The Projector #15: Ways of Seeing (Patreon)

We talk about movies a lot on The Next Picture Show — that’s kind of the point of the podcast — but we don’t spend a lot time talking about movie technology, and the result of technological innovations. But sometimes the technology is tough to ignore, and can make an already-impressive film breathtaking. We’re covering The Dark Knight in this week’s episode, and while I’ve enjoyed the film many times over the last decade, nothing has ever been quite as stunning as the first time I saw it at IMAX. When Christopher Nolan brings in the large-screen format for key action scenes, it’s striking in ways that other formats — be they non-IMAX theaters or home viewing — can approach but never replicate. Ditto Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol’s Burj Khalifa sequence. I’ve only ever seen that film in IMAX, but I made sure to see it twice.

But technology can be off-putting as well. Many were blown away by what James Cameron did with Avatar’s 3D technology, but the rush to imitate it and put every film in 3D has had diminishing returns, particularly when viewers started to feel burned by rushed post-conversation jobs that didn’t look nearly as impressive as films native to the 3D format. More recently, the high-frame-rate technology has suggested a possible future of film. But Peter Jackson’s use of it for the Hobbit films was not well-received, and only Ang Lee has really embraced the format since then, first with the Iraq War drama Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk and now with the new Will Smith action film Gemini Man.

I can’t say that many great things about Gemini Man. It’s a familiar spy-tries-to-retire thriller made from a script that’s been kicking around since the ’90s. Its plot’s sole novelty — that Smith has to do battle with a clone of himself half his age — doesn’t really pay off thematically and involves a mostly terrible CG version of Smith. Nonetheless, if it’s playing anywhere near you in 120 frame-per-second 3-D, I highly recommend you check it out. I saw it last night and it truly looks like nothing I’ve ever seen before. That’s not always a good thing, but it has action scenes of a visceral intensity I’ve never seen before. If you want to see what one possible future of filmmaking looks like, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

It might also be the end of the line for that future, given that no one went to see Gemini Man over the weekend. And sometimes technology becomes a dead end. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth revisiting, however. A few years back, I got to see a pair of films in true Cinerama, the three-projector widescreen process that looked like it could be the future of filmmaking between the years 1952 and 1962. It ended up as a dead end, but seeing How the West Was Won in the format remains one of my fondest moviegoing memories. There’s one shot of a carriage rolling through the center of town that feels like a completely immersive journey through a small frontier town. I’ve never seen anything that quite replicates that thrill, but I’ve looked. That’s why we keep going back to the movies, isn’t it?

As mentioned, look for The Dark Knight this week, and our Patreon subscribers will also get a bonus episode on El Camino, the new Breaking Bad movie.

As for stuff to read, try this (warning: last week seemed a little slower than usual):

For Vulture, Nick Allen assembled a list of 15 essential Judy Garland performances to coincide with the new biopic, Judy. 

Also for Vulture, E. Alex Jung talked to Parasite director Bong Joon-ho. (Who may soon be relevant for Next Picture Show listeners.)

At The Ringer, Adam Nayman offered a short history of Ang Lee’s unpredictable career.