Ron Howard’s space docudrama Apollo 13 originally hit theaters in 1995, meeting positive receptions on both critical and commercial fronts. The retelling of the 1970 moon mission gone awry was praised for its sincere script, suspenseful pacing, and stellar performances from an all-star cast of Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise, and Ed Harris. Barring some innovative special effects, though, the film was only so impactful on the cinematic craft as a whole. That is, until seven years later, when its theatrical rerelease ushered in a growing trend that would eventually take hold of nearly every blockbuster to come out in the 21st century.

In September 2002, Apollo 13 returned to theaters, but it looked somewhat different. About 20 minutes were trimmed from the runtime, and the widescreen edges were clipped to suit a new and innovative format — a bold, grandiose projection of unmatched resolution that up until then, had never been applied to a feature-length live-action narrative film. It was IMAX.

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The History of IMAX
Image via IMAX

Canadian filmmakers first envisioned IMAX in 1967 at the Montreal Cinema Expo. Director George Ferguson was there to show his short documentary Polar Life, which was an experiment in grandiosity. The movie, or perhaps one could better call it a cinematic exhibition, put audiences on a turntable that slowly swiveled to pass 11 separate screens over the course of 18 minutes, providing them with an immersive, 360-degree film experience. While Polar Life was surely a unique showcasing of cinematic might, it was still reliant on the multi-screen fad that had taken over theaters in the 1960s. Ferguson, along with other Canadian filmmakers, desired the ability to show one, immense image through a single projector. Thus, IMAX was conceived as a concept.

Horizontally running 65mm film (as opposed to the vertical 35mm standard of most cameras) allowed Ferguson’s audacious cinematic vision to become a reality, and the first IMAX film debuted three years later in Osaka, Japan. It was a short film titled Tiger Child, produced by IMAX co-founder Roman Kroitor. Due to expensive film stock and limited theaters with the proper equipment to project the new format, though, IMAX would spend the next three decades largely confined to documentary, short, and animated films. Not until the advent of Digital Media Remastering (DMR) at the turn of the millennium would IMAX become a viable commercial format, with Apollo 13 leading the way.

One Small Step For Film, One Giant Leap For Filmkind
Image via Universal Pictures

Digital Media Remastering allowed for films that were shot in traditional 35mm to be converted to 65 or 70mm IMAX and still appear sharp. While some animated films were able to undergo conversation without the help of DMR — notably Beauty and the Beast upon its rerelease in January 2002 — live-action required digital support to enlarge each frame without the image becoming granular. Doing this manually would have taken an insurmountable amount of time and money. Relatively speaking, DMR was an inexpensive conversion method, and conversion negated the need to shoot on IMAX film stock in order to project it in the format. Ultimately, it opened the door for IMAX’s commercial potential.

Apollo 13 was the first film that IMAX applied DMR to, and thus the first live-action commercial film to receive the IMAX treatment. The movie’s original 2.39:1 aspect ratio was converted to 1.66:1, hence the aforementioned clippings off the widescreen format. Meanwhile, the abbreviated runtime suited the IMAX projectors’ limited space at the time, but it also served as a means to rework the script for the film’s newfound enormity. According to a 2002 review from IGN, the omissions did not hurt the movie, and actually cut out some of its less spectacular scenes — scenes that would not have been essential to re-see on such a large screen.

Many critics, including Roger Ebert and Variety’s Robert Kohler, noted that the greatest improvement brought on by the IMAX rerelease was not visual, but audible. In addition to doubling the size of the image, IMAX doubled the audio, bringing thunderous new aural energy to Apollo 13’s Oscar-winning sound design. Overall, the DMR conversion was a hit, with critics praising the rerelease and the movie adding another $2 million to its box office earnings: an impressive amount considering that the rerelease only played in 19 theaters.

But Why Was ‘Apollo 13’ the First IMAX Rerelease?
Image via Universal Pictures

Later that year, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones became the second live-action film to be converted to IMAX, and the next year, The Matrix: Revolutions was the first movie to release its standard and IMAX versions on the same date. This became a growing and eventually standard trend for blockbuster films, especially those with immaculate visuals. Today almost every extravagant action film is either shot or simultaneously released in IMAX, which raises the question as to why Apollo 13 was the format’s first choice for DMR.

While Apollo 13 certainly looks good, its visual effects still lost to those in Babe at the 68th Academy Awards. Ron Howard’s film is neither an action extravaganza nor a science-fiction feast for the eyes, but a historical drama that just happens to (mostly) take place in outer space. Why then did IMAX deem it the film to push themselves into the mainstream movie market?

To understand that decision, one has to remember IMAX’s place in the film world for the 30-plus years leading up to the new millennium. The format was mostly used for documentaries, particularly nature documentaries that played in museums rather than regular theaters. In other words, IMAX was seen as a tool for educational films, and educational centers were usually the only places equipped to project IMAX movies.

Apollo 13 thus split the difference between IMAX’s past and future. It was a film that had merit playing in educational settings and attracting IMAX’s conventional crowd leading up to that point. At the same time, it was a big-budget Universal Pictures success, one that average moviegoers had an established interest in and would perhaps be eager to rewatch on the big(ger) screen. As IMAX co-CEO Bradley J. Wechsler told the Animation World Network in 2002, “It’s the type of film that will not only play beautifully in the best IMAX commercial theaters around the world, it will also play in the best museums and science centers where a number of our theaters are as well.”

In short, Apollo 13 was a rare film that could do it all: entertain, enlighten, educate, and perhaps most importantly to IMAX, launch advanced film technology into the mainstream film industry. So as we prepare to watch Mission Impossible, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Oppenheimer, A Hunting In Venice, Kraven The Hunter, Dune: Part 2, The Marvels, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, or any of the other blockbusters arriving in IMAX this year, we should not lose sight of the huge screen’s humble roots in Apollo 13.