Speaking with
Hero Complex, Brad Bird - director of the upcoming
Mission: Impossible film,
Ghost Protocol - reveals that the film will hit IMAX theaters December 16th, five days before the film's release across all formats and the original release date before being pushed back. The
Incredibles director also shares his thoughts on the growing IMAX vs. 3D debate, saying that IMAX is 'the best example of showmanship' and that the image quality works better for IMAX than 3D.
There’s been intense interest by studios to release films in the stereoscopic 3-D format, but we have heard filmmakers like Christopher Nolan champion IMAX as the better path to follow. How would you frame all of that?
The default question with all the studios — and even more so a few years ago — is “Do we go in 3-D?” To me, 3-D is really interesting, and there’s been some good films. I’m as big a fan of Avatar as anybody, but what is not discussed often is the power of a really, really, really big screen. Part of the pitch of 3-D has always been “It’s more immersive.” And I agree that added depth perception is immersive, but you dim the image down and now I’m talking step back. You put on glasses and now I’m taking another step back. The two things that movies have that you can’t get anywhere else are really big screens and an audience. … I feel like multiplexes and the shutting down of the grand old theaters have taken a lot of the showmanship out of presenting movies. There used to be a thing such as “first run.” The meaning of “first run” is gone now because on opening day you can see a brand new movie on a good screen but it’s more likely you’ll see it on a crappy screen. And it can even be a small, crappy screen. It used to be that when a movie opened, if you wanted to see it early, you had to see it great. To me, the best example of showmanship now is IMAX. I pushed to shoot in IMAX, and Paramount went along with me, so we filmed a good chunk of this movie in IMAX, which is a pain in the butt. The cameras are big and they’re noisy. But the image quality – you can’t get that any other way … you really feel it when it’s in IMAX. Maybe one of these days I’ll get to do a whole film that way.
Man, when you try to change things in the film industry, they do not want to deviate from what the well-worn paths are. We were able to get five days. Every studio likes to have bragging rights to the biggest opening numbers, and the problem is what that does is it perpetuates the approach of getting a zillion prints out there so your opening number is the biggest. But to me that is an intellectual thing. The average viewer doesn’t experience how much money is made on opening weekend. What they experience is their experience. I wanted the first people that see the film to see it big with a sharp image and great sound systems, so when they went out and talked about the movie they saw, we would know that they had seen it at its best.
To check out another excerpt from the interview, hit the link below.
Starring Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg and Josh Hollaway,
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol hits theaters December 21st, later this year!