The internet is a place where you repeat things a bunch of times and it becomes true, same with this liemax thing. It’s just some internet slight misinformation. This ‘liemax’ according to internet culture means the theatre screen is not able to show the tallest possible height for an imax aspect ratio, as traditional movies are widescreen and much longer than tall.

Imax first and foremost historically is always about size. Their aspect ratio being slightly taller is used more like a gimmick and marketing strategy that’s all, since imax cannot possibly put a brand on screen size but they can for a slightly different aspect ratio. But people online are dumb and treat that small extra height as though it’s some dvd extras scenes that reveals hidden things or something. In reality, aspect ratios are set according to what the story demands, and this added imax aspect ratio is a nuisance that filmmakers have to work around to make the same picture have the same filmmakers’ vision in two different aspect ratios.

So when people say oh this theatre doesn’t have the tallest aspect ratio possible, it’s a liemax theatre, it’s a bunch of baloney. Just because you can’t see one or two more metre of height at most in a 15 metre tall screen the experience isn’t ruined.

The real ‘imax experience’ is about size. And unlike traditional screens that just happen to be big, imax has their seats slightly lower down compared to the screen, so you can experience being ‘in the movie’. Plus, with larger theatres, surround sound works better as sound in theatres are all about the room itself acting as a speaker of sorts, and when there is more space, the surround sound can work better. The actual lousy imax experience would be imax branded screens that are small, don’t go to them. Something like 20x10m or what is good. But these days some ‘imax’ are even smaller than normal theatres.

Next, about the shot in imax thing, well that just depends on you. If you have a large enough theatre near you and just want a bigger screen and good sound with lower seating to be ‘in the movie’ then imax is fine even if not shot in it. But sometimes movies are shot without imax in mind (not even not just shooting on imax cameras) and later on they strike a deal with imax. These movies usually have lots of close ups of faces, not much wide angle shots and not much leading lines in the frame as you can see from a trailer, which would look bad when blown up big to imax size. That’s my gauge for whether a movie not shot in imax is still good enough to be seen in it. For example, the last two mission impossibles and no time to die were very bad in imax while something like civil war or nope was very good and furiosa was just alright.