An epic ‘Odyssey’ deserves an epic movie screen. Does Tampa Bay have one? 62%
By Christopher Spata89%
7/14/2026, 8:06:13 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 27 faulty reasoning types, including Anecdotal, Appeal to Emotion, and Appeal to Authority, with False Dilemma as the most egregious example at 15.8% saturation with 182 hits. Analysis detected 1,755 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,153 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 57.3% and a BS Rank of 62% (8,192 of 21,204 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 61.40% of the article peer group.
Josiah Johnson tricked his friends.
When tickets for director Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” went on sale last year, the 24-year-old Tampa resident bought six seats and told them they’d be taking a trip to South Florida to visit a casino.
In reality, he’d orchestrated a trip to the AutoNation IMAX Theatre in Fort Lauderdale — one of only 19 theaters in the United States with IMAX 70mm film projectors, and the only one in Florida.
“I had to lie to them a little,” Johnson said.
“But they’re going to thank me once they see it.”
Johnson, who flew to New York last year just to see “One Battle After Another” in IMAX 70mm, is making the four-hour drive south to see Nolan’s highly anticipated film in the format it was shot in.
It’s the only way to see every inch of what the director captured while making the first movie ever shot entirely using IMAX film cameras.
To Johnson, this isn’t just a movie, it’s a generational event.
Nolan’s film, starring Matt Damon as Odysseus alongside a cast including Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Zendaya and Tom Holland, re-tells Homer’s 2,800-year-old Greek epic in the biggest modern format possible.
“If I could go back in time to 1968, when ’2001: A Space Odyssey’ or ' Lawrence of Arabia’ came out and see it in that format, it would be amazing," Johnson said.
“I think we may be talking about this film the same way decades from now.”
As Nolan’s $250 million epic hits theaters Thursday, cinephiles and casual moviegoers alike are hoping to see it in the best possible way.
While not everyone in Tampa Bay may be willing to drive four hours, there are some screens showing ”The Odyssey” locally.
In addition to IMAX, theaters in recent years have muddied the waters with an onslaught of branded proprietary formats like 4DX, Dolby, Screen X and HD.
But not all are created equal, including IMAX, which, contrary to popular belief, does not always mean the same size screen.
Enter Sean Simon, a 30-year-old public relations professional from Washington, D.C.
A couple years back, Simon wanted a visual aide to show a friend the difference between two IMAX screens in Washington they were deciding between.
He created a diagram.
When he posted it online, it got a lot of attention from film fans.
People were asking him to make diagrams for their city.
Thus, an idea.
He spent the last year and a half standardizing data to map out more than 820 premium screens across North America.
He launched findbigscreens.com two weeks ago in anticipation of “The Odyssey,” drawing 10,000 visitors in the first week alone.
“Tickets cost a lot of money,” Simon said.
”If people are spending (on) a premium ticket, they really want to know that they’re getting value for their money.”
If you use the site to diagram screens in Tampa Bay, one clearly dwarfs all others: The 70-by-40-foot behemoth at AMC Riverview 14.
The screen is about 10 feet taller than anything else locally.
That theater utilizes a format called GDX, which is a massive standard rectangle.
It’s the largest screen in Tampa Bay, but since it’s not IMAX, it may not display the towering, expanded vertical height captured by Nolan’s IMAX cameras.
If local viewers want that extra vertical picture, they may need to visit a theater with an IMAX auditorium, like the AMC Sundial in St.
Petersburg or the AMC Veterans 24 in Tampa for the proper aspect ratio.
Then there’s the question of whether to see the movie on 4K digital, which is most screens at most theaters (including our aforementioned local IMAX screens), or on actual film, which many believe provides a far superior picture in both color and resolution.
IMAX digital has 4K resolution, like a modern TV.
Seventy millimeter film is equivalent to something like 8K to 12K, experts say.
For “The Odyssey,” the AMC Veterans will be firing up its rarely used 70-millimeter projector.
Along with Sun-Ray Cinema in Tampa, it’s one of only two places to see “The Odyssey” on 70mm film in Tampa Bay.
“Nothing else makes you feel the same way,” Simon said of watching 70mm film.
“It’s a totally different sensory experience.”
Bobby Carney, a 37-year-old marketing and communications professional for USF Health who studied film at the University of Florida, is bypassing digital IMAX projections entirely.
Instead, he has tickets to see the 70mm film print at Sun-Ray Cinema.“
There are bigger screens in town,” Carney said, “so if it’s just about the size of the screen, then there’s that.
But for me, it was definitely going to be film.
I saw (Nolan’s) “Dunkirk” on 70mm IMAX, and it clicked.
This is the way movies are supposed to look."
Getting that physical film print to Tampa Bay theaters is a huge logistical undertaking.
According to Sean McKinnon, director of specialty presentations at Boston Light and Sound, the industry had largely thrown these mechanical projectors into dumpsters as theaters transitioned to digital.The resurgence began in 2015 with Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight.”
Back then, the company was hired by the film’s studio to scour barns, basements and private collections to assemble more than 100 functioning 70mm projectors, which had mostly wound up on the trash heap, and get them to theaters around the U.S.
Running them relies on a dedicated, aging community of projectionists that basically have to be called back into service whenever a new Nolan film comes along.
Those folks, organized by Boston Sound and Light, are fanning out to theaters across America this week.
“One of our technicians is 84,” McKinnon said.
Because the trade has largely died out, McKinnon frequently relies on retired operators or people working unrelated jobs who view projection as a calling.
“We had somebody who worked for the Library of Congress, and they took vacation time to be able to run a projector at an AMC for at least two weeks.”
At Sun-Ray Cinema, it will be theater owner Tim Massett working the 70mm projector, which was installed a few months ago at an expense of $100,000.
Because he is the only trained projectionist on staff, Massett will be manually switching the movie from one projector to the other every 40 minutes, every single day, for two weeks.
That workload, and the renewed interest in 70mm, are the reasons he’s putting together a training for aspiring projectionists at Sun-Ray later this year.
“Tickets are selling really well,” Massett said of his 70mm screenings of “The Odyssey.”
“Thursday evening is nearly sold out.
I think it’s going to be a big weekend for us.
This is why we spent $100,000 on a projector.”
Those who show up for the first 70mm screening at Sun-Ray will be treated to a giveaway: a 70mm film strip with several frames from the movie.
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83%flagged-word coverageSean Simon
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