Imax 3-D Films Coming to Irvine in a Big Way

One film is an old-fashioned historical melodrama. The other is a straightforward nature documentary set off Southern California.

Nothing special, it might seem, but “Wings of Courage” and “Into the Deep” stand apart from the rest of the movies opening this weekend in two ways--how they’ll be seen and where they’ll be seen. They open Friday, in 3-D, at the Imax theater in Irvine, which itself is opening at the Edwards 21 Megaplex in the Irvine Entertainment Center.

Forget the red-and-blue 3-D glasses of an earlier generation. Forget the cheap 3-D gimmicks of those ‘50s B-movies. With a new generation of space-age liquid crystal headsets, the 3-D film-scape is seamlessly realistic.

Also, thanks to the immense screen (66 feet high, 92 feet wide), the images fill the viewer’s field of vision. And the headsets’ tiny, built-in speakers not only enhance the overall sound but also allow such touches as a film character to whisper in your ear.

The buzzword for this Imax 3-D experience is “immersion”--a term especially apt for “Into the Deep,” which dunks viewers into the submarine shade of a kelp forest and into the midst of thousands upon thousands of darting, glittering mackerel.

“It is virtually identical to what I saw through my mask,” director Howard Hall said after a screening in Irvine last week. “You’re seeing what I saw.”

In “Wings of Courage,” the first Imax-format film to tell a dramatic story with actors, viewers sit table-side in a 1930 Buenos Aires cafe and ride along in an open-cockpit airmail plane as it skims over high mountain passes.

Upcoming offerings in Irvine include another historical drama from the makers of “Wings of Courage” (“Across the Sea of Time,” about New York City) and such two-dimensional fare as “The Living Sea” and “Stormchasers,” documentaries by Greg MacGillivray of Laguna Beach. On the “probable” list: the 1991 Rolling Stones concert film “To the Max.”

Until now, Southern California’s only Imax theaters have been in Los Angeles, at the California Museum of Science and Industry in Exposition Park, and in San Diego, at the Reuben H. Fleet Space Theater and Science Center.

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Irvine’s entry into the world of cutting-edge Imax technology has more than local ramifications, however. The Edwards opening is an important step in an Imax strategy to move out of the museum niche into more commercial venues, a strategy that will have long-term effects not only on the number of Imax screens but also on the kinds of films that are made.

Imax, it should be noted, refers to both a format (with a film size more than 10 times that of standard 35-millimeter cameras) and to the company that manufactures the projection and sound equipment. The Toronto-based firm has also produced and distributes about a third of the movies made in the Imax format, including “Into the Deep.”

“Our objective [is] to reposition the company out of the institutional setting,” says Richard L. Gelfond, vice chairman of Imax and one of three partners who took over the company 2 1/2 years ago. “What’s happening in Irvine is part of the leading edge of a worldwide trend.”

When Gelfond, Bradley Wechsler and Doug Trumbull took over, only 15% of the 120 or so Imax screens worldwide were in commercial settings. Now, more than 70% of the projects in the works are geared for such settings.

Irvine’s theater is the second to be set in a so-called “location-based entertainment center,” a development that combines movie theaters, restaurants and other leisure-oriented businesses. Such centers are touted as a wave of the future; another 3-D Imax theater is opening within weeks in a similar Chicago development.

Its technology also sets Irvine’s Imax apart. Though an Imax theater in Santa Clara has 3-D capabilities, it uses less-advanced polarized lenses for the headsets. Irvine’s theater is the first on the West Coast to use the new sight-and-sound technology introduced late in 1994 at a Sony-operated Imax theater at New York City’s Lincoln Center. It has since become the highest-grossing single movie screen in the country.

In the 3-D projector, a shutter alternates left- and right-eye images 96 times per second as the film moves through the camera. Meanwhile, infrared signals from the projection system trigger right and left lenses in the wireless headsets to open and close 48 times per second, creating the 3-D effect. Speakers in each side of each headset work together with theater speakers to create a highly realistic sound experience.

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By the end of this year, about two dozen theaters with these high-tech capabilities will be open; Imax expects to open an estimated 20 to 25 new theaters each year. Gelfond says commercial developers are preparing to announce another Imax project in Los Angeles and yet another elsewhere in Southern California.

Meanwhile, the California Museum of Science and Industry is replacing its 12-year-old Imax theater with a bigger 3-D facility, now under construction as part of a museum renovation and set to open in spring 1997.

“As we’re rebuilding the museum, we felt it necessary to do the same for Imax,” says Jeff Rudolph, the museum’s executive director.

For the museum, which does not charge admission, the Imax theater is a major source of revenue. But Rudolph says he is “not concerned” that the museum’s longtime regional monopoly on Imax has come to a close. For the museum, the Imax films (most of them about 40 minutes long) are “part of an all-day experience,” he notes, adding that much of the museum’s Imax business comes from school field trips.

“There’s more than enough of an audience. We’re not going to be competing for market share.”

* “Into the Deep” is being shown daily at 10 a.m. and 1, 4 and 7:15 p.m. with additional showings at 11:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. “Wings of Courage” is being shown daily at 11:30 a.m. and 2:30, 5:30, 8:45 and 10:15 p.m. Tickets to each film are $8 general, $7 for seniors and $6 for children 11 and younger. Advance tickets are available at the box office or by calling (714) 777-3456 (777-FILM). For groups of 20 or more, subtract $1 per person if you make arrangements ahead of time (714) 832-4629 (832-IMAX).