Added Dimension Gives the 3-D ‘L5’ a Lift for Young Viewers

It’s not “Star Wars.” Or “Independence Day.” But the short and educational “L5: First City in Space” packs a few thrills that kids won’t find in most Hollywood action films about outer space: It has real-life footage, high-resolution computer graphics and three dimensions.

“It was pretty cool how it, like, popped out,” said Daniel Fell, 11, of Temecula at the Irvine Spectrum after a preview of the movie, which opens there Saturday. Even though Daniel preferred the action-oriented “Independence Day,” he said the kinder, gentler “L5”--the first 3-D Imax movie he’d seen--gave him “an idea of what it could be like in the future in space.”

Some kids found the story line simplistic and predictable. Andy Vaughn, 9, of Garden Grove went so far as to say that if the movie “wasn’t 3-D, I wouldn’t like it.”

Even so, it provides an uncomplicated framework to show off sophisticated science, based on actual data from NASA and the visions of futurist artists. And it seemed to have something for almost everyone.

Amanda Smith, 15, of Irvine said she was intrigued by how the space colony was constructed to spin slowly and create artificial gravity. “That was really cool,” she said.

Her friends Tricia Graham, 15, and Michelle Stiefel, 15, also from Irvine, said they were interested in how families might live 100 years from now, and in the way Chieko’s family ate food grown in hydroponic gardens.

Younger kids enjoyed watching Chieko meeting with her friends from Earth on a virtual snow field and “playing” hide-and-seek. “They were using kind of magic to play,” said Wesley Robertson, 9, of Laguna Niguel.

But the most exciting sequences by far were a simulated high-speed flyover of the surface of Mars and scenes from inside a comet as Chieko’s father maneuvers among a blizzard of ice particles. Watching the hurling chunks through their 3-D goggles, many kids actually ducked. A collision with an explorer pod seemed so real that “it hurt,” said Danielle Rozbruch, 8, of Sherman Oaks.

For Hakam Dino, 9, of Westminster, the best part was real Imax footage of a space shuttle takeoff. “It was going up, and all the smoke came in our eyes.”

The blending of real footage and special effects is so seamless that it sometimes is hard to tell them apart.

Real images to watch for include the Russian space station Mir orbiting Earth, filmed by astronauts aboard the U.S. space shuttle, and images of Earth spinning alone in space, collected by space probes and satellites.

Most kids were disappointed that the film lasted only 40 minutes. But others said the length was about right. At least, said 15-year-old Michelle, who left with a headache, “you don’t have that thing on your head forever.”