Could IMAX help save the theatrical comedy movie?

No movie genre is ever truly gone. All it takes is one successful feature to bring a seemingly dead and buried cinematic domain back to relevancy. Remember how the musical movie was finished theatrically before Chicago in 2002? Consider how, pre-Minions: The Rise of Gru, nobody thought family movies would work again theatrically after COVID shut down theaters. Heck, It Ends with Us just resurrected the theatrical romantic drama after years of dormancy. Audiences do not show up to movie theaters and think "which movies belong to genres that are hot right now?". They want compelling ideas, visuals, and stories. Whatever shape those elements take (whether it’s in a western, sex comedy, or documentary) is often immaterial.

This means that the comedy movie will inevitably return to theaters someday. All it’ll take is one movie that strikes a chord with audiences to revive the genre like it’s 2009 again. Still, there’s no denying the theatrical comedy needs some extra help getting back on its feet, especially in the eyes of studio executives controlling what movies do and don’t get financing. To make these titles extra appealing in the modern marketplace, perhaps it’s time to think outside of the box. Maybe future comedy movies should consider shooting in IMAX. That wouldn’t just make forthcoming entries in the genre more relevant to the current theatrical marketplace. It would also address the dire visual shortcomings that have doomed the modern comedy movie.

The American comedy suffers from extra specific issues many other genres don’t need to face. For one thing, studios rarely put these titles out in theaters anymore. How can we judge their big-screen viability if the likes of Warner Bros. and Disney/20th Century Studios won’t put them on the big screen? Corporate disinterest in the genre alone makes it difficult to get these titles back to their previous status.

Meanwhile, the typical American comedy struggles to register as transgressive for the genre’s target demo of young people. Grifter right-wing podcast hosts will claim this fault lies in “wokeness run amuck” or “cancel culture” or other nonsense. In reality, it’s actually because of the innate conservatism among mainstream studio comedies. We live in an age where 18-35-year-olds get their laughs from Haus of Decline comics full of nudity and fluids, surrealist Dril tweets, or Patti Harrison’s bizarre I Think You Should Leave antics. The Wrong Missy believing a (GASP!) threesome is the height of sexual adventurousness, the obsession with dog boners in Strays, or whatever was going on in You People’s terrible script, these are just a few examples of modern comedy movies feeling out of touch with what’s considered “edgy”. These features are about as subversive as a meme shared on Elon Musk’s Twitter page.

However, the biggest problem plaguing comedy movies, without question, is their visuals. Exceptions exist, like the terrific cinematography of Bottoms, the lusciously maximalist imagery in Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar, or the endless striking images in Barbie. Low-budget indie comedies, meanwhile, have continued to infuse the genre with visual panache. Hundreds of Beavers, Slut in a Good Way, Palm Springs, and Red Rocket, these low-budget comedies all looked fantastic in their camerawork and production design. However, most modern studio comedy features like Tag, Bros, Stuber, Unfrosted, Anyone but You, Jackpot!, and countless other titles have lifeless visuals bathed in distractingly bright lighting. Even titles that go to the big screen, like Strays, look like TV shows, not motion pictures.

Even back in 2005, a disposable Martin Lawrence comedy like Rebound was shot on Kodak 35mm film. If you saw a Rebound commercial, it was immediately easy to discern it as “a movie” compared to a CBS comedy. Try and watch the trailer for Unfrosted and figure out how it looks any different than a long-forgotten Netflix/NBC/Hulu sitcom. With this problem, comedy movies get especially lost in the "content" slush pile dominating pop culture.

This is where the possibility of shooting on IMAX comes into play. Comedy movies do not need to suddenly incorporate blue sky-beams into their third act or lots of explosions to become viable big-screen experiences. The solution to saving the big-screen comedy movie isn’t taking The Jerk and turning it into a superhero movie. However, incorporating more polished cinematography into these titles would give them something different from streaming comedies. Instead of building the camerawork around capturing random Jonah Hill improv, how about crafting more pre-planned visual gags? Why couldn’t Robert Elswit, Hoyte von Hoyteman, or Claire Mathon lens a comedy feature? Executing those precise images on an IMAX screen would reinforce the truth to audiences that comedies belong on the big screen.

Various forms of historical precedence suggest this plan could have some merit. The big mid-2010s comeback for horror movies occurred partially because they started shooting these titles like real movies again. After Paranormal Activity in 2009, every horror movie was a found-footage title. This came with lots of shaky cam and faux “off-the-cuff” imagery. Projects like It Follows, The Babadook, and Get Out upended this norm with more precise and detailed camerawork. Get Out’s opening scene, for instance, unnervingly utilizes a wide shot and unbroken images to capture Andre Hayworth’s (LaKeith Stanfield) kidnapping. Similarly, more expansive framing in It Follows creepily reinforced how inescapable that movie’s main foe was. They’re always lurking, following, stalking, even if it’s just in the corner of the frame.

