It’s all about great sound and great graphics.
Browsing movie showtimes these days can often mean choosing the format in which to see it. As always, the typical theater experience is at the table, offering the biggest screen and the best sound anyone has at home, in addition to the company of strangers eating popcorn. But in some theaters, you’ll also see Dolby Cinema or Imax screenings, two premium formats that some moviegoers may find difficult to tell apart.
The difference between Imax and Dolby Cinema comes down to purpose. While Imax focuses on scale, with large screens and special film cameras or digital workflows used during the filmmaking process, Dolby Cinema is about precision, with complex, spatial sound systems, object-based sound images, and a proprietary version of high dynamic range (HDR) visuals. In the end, you should choose Imax if you want to feel swallowed by the whole movie, and Dolby Cinema if you want an incredibly accurate and focused sound and image experience on the screen.
Both formats have their place, and a filmmaker can use either format. Others, including Oppenheimer again The Odyssey director Christopher Nolan and They are sinners director Ryan Coogler, championed Imax for those projects as a way to make their stories feel larger than life. Others, including Frankenstein director Guillermo del Toro and Image: Fire and Ashes author James Cameron, welcomed Dolby Cinema. However, many movies are released in both formats, and it is up to moviegoers to decide which is best for any given movie. So, here’s what you need to know before you grab those tickets.
IMAX is all about the incredible scale of the filmmakers and the spectacle of the audience
If you’ve been inside an Imax theater before, you know the format is all about scale. Although it was originally used for nature documentaries (trust me, you haven’t seen a wildlife documentary until you’ve seen it in Imax), it was eventually adopted by blockbuster filmmakers. What makes it unique is its marriage between cameras and theater.
As Imax senior vice president Bruce Markoe explained Varietydedicated Imax images are shot on 1.43:1, 15 perf, 65mm film with a special camera. The latest Imax camera is called Keighley. That camera was recently spotted in Christopher Nolan’s possession The Odyssey. Imax Movies can also be produced using a digital workflow optimized for the format and edited in a special 1.90:1 format. If some footage is shot on Imax film, the movie may be labeled as “shot in Imax,” while filmmakers using an Imax-first digital workflow may say their movie was “shot in Imax.” All movies made with Imax production then go through a process the company calls digital image remastering (DMR) to make the images look their best on the Imax screen. Actually, if you see a movie advertised with one of those labels, you can safely assume that the best viewing will be in an Imax theater.
Imax theaters facilitate dedicated viewing of any type of Imax production, including specific room geometry, speaker placement, and that giant screen. The Imax screen is curved and stands floor to ceiling, which is why Imax movies feel like they swallow you whole. While it was once designed using an efficient film projector, the new Imax theaters use a laser projector. Imax theaters are built from the ground up by Imax, with only 1,829 screens worldwide by the end of 2025, although Markoe told Variety that there is a backlog of many orders.
Dolby Vision is all about sound accuracy and clear images
Dolby has been a staple of the filmmaking scene for decades, and its name is on the Dolby Theater where the Academy Awards are held every year. This company, the full name of Dolby Laboratories, specializes in audio technology. If you’ve ever shopped for home theater sound systems, you’ve probably heard of Dolby Atmos, and that’s more than half of what makes Dolby Cinema so immersive. Dolby Cinema combines Atmos with the company’s definition of Dolby Vision, which uses a Dolby Vision laser projector with standard CinemaScope or Flat aspect ratios.
Dolby Atmos is a proprietary suite of technologies that combines channel-based sound mixing with special, object-based mixing. Each sound in the mix is tracked as its own element in a virtual, 3D environment. The format can currently accommodate a 9.1 channel audio bed with up to 118 spatial elements. To accommodate the surround sound mix, the Dolby Cinema theater must be purpose-built in format, with up to 64 speakers installed in the front, sides, back, and rear of the hall, as well as on top. The result is that every explosion feels like it’s happening to you. While watching Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among ThievesI tried my hardest to dodge the dolby-mixed arrow that sounded like it was whistling through my head, and I’m afraid I’ll never feel that way again.
As for another piece of the Dolby Cinema puzzle, Dolby Vision is simply the brand name for the company’s take on HDR. Like any other version of that technology, Dolby Vision deepens contrast levels to produce inky blacks and bright, rich colors. But while HDR looks great on your TV at home, it looks even better in a theater. Because projectors commonly found in theaters cannot produce deep black colors, instead they look somewhat gray, Dolby Vision uses a special laser projector and screen to overcome this limitation and deliver contrast ratios of up to 1,000,000:1.
