Zack Snyder's Justice League

[pipefan413]

I'm kind of enamored of the recent return of the 4:3/Academy aspect ratio. It does evoke a certain sense of nostalgia does it not? IF not the good old VHS days maybe for the movies of the 30s and 40s. At least, that's the feeling I get when I see 4:3 in a bunch of indies like Ghost story, Meek's cutoff, Grand Budapest Hotel and First Cow.

I know this is a different beast since it's Imax and a "big budget film" but still kind of cool and different to see.

Oh absolutely aye, I'm all for it! I just got grumpy about equating IMAX with "a big f-ing square". That's not all IMAX was to begin with, it was also about fidelity, and it's rather lost that to some extent in the digital realm (to varying degrees of course, I know some better digital IMAX theatres will use dual high res projectors, but some are still on pretty low res gear). But I'm genuinely impressed that they appear to be going for an open matte style presentation.

It's funny how quickly something simple like aspect ratio can affect the feel of a film. It's one of those things that I think was probably communicating something to me before I was fully conscious of specifically what was going on when I was younger and hadn't quite cottoned onto which aspect ratios were used and why. You know how you often get a feeling for something but can't quite put your finger on it? That. Nowadays, I'm much more conscious of it and am always interested to see what was chosen and think about why that might be. Like, a narrower frame is really good for claustrophobia (THE LIGHTHOUSE), but the increased relative height (especially with the screen size of IMAX) is also excellent for imbuing a film with a sense of wonder that you don't really get with super-wide formats like 2.39:1... but 2.39:1 and similar are brilliant for showing big epic environmental shots and a great big anamorphic lens gives a sense of "hyper-realism" you might not get from a flat presentation.