1 aspect ratio.
Creating a home IMAX Expanded Aspect Ratio environment for presentation of the films in the preferred format of the filmmakers for years to come provides more comfort and value to the filmmaker, says Markoe, and therefore will encourage more filmmakers to create films using the expanded format that will benefit IMAX in theaters, where their giant screens still provide a significant difference and enticement to consumers over the home theater experience.
“It creates more value to the filmmaker and the brand if people see it in home and like it, and then want to see it that way on a giant theater screen. It completes the circle by benefiting both,” Markoe says.
Some directors are even choosing to shoot in the much taller 1.43:1 aspect ratio that retains the same amount of image horizontally while adding up to 40% more vertical content to the more square-ish film frame, such as the more than 40-minutes of scenes in No Time to Die and more than 73-minutes of “Dune.” Consumers are also showing a significant interest in expanded formats, with IMAX theaters representing about 25% of Dune’s theatrical grosses and about 37% in Japan despite IMAX only accounting for a percentage of the overall screens for “Dune.”
Disney’s “Eternals” is reportedly the first Marvel movie to have shot scenes in the 1.43 aspect ratio, but only for seven-minutes of that finished film.
Filmmakers must make a creative decision about how they want their films presented on different size screens. Most IMAX theater screens don’t even offer the 1.43 ratio.
Does accommodating the taller 1.90 film frame mean that these versions of the movie on Disney+ will have vertical black bars on the sides of the screen (“pillar boxing”) to accommodate the extra height, just as ultra-widescreen films have black horizontal bars at the top and bottom of the screen (“letterboxing”)?
No, says Markoe, whose post-production unit also includes the Filmed in IMAX and IMAX Enhanced programs, the latter specifically for in-home standard certification. That’s because TVs and most devices for watching streamed content are set for 1.78:1, which is even slightly taller than the 1.90:1. Most films are shot in 2.40:1, and therefore there is dark available space (black bars) at the top and bottom unless you have your TV settings adjusted to fill the screen regardless of the way the film is presented.
For TVs and streaming, films with that much more frame height, as in 1.43:1, require the overall image size to be reduced in order to fit the full vertical image on the screen, thus reducing the size of the horizontal width as well, creating those vertical black bars, the pillar boxing (like watching an old TV show which were all filmed in the 1.33:1 aka 4:3 aspect ratio of TVs prior to HDTV). “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” was shot and is presented in this way for streaming.
Other movies being offered in the new IMAX Enchanced service on Disney+ this Friday include “Black Panther,” “Ant-Man and The Wasp,” “Captain Marvel,” “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” “Doctor Strange,” and “Thor: Ragnarok.”
Disney and IMAX say their collaboration will also deliver even more enhanced audio and visual technology to Disney+ in the future, including immersive IMAX signature sound by DTS.
The launch of IMAX Enhanced coincides with Disney+ Day, a global corporate-wide celebration Friday with new content releases, fan experiences, and exclusive offers, including a reported offer of Disney+ for $1.99 for the first month for new and returning subscribers.
— By Scott Hettrick