Though I don’t speak about them in great detail, people who read my reviews can tell that I’m a fan of IMAX. Whenever I review a movie that is also being shown at IMAX I always recommend seeing the movie there, even if that means the person I’m recommending this to has to wait a few months before their IMAX gets the film. IMAX is a true one-of-a-kind theater experience, making even a boring blockbuster like “The Matrix Revolutions” a fun film when projected on a six-story high screen. Recently though a new form of IMAX has been unleashed on the world through AMC and Regal Entertainment Theaters. It’s IMAX with a digital projector. And while that may not sound like a big deal this new form of IMAX has been receiving lots of criticism. Magazines, blog, film critic Roger Ebert, and (most importantly) IMAX customers are complaining about these new digital screens, claiming they are not a true IMAX.

I’m with them. When a new IMAX opened at a local Regal theater in my town I wrote an article about it for our local paper and dubbed it “IMAX Lite.” It’s not that I wasn’t impressed by the experience but it didn’t feel like much of an upgrade. I tried to convince myself though that this was simply my mind playing tricks. While the screen was unquestionably smaller I kept in mind that most Hollywood films are letter boxed, which leads to lots of black space taking up room. This digital screen cut most of that block space away, so I figured it was, more or less, the same thing. How wrong I was. Since the opening of this screen the one movie I compared to the new IMAX and to (what I’m dubbing) the “IMAX Classic” was “Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa.” Yeah, laugh, I know I gave that movie the low Zero Stars grade, but comparing the two screens made it clear that IMAX Lite simply wasn’t a good replacement for IMAX Classic.

Thanks to illustrator Jeff Leins we now have a better idea of what the difference between these two exhibitions are:

As you can see, a IMAX Classic is much, much, MUCH bigger then that of an IMAX Lite! “But what about that black space?” you ask me. “Doesn’t that make up for things?” You’d think so, but no. Look closely at the image above. If the screen were simply smaller then maybe this wouldn’t be much of issue, but the screen length is also shorter. Cutting screen space off the top and the bottom is one thing. Shortening the sides is another thing all together. So now that we know the difference between IMAX screens then the question is this: Does that effect the regular theaters. Because, yeah, the IMAX Lite screens may be smaller, but they could still easily trump the regular screens right? Well, I thought so too. And then when I measured an average theater screen this is how it would compare to the IMAX screens...

...and once you put that into perspective you can feel cheated real fast. IMAX Corporation is obviously cheapening it’s brand. At this point the IMAX Lite screen is obviously not that much bigger then the average theater screen. What makes it more maddening is that there is STILL some black space taking up some of the IMAX Lite space. The CEO of IMAX has claimed that statistics show that people genuinely can’t tell the difference between the two, but that’s not information I would bank on. It’s the same sort of research that told Coca Cola that people were satisfied with New Coke. Yet no research could trump the obvious fact that people hated getting rid of the old formula for a new one. If IMAX decides to make IMAX Lite the standard and do away with IMAX Classic then they could be in for a world of hurt. All over the net people are talking about what a rip-off these new screens are, and people who have never experienced IMAX Classic are walking away from IMAX Lite not convinced that IMAX is anything special.

On top of that, this is the worst possible time to be watering down the format. Now that “The Dark Knight” has shown what can be done with IMAX cameras other film directors want to work with them. But on the IMAX Lite screen the image from these cameras will be too big to put on the screens, and as a result the image will have to be cropped. Kind of defeats the purpose of filming a movie with one of these cameras huh? Now I’m not ignorant: I know that this was, sadly, the way IMAX would eventually have to go. It’s easier to convert existing theaters then to build new ones. But they should at least differentiate between the two. And if you want to steer IMAX down the Classic path boycott these Lite screens and only pay to see IMAX films on Classic screens. Sooner or later they will have to get the message.