Director Ang Lee set out to push the boundaries of moviemaking with the Will Smith vehicle GEMINI MAN, shooting it at a groundbreaking HFR (High Frame Rate) of 120fps and in 4K 3D. Critics who got to see the movie in this format have said Lee has made a technical marvel that demands to be seen on the big screen. Unfortunately, no one will get to see the movie how it was originally intended, as Paramount is only releasing the movie with the HFR attached in very select theaters across the country, and none of them will be in 4K.
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Polygon was able to confirm with Paramount that only 14 theaters across the country will show the movie at 120fps, but that they will be shown in the standard 2K, not the 4K with which it was filmed. As for those theaters that do have showings at a higher frame rate, they will be at 60fps (still vastly higher than the industry standard 24fps). Polygon got the list of AMC theaters that will have the 120fps 3D versions:
AMC Aventura Mall 24 – Miami, FL
AMC Century City 15 – Los Angeles, CA
AMC Del Amo 18 – Los Angeles, CA
AMC Disney Springs 24 – Orlando, FL
AMC Elmwood Palace 20 – New Orleans, LA
AMC Flatiron Crossing 14 – Denver, CO
AMC Hawthorn 12 – Chicago, IL
AMC Lincoln Square 13 – New York, NY
AMC Metreon 16 – San Francisco, CA
AMC North Point 12 – Atlanta, GA
AMC River East 21 – Chicago, IL
AMC Town Square 18 – Las Vegas, NV
AMC White Marsh 16 – Baltimore, MD
AMC Willowbrook 24 – Houston, TX
The report notes how for the movie’s premiere at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles Paramount equipped the theater with state-of-the-art projection tech to provide the absolute best technical specs for the audience. As for the movie’s screenings around the world, some select Odeon theaters in the U.K. will have the 120fps shows, while a few theaters in Asia will be able to meet the 120fps 4K standard.
This then begs the question of why Lee set out to do this at all if Paramount wasn’t set to release the movie as it was intended, and with theaters not equipped to do so anyway. Lee told Polygon it was all done to make “Junior,” the younger version of Smith’s character, have a sense of realism during both dramatic scenes and big action set pieces – all while knowing audiences probably wouldn’t be able to see it in the filmed format.
“It’s fair. People will be intimated by 3D and more data and more details,” Lee said. “It can be scary and most people won’t try it. But it also [gave] us more material to work with. We had 40 times more data, which meant 40 times more chance of flopping or succeeding. You just have more to work with, and in 3D, it’s sharper. Because of that, it made me want to do this. You can’t put on makeup or erase wrinkles or have his son play him and call that a clone.”
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The hope is that people with expensive TVs will be able to see the movie as it was intended when it hits 4K Blu-ray, which is, I guess, one way to see what Lee intended. “The scary part is that the TV is ahead of movies," he said. "[But] I would like to show them it the right way.”
So yeah, unless you live in any of these areas you won’t be able to see the movie in the HFR Lee intended, and if you aren’t living anywhere showing it in any sort of HFR, then it’s a standard moviegoing experience for you. While Lee explained that it was all for the sake of bringing the movie to life, it still feels cheap for the studio (and Lee himself) to push such a technically unique movie, only for people not to see it the way it should be seen. I suppose baby steps are needed to advance how we watch movies on the big screen, but still, it feels like money wasted and expectations tarnished for those anxious to see what Lee accomplished.
GEMINI MAN is in theaters October 11.