Immersive movie experiences

Yesterday I went to see the U2 3D movie at cinema Roy, which has been reopened and refurnished with 3D equipment. While I’m not the biggest U2 fan in the world it was still quite entertaining to wear the silly 3D glasses. At one point some in the audience joined in the applause and I almost did as well.

It got me thinking about other ways to enhance the movie experience.

By a curious coincidence I read a newspaper article today which featured a swimming hall that had showed the classic Jaws movie on a big screen, proudly announced that they will show Piranha next. They even seemed to get visitors for this event! I’d love to be there.

A few years ago I was on a flight to Sydney and it had two movies that caught my eye more than usual: “World Trade Center”, detailing the events of the 9/11 airplane attack, and “Snakes on a plane”, where a bunch of snakes are attacking passengers on an airplane. I giggled to myself while pondering what kind of sick mind who had selected these two films for a 14 hour flight. Wrong kind of immersive.

Universal Studios in Los Angeles.

At Universal Studios in Los Angeles I saw a Terminator 3D movie, featuring real-life action with an Arnold look-alike on stage and bursts of water coming from the seat in front (for liquid metal effect). The Shrek 3D movie in Disneyland used similar sprays of water when the donkey sneezed.

I guess there are several tricks to attract visitors to the cinemas in this age of file-sharing and torrents. What’s the next step? Different smells and temperature changes would probably be quite funny to implement and experience. Bring it on.