Once theatrical horror movies were shot like films again, the genre looked more enticing to the general public. Engaging in a similar practice for mainstream studio comedies could provide a renaissance for the genre. Given the currently dire box office straits and theatrical presence plaguing the comedy movies, taking some extra measures to make these movies must-sees is necessary. With moviegoers showing up to IMAX features in droves, going the extra mile and presenting comedies in IMAX could really help seal this genre’s revival.

Not every comedy needs IMAX (Barbie didn't need the format to get a record-shattering box office opening), but embracing the format for certain comedies could be a boon to artists and audiences alike. Believe it or not, the specific prospect of sending comedy movies to IMAX isn’t as ludicrous as it sounds. In the 1950s, several comedy features used the expansive CinemaScope aspect ratio. This included the 1957 Katharine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy feature Desk Set, How to Marry a Millionaire, and It's a Dog's Life, among others.

CinemaScope is not a 1:1 comparison to IMAX. However, these CinemaScope comedies demonstrate that Hollywood used grand shooting styles for this genre decades ago. There is precedent for employing the same cinematography tools reserved for grand epics on smaller-scale yukfests. Meanwhile, acclaimed comedies like Jacques Tati's Playtime have expansive images rich with details that require the big screen. Surely that kind of imagery is as worthy of the IMAX screen as Borderlands!

Speaking of IMAX, this large-screen format doesn't just belong to Christopher Nolan films, superhero yarns, and nature documentaries. Starting around 2013, nearly every weekend has brought a new film to IMAX theaters. Many of these are gigantic tentpoles...but not all of them are rife with explosions and cities going up in smoke. Smaller-scale titles like Focus, Fifty Shades of Grey, Killers of the Flower Moon, The Finest Hours, 10 Cloverfield Lane, Jigsaw, Parasite, and Dear Evan Hansen (among other titles) have all played on IMAX screens.

Meanwhile, several lucrative Chinese comedies debuted in IMAX in that country recently. My People, My Homeland, Only Fools Rush In, Nice View, and YOLO (among others) all launched in Chinese IMAX screens. Audiences showed up in droves to see such projects in these venues. After these various historical precedents, would it really boggle the minds of American moviegoers seeing Game Night, Spy, or (in a perfect world) Hundreds of Beavers playing on IMAX screens? If Dear Evan Hansen can go to IMAX, so can comedy movies!

Then there’s the Oppenheimer of it all. That movie truly solidified that IMAX motion pictures don’t just have to focus on fight scenes all the time. Oppenheimer was a grand production told through Christopher Nolan’s famously epic eye, but it was also a relatively down-to-earth production. There were no CG characters in its runtime. Nor were there large extensive hand-to-hand skirmishes like the ones dominating prior Nolan movies like Inception and Tenet. Much of the runtime focused on people chatting in interrogation rooms or at Senate hearings. The producers and heads of the IMAX company have themselves admitted that, on paper, this didn’t look like an ideal motion picture for the big screen format.

Yet people turned out in droves for Oppenheimer. At my Cinemark IMAX 70mm screening in Dallas (one of only a few IMAX 70mm showings in Texas), people traveled across state lines to see this feature in this particular format! True, people weren’t showing up to Oppenheimer in IMAX because it was smaller in scope than Inception. Christopher Nolan’s name and the notoriety of J. Robert Oppenheimer as a historical figure did that. However, Oppenheimer not being of the same scale as, say, Avatar: The Way of Water didn’t deter people from costly IMAX tickets either.

Oppenheimer demonstrated that a wide array of movies can flourish on IMAX screens. This space does not just summer blockbusters with regular doses of fight scenes. After that Nolan movie rewrote the rule for what could play in IMAX…what’s next? What other motion pictures could unexpectedly excel in this pristine format? There are lots of possibilities here and that could include comedies. If you present a comedy movie in IMAX auditoriums, or better yet shoot it in IMAX, people could come out just like they did for Oppenheimer, Focus, Fifty Shades of Grey, and other unconventional IMAX titles. You'd be offering audiences something they can't get with Netflix's comedy movie slop. Plus, you'd be offering filmmakers exciting tools that would open up new worlds of unique comedic opportunities for filmmakers. Who knows what exciting new gags could flourish with the expansive IMAX canvas!

Above all else, it’d be nice to see Hollywood put some pomp and circumstance into its comedy movies again. Make these features LOOK like movies again! Don’t just make them appear interchangeable with your average sitcom! Presenting certain comedy movies in IMAX would be a perfect cornerstone of a larger resuscitation of this genre’s theatrical presence. It’s time to consider the previously unthinkable…including maybe bringing comedy movies to IMAX auditoriums. Or at least, as a gift to me, giving Hundreds of Beavers a one-night run in IMAX. Oh, how hysterical that film's ingenious jokes would be on such a massive screen!