An Animated IMAX Movie With The Simpsons Is Impossible To Watch Today

In the year 2000, to show off its newest technological capabilities, the IMAX Corporation produced a 44-minute demo film called "CyberWorld." It was its first in-house film presented in 3-D. "CyberWorld" played at the IMAX theater on the Universal Citywalk before eventually screening in IMAX theaters all over the world. It drew in enough tourists to earn over $16.6 million at the box office, making it a legit smash hit. Not bad for a film constructed mostly of clips from other movies and TV shows.

The idea of "CyberWorld" was to convert extant footage from recent hit films and known TV programs into 3-D and present them with a small amount of wholly original bookend material. In construction, "CyberWorld" was no different from a clip show or traditional TV retrospective. In execution, though, the 3-D (not to mention the outsize IMAX format) enhanced the clips greatly, making them a whole new experience.

The film opened with a computer-animated host character named Phig (Jenna Elfman) who served as a guide through the titular animation museum. She led the viewers to various screens within the museum, showing them the varied vignettes. The shorts included a dance sequence from the 1998 film "Antz," the CGI portion of "Homer³" (a segment from the "Simpsons" episode "Treehouse of Horror VI"), and the Pet Shop Boys' music video for "Liberation" (which is noted for its digital animation). "CyberWorld" also featured a few already-produced animated shorts, including "Monkey Brain Sushi," "KraKKen: Adventure of Future Ocean," "Joe Fly," and "Flipbook and Waterfall City." A short called "Tonight's Performance," made by REZN8 Studios, was produced specifically for "CyberWorld."

While Phig presented these shorts, she found that the CyberWorld museum was under attack from hungry bugs that liked to eat binary code. As such, Phig had to find the bugs — which were played by Matt Frewer and Canadian actor Robert Smith (no relation to the guy from The Cure) — and destroy them ... as the folks who saw "CyberWorld" in theaters, and probably only those folks, would know.

The running gag throughout "CyberWorld" is that the animated, computerized museum is kind of glitchy and nothing works quite right because of the bugs. This rang true in 2000, back when many newer computer technologies were still getting on their feet. CGI feature films were nothing new by the time "CyberWorld" came out ("Toy Story," "Antz," "A Bug's Life," "Toy Story 2," and "Dinosaur" all precede it), but they were still considered a mild novelty, and it was rare to see them in 3-D on giant IMAX screens. Footage of the bookend material can be seen in the film's readily available preview.

It was especially rare to see the Simpsons in theaters at the time. The "Homer³" sequence was notable when it first aired in October of 1995, so seeing it in 3-D on the big screen must have been astonishing. In the segment, Homer (Dan Castellaneta) finds a portal into the eerie and unknown third dimension; there, he rounds out into a CGI figure standing in a large, open, blackened space as lasers zip by overhead and solid 3-D objects bounce past him in the background. "This place looks expensive," he observes. He then says he'd better make the most of it ... right before scratching his butt for a few prolonged moments and belching loudly.

According to the Lost Media Wiki, portions of "CyberWorld" remain lost to time. It seems that the 3-D-converted sequences weren't well cared for and, as of this writing, have not been located since the film ended its run. Parts of the "Antz" scene and the "Simpsons" segment, as well as portions of "Flipbook" and "Tonight's Performance," cannot be found either. Online, of course, one can track down bootlegs of most of the "CyberWorld" shorts, but they are low-quality or incomplete.

"CyberWorld" is a fascinating time capsule from a time when CGI animation was still developing. It looks retro and rudimentary to today's eyes, but in the late 1990s, this sort of thing was expensive and rare. It won't ever resurface, sadly, as it has long since been technologically surpassed. It is now only a curio from an earlier time.