Consider it an… internal battle (after another). When it was first announced that Paul Thomas Anderson’s tenth film “One Battle After Another” was going to be available in multiple premium formats, our primary task here at IndieWire was clear: how would we best educate our readers (and ourselves) about the merits of each individual option?
When our resident VistaVision evangelist Jim Hemphill carefully broke down each and every format, I confess I expected his guide would end any debates, full-stop. VistaVision is obviously the superior format, right? (That’s a short way to note it’s my own preference.) Well, perhaps in an ideal world in which the super-sized format was available to all audiences. And we sure-as-shootin’ don’t live in an ideal world, and VistaVision prints of PTA’s latest masterpiece are only available in four venues around the world.
Thus began weeks of chatter around the IndieWire water coolers (read: a large, blocky beverage dispenser that threatens to offer water at either “cold” or “ambient” temperatures). Given everything that we know about the various formats the film is available in, what are our personal preferences? Well, tough cookies: even IndieWire’s own staffers can’t decide on a preferred format, but we do hope that our own internal debates might help further guide your choices when it comes to ticket-buying.
VistaVision
I have already seen “One Battle After Another” as our Lord intended, projected in VistaVision, and I plan to do so again when it opens this Friday at the appropriately named Vista Theater in Los Angeles. VistaVision is the greatest of all the widescreen processes the studios tried out to compete with television in the 1950s — it has the highest resolution without any of the downsides of formats like CinemaScope, Super-35, etc. — but because of its costs and complexity it was ultimately phased out in favor of cheaper and inferior systems.
“One Battle After Another” provides the opportunity to see a new release movie shot and projected in true VistaVision for the first time since Marlon Brando’s “One Eyed Jacks” over 60 years ago. I will be taking advantage of the gift Paul Thomas Anderson has given us as many times as I can while it plays at the greatest first run theater in Southern California, Quentin Tarantino’s Vista! —Jim Hemphill
So, I was supposed to see “One Battle After Another” at a press screening last Sunday, and I chose the 70mm. While it’s blown up from a VistaVision negative, it retains all the added benefits many sickos at IndieWire and elsewhere have noted about 70mm. It’s the right aspect ratio, the projection (and, let’s be real, probably also the sound balance in the theater) is almost certainly going to be better than anything digital, there’s that sweet, sweet grain and contrast to enjoy. I have to watch a lot more than I want to on my dirty laptop screen. My initial thought was for the largest, cleanest film-going experience I could have.
But I did not get to go see 70mm “One Battle After Another.” I emergency babysat and spent that Sunday quite literally touching grass and preventing a toddler’s death urge over the three hours my colleagues were treated to, apparently, one of the best films of the year. But perhaps this is a good thing, because it means it has brought me closest to you, the IndieWire reader! I now had to put my money down on a format to see the movie. Friends, I and my $33 chose VistaVision.
Why? Because it’s neat, that’s why. Because Alfred Hitchcock shot “Vertigo” on VistaVision, and I don’t put it past Paul Thomas Anderson to have an animated, disembodied Leonardo DiCaprio head come at the screen in a trippy, psychotic breakdown sequence (this is what everybody means when they say the movie’s great, right?). Because the more we can keep labs and studios on their toes to maintain the various apparati of film exhibition, the better it is for preserving film history. VistaVision is the weird choice. Where available, I hope folks take it. —Sarah Shachat
70mm IMAX
I’ve seen “One Battle After Another” twice now, once in LieMAX and the other time in true IMAX up at AMC Lincoln Square, and while it was an extraordinary presentation both times and I don’t want to shame anyone who has to settle for the former (let alone a regular ol’ standard-format DCP), the difference between those two formats was so immense that I have to think full IMAX is the way to go if you’re lucky enough to live in a city with all of the available options.
This — let’s not forget — is the first movie to be presented entirely in IMAX’s 1.43:1 aspect ratio, and it feels like it was shot for it from the opening frames. The image is overwhelming without losing its composure, and while I’m sure the clarity of the VistaVision experience is stunning in its own right, the experience of watching that final car chase over the “river of hills” on a 16-story screen is second-to-none. As I put it in my review, the sequence is so enveloping that “it made me want to apologize on behalf of anyone who’s ever mocked the people who supposedly fled “The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station.” —David Ehrlich
My friends and I will be joining NYC’s biggest big screen fanatics at the AMC Lincoln Square’s 70mm IMAX. It’s a pricey ticket, and getting anywhere near decent seats requires Eras Tour-level online ticket-buying skills. But “One Battle After Another” has film fans worked up into a fever of anticipation, and when a movie is this hyped, it’s worth the work to get myself right in the middle of it.
I crave the camaraderie of obsessive fandom. At the Lincoln Center IMAX, I know everyone in the room with me has also been counting the days, spent weeks listening to podcasts, and reading reviews. No one will be on their phone or talk to their neighbor, because we are all there to fulfill the same need. To be humbled and awed by the 7-story screen, every square inch of vision filled with movie, ready to sink into the textures and colors of 70mm film. So yes, I love the 70mm IMAX format, but what I adore most is the type of audience it creates. —Trevor Wallace
Digital IMAX
I am one of those lucky few who got to see “One Battle After Another” on the Warner Bros. lot in VistaVision. The image had true crackle and life to it in what was literally an aspect ratio I had never seen before and absolutely no one has for a Warner Bros. film since John Ford’s “The Searchers.” And much as I’d like to stand on my high horse and say it’s the way you must see it as PTA intended, that’s going to be a hard sell to anyone beyond the most diehard cinephiles, let alone someone living in the middle of the country (or in, you know, continental Europe).
