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Post #1371736

Author
Fang Zei
Parent topic
Were the prequels released on 70mm, and were the sequels released on film other than IMAX 70mm?
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1371736/action/topic#1371736
Date created
28-Aug-2020, 4:06 PM

AotC got an Imax release only a week before (or was it a week after? can’t remember now) the dvd hit shelves. The Imax projectors’ platters could only hold 120 minutes of film running at 24 frames a second, so the movie had to be cut down to that length. Presumably the end credits were time-compressed to keep as much of the actual movie as possible. By the time The Matrix Reloaded hit theaters the following May, the platters had been modified to hold 167 minutes of film. Notice we’ve never gotten a movie released on actual Imax film prints since then with running times going over that (Watchmen, Avatar and Dark Knight Rises all came close, and Interstellar had to compress its end credits to shave off two extra minutes).

The technical specs for RotS on its imdb page list 70mm Imax as one of the printed film formats, but I’m not sure how accurate this is.

There were a small number of 35mm prints made for TFA. This was probably done at the behest of JJ Abrams. There were, apparently, also 35mm prints made for TRoS, but I don’t remember hearing about it like I did with TFA. To the best of anyone’s knowledge, no 35mm prints were made for TLJ.

There were no regular 5-perf 70mm prints made for the PT and ST movies.