The other night Steven and I went with some of his co-workers to see the Transformers sequel on the IMAX screen at the McWayne Center. Cool, right?
Ugg. I don’t think The Great Wonderous People That Be thought this one all the way through. Some movies aren’t meant to be stretched across your entire span of vision, and 140 minutes of fast-paced, constantly-transforming robots shown in closeups will wear on your eyes in the first five minutes.
The few times people were not running for their lives and actually walked across the screen, you would have to turn your entire head in order to see them.
Sometimes, the location of the city would flash in techy wording at the bottom left-hand corner of the screen, which was right over my left shoulder. A little sound effect would burst forth when the words would be etched on, encouraging me to think, “Where are we at?” so I would lean forward to look around Steven and everybody else to my left so I could read the slightly stretched words of NEW YORK, which I should have been able to tell anyway if I knew my Geography of Buildings better. It didn’t matter that the characters were in New York, anyway.
The worst part was an unexpected strip-down of a guy into just a creepy thong — larger than ever thanks to the IMAX experience. We did not need to see the hairs on that man’s ass.
At least, since the movie let out after the McWayne Center itself closed, we didn’t have to pay for parking.