After all, it’s only on four screens worldwide, which is not going to fly for my dad as I try to keep his eyes from glazing over as I explain what a “PERF” is. It sounds like the closest approximation then is the IMAX 70mm 15-PERF showings, which is on a robust 9 screens across North America but still would require my dad to drive to Indiana. So I’m just going to say to check it out in digital IMAX because this movie is PERFect no matter how you see it. —Brian Welk
Out of both a sense of urgency and a sense of curiosity, I saw “One Battle After Another” at its Los Angeles premiere, which was at the historic TCL Chinese Theatre IMAX. I sat in Section: Right Center, Row J, Seat 216, which was 10 rows away from the right side of the famously massive screen, with the film preceded by an introduction from director Paul Thomas Anderson, flanked by his stars including Leonardo DiCaprio, Teyana Taylor, Sean Penn, and Chase Infiniti.
It was a slight surprise that the film was not shown in VistaVision, as the theater is known to be amenable to even renovations just to make sure the film is shown in the way the director intended. For “Oppenheimer,” the theater installed a custom booth for the 70mm, 15-perf IMAX projector required to show Christopher Nolan’s eventual Best Picture winner. Still, even if it was a DCP, whatever it perceivably lacked in visual quality, it made up for in immersion. When watching a screen that large (it is the widest and third tallest of all the screens in the greater Los Angeles area), it’s hard not to feel like you are actually going up and down the desert road hills of the film’s climax. It was one of the closest times, without all the bells and whistles of a 4DX screening, that it felt like I was on a rollercoaster while watching a film. —Marcus Jones
Whichever Way You Can
So I saw a digital IMAX presentation of “One Battle After Another” at AMC Lincoln Square early on a Friday morning and had no complaints about the format. In fact, the grit of celluloid was well-preserved on a gloriously oversized IMAX screen, where I sat close as to be fully absorbed into Paul Thomas Anderson’s we’ve-all-gone-mad vision of the fight for a scattered American dream. While I’m eager to see the film in its intended VistaVision before it evaporates from theaters — lower-end box office projections aside, this movie has legs for days, hopefully months — I worry the rigamarole about how and where to see it and why to see it that way will deter or confuse the masses.
Then again, the people we need in seats here aren’t the ones online tracking how many perforations are on display at the Regal Union Square in New York or Vista in Los Angeles. Another deterrent: It seems like the film’s core audience has already seen “One Battle After Another” and multiple times since advance screenings started rolling out. Here is a film you should vote for with your dollars rather than an RSVP to a press or industry screening, if you have the means or can. If you’re closest bet is to see “One Battle After Another” in plain-old digital IMAX (or even on a standard screen), I promise you it will do just fine. A great movie should work on any format, and this one surely does. —Ryan Lattanzio
In my limited time attending New York theatres (LA and Chicago FTW), purchasing tickets for auteur films in premium formats (Nolan in IMAX, Miller in 70mm, Coppola on film) is a particularly competitive, calamitous experience. Booking sites crash even when you’re not looking for front-row seats to Taylor Swift. Options dwindle faster than Tom Cruise can sprint. And God help you if you don’t secure a spot within the first few hours they’re available.
The whole process is stressful, and that’s coming from someone with (minimal) inside access to release schedules and studio reps. Getting into “The Master’s” opening weekend at the Arclight was nothing compared to seeing “One Battle After Another” at the Alamo — and that’s my third-choice theater!
Which brings me to my point, if I have one: Theaters need to LABEL their screenings PROPERLY.
I had every intention of seeing the latest PTA in the rare and recommended VistaVision format, but when it came time to snag tickets, Regal Union Square — the only theater in NYC with VV — only listed three available formats: digital, 70mm, and… 4DX.
Where was VistaVision? Was it hiding behind the wrong label? Is the “right” screening 70mm? Is it 4DX? The clock was ticking, and amid my panicked search for seats, I couldn’t risk choosing wrong and ended up bailing, heading to another theater entirely where I at least knew what I was getting.
What real choice did I have? How could I sit in the wrong theater knowing the right one was just next door, available only to bolder theatergoers than myself? Those willing to risk sensory overload for the shot at that beautiful, precious, VistaVision. (But really: Who wants to get sprayed with dirt whenever Leo falls from that speeding car on the first viewing? Subsequent screenings, sure, but I can’t be flushing my eyes with soda water while trying to glimpse PTA’s latest masterpiece for the first time!)
Today, I see Regal has updated their website with clearly labeled screenings: VistaVision, 4DX, and Standard. OK, that last one isn’t exactly clear, but the rest show progress. I may have lost this battle, but I shan’t concede another. (In other words, please hit me up with tips for seeing “No Other Choice” anywhere better than the Angelika — Park Chan-wook deserves better than to be interrupted by the F train.) —Ben Travers
A Warner Bros. release, “One Battle After Another” is in theaters now.
