Quote Originally Posted by Woochifer
I think projecting 35mm onto an IMAX screen just doesn't look right if the projection uses the full width of the screen. It's too close to the audience, unless you sit in the back couple of rows. Plus, with the big screen and closeup viewing, the image looks very grainy. IMAX is supposed to envelop your entire peripheral vision, and the IMAX movies are framed to take advantage of that, and the theaters are designed to put the audience "into" the movie. Plus, the film format is large enough to not look grainy on an IMAX screen.

As a sidenote, I also saw the IMAX version of Episode II, and it was a mixed bag. By transferring the movie onto the large print format IMAX projector, the image quality was stunning. I was actually shocked at how good the images looked considering that the movie was made using digital camcorders. The only image flaw that I could pick up on was that the live action images looked two-dimensional and lacked depth.

But, the main drawback of seeing Episode II in IMAX is that the aspect ratio got truncated. The IMAX version used the full IMAX screen, which unfortunately chops off the image on the sides. This made the IMAX experience more like the "pan and scan" experience. A lot of the action scenes were very hard to follow because so much of it was in the peripheral vision, which just exacerbated the narrow image frame. Still, it made for some interesting viewing, and apparently the IMAX version benefited from some extra editing -- a lot of the scenes with Padme and Anakin were mercifully cut out.
I liked the IMAX cut of Episode II better than the original release!