Brad Pitt's F1 Movie Proves One Thing About IMAX

Since the advent of motion pictures, various gimmicks have been employed to help enhance the moviegoing experience. Amidst all the hullabaloo and ballyhoo of the sideshow huckster variety (something which genre filmmakers like William Castle excelled at) exists the various technological advancements (and/or experiments) that attempt to gussy up a mere movie. Everything from the adoption of sync sound (also known as the "talkies") in the 1930s on through the emergence of Technicolor, the invention of Cinerama (and its cheaper competitors VistaVision and CinemaScope) in the 1950s, the use of "Sensurround" in the mid-'70s, the advent of digital sound (and later, digital projection), and the 3-D boom of the 2010s are all major examples of Hollywood and theater owners attempting to find a way to draw crowds in with an additional gimmick. While some of these additions have been successful to become standards, and others have only been short-lived fads, there hasn't really been a moviegoing gimmick that's remained unique while becoming more prevalent ... save for one.

That's right: IMAX is a moviegoing format which has not only proved itself to have an ability to last and draw up business even with repertory releases, but consistently provides an experience that simply cannot be replicated at home (unless you happen to live inside a very open-concept multi-story building). Originally developed in the late 1960s as a demonstration-style projection system, the company continued on to become a feature at numerous science centers and museums across the country, before finally beginning to be used to screen first-run motion pictures in the '00s. In 2025, just about every multiplex chain cinema has an IMAX-branded screen, and an increasingly large number of Hollywood films — whether they be summer blockbusters or high-profile releases of any kind — are offered in the format, to the point where the company has implemented its "Filmed For IMAX" brand.

One of the continual supporters of the format, alongside Christopher Nolan and Ryan Coogler, is filmmaker Joseph Kosinski. His latest feature, "F1: The Movie," is the his fourth to be shot for IMAX, and it's the 16th domestic film to be offered in IMAX this year alone. While a big budget summer movie released in IMAX may be par for the course these days, "F1" makes a particularly clever use of the format, one which proves at least one thing about it: IMAX is here to stay, and it needs to be utilized to its fullest potential.

Anyone who's watched a movie shot in the IMAX format knows the score by now, and that's to prepare their eyeballs for the endless switching of aspect ratios. Christopher Nolan, the earliest narrative filmmaker to adopt the format, prefers these shifts (which typically switch between a wide-screen frame of 2.20:1 and a tall, IMAX-unique ratio of 1.43:1) to be sudden and jarring, thereby keeping an audience as stimulated and alert as his similarly abrasive sound mixing. Other filmmakers like to subtly shift between ratios in a clever way, as Ryan Coogler does with the changes in "Sinners" where the image grows during a shot. While there are many fun applications of this technique (this year alone has a clever one in "Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning," where Tom Cruise's superspy turns a wheel and the image grows with each crank), it's always felt like a limitation of the format. In other words, because not every standard screen can accommodate true IMAX framing, filmmakers have to pick and choose their moments to shine.

Kosinski seems to have found a compromise with "F1," which is that the entire film is presented in a consistent aspect ratio of 1.90:1. This means that there are no image changes throughout the whole movie, and it allows the film to become as immersive as Kosinski apparently wishes it to be. It's a smart choice for a movie about a veteran racer, Sonny (Brad Pitt), learning to find equilibrium with his younger and more ambitious teammate racer, Joshua (Damson Idris), as the duo clash both on and off the track. With this approach, Kosinski and cinematographer Claudio Miranda have no need to indicate or delineate the kinetic racing sequences from the moments between characters outside of their vehicles, and thus, the movie looks all of a piece. "F1" isn't the first major release to keep its imagery consistent, as "Avengers: Infinity War" and "Avengers: Endgame" were the first Hollywood movies to be completely shot with IMAX cameras. Yet while those films featured almost constant, outsized action throughout, "F1" is an intimate drama when it's not out on the race track, making the presentation feel more novel. Although this choice of consistency loses some of the ballyhoo of a typical IMAX film — there's always a palpable sense of excitement in an audience when the screen widens, indicating that a big setpiece is about to begin — it instead makes the entirety of "F1" feel like an event, with the image filling the entire screen the whole film, similar to how the Cinerama releases of the 1950s and '60s must have felt.

Up to now, most IMAX releases (or at least the movies that have been "Filmed For IMAX" using the company's cameras) have essentially followed the same pattern of changing aspect ratios. Whether these ratios have been 1:90:1 all around, or 1.90:1 for smaller IMAX theaters and 1.43:1 for the taller and larger ones, there has at least been a general consistency in the presentation. Yet, as recent releases such as "Dune: Part Two" and this year's "Sinners" have demonstrated, there is a lot of variation in between all the large format showings available (in the latter case, Coogler himself helped point out these distinctions). In other words, telling someone you saw "Sinners" in IMAX could mean that you saw either a 2.76:1 version that switches to 1.90:1 during the IMAX scenes, or a 2.76:1 version that switches to 1.43:1 during the IMAX scenes, or the latter on 70mm IMAX film. When it comes to IMAX with Laser locations, there are only 7 in the United States, and only 10 additional theaters are equipped to project IMAX 70mm film. This means that only 17 theaters in the entire country feature the full 1.43:1 IMAX screen, and while it makes these screens a special and unique experience, it feels like so many moviegoers are sadly missing out regardless.

This is why Kosinski and Miranda's choice to shoot for 1.90:1 throughout is a decent compromise, for it means that whichever IMAX theater you see "F1" in, you're seeing the same amount of image that everyone else is. Yet there's no denying that the experience of seeing a movie in 1.43:1 IMAX is that much more unforgettable, and is completely impossible to replicate at home. So the question is raised: now that IMAX is here to stay beyond a shadow of a doubt, should the standard IMAX frame be considered to be 1.90:1? Or should this continue to be thought of as per the derogatory term "LieMAX," keeping 1.43:1 the "true" definition of the format? After all, every single Dolby Cinema and 4DX screen in the country offers the same general experience without this much variation.

For my money, I believe there's a future in theater owners and IMAX putting dollars and effort into constructing more 1.43:1 IMAX screens around the country. The massive success of "Oppenheimer," "Sinners," and other premium IMAX releases should be proof enough that audiences will attend these screens in droves. If this happens, perhaps the prospect of a full-length feature presented in 1.43:1, similar to "F1" and its lack of ratio changes, could actually happen, and we'd have one hell of a moviegoing gimmick to get excited about.