hairy_hen said:

What exactly is the point of Super 35? It seems like all you're really doing is decreasing vertical resolution by shooting non-anamorphically, compared to something like Panavision. Is it just because it's cheaper?

Yeah, it's basically because it's cheaper. That and spherical lenses are much easier to shoot with than anamorphic lenses - they're nowhere near as long or as heavy, and they don't require as much light. A lot of cinematographers dislike anamorphic lenses, but like the 2.39:1 frame, so for them Super 35 is the way to go.

It shoots a larger image than shooting 1.33:1 35mm, as it uses the full aperture, but it's still much less effective resolution than anamorphic.

That and the better compromise you can get when making the 1.33:1 version for TV/home video make it quite popular.

An easy way to tell while watching a 2.39:1 film is by looking at the circles of confusion in low-depth-of-field shots (that is, when the background is blurry, points of light show up as big circles). Here's how they look when shot with an anamorphic lens (look out the window to the right at the lights in the background):

Note they're oblong, taller than a circle.

This is what they look like when shot with a spherical lens:

Circular.

Lens flares are another good giveaway, except in this case, for a spherical lens they're circular as above, but for an anamorphic lens, instead of being taller than they are wide, they're wider than they are tall.

I remember this bugged me about WALL-E, because they got the tall circles of confusion right for an anamorphic lens, but all the lens flares are circular.