- guardian.co.uk, Sunday May 2 1999 22.55 BST
There is a fundamental paradox at the heart of Imax. It is the most exciting cinematic medium ever invented, yet many of its films rank as the most tedious ever made: triumphs of technology over content.
Theoretically, an Imax movie should set the pulses racing, and for a few minutes it often does - as stunning five-storey images of shuttles taking off rumble above your head, and three-dimensional sharks lunge at you across the auditorium. Then a certain ennui takes over as you are treated to dialogue worthy of a 1950s National Geographic travelogue.
Much of the problem stems from the heartbreaking expense of making an Imax film: £6-£8 million for a brief documentary. Each movie then has to recoup a vast investment, without the prospect of a glamorous movie star to bring in punters. So film-makers opt for the conservative, easy solution: worthy, educational, family fare that too often has a timeless, safe, surprisingly unadventurous feel.
In the case of the two films that will be premiered today at the British Film Institute's London Imax - Into the Deep and Destiny in Space - audiences will at least see some of the best Imax movies on offer, which should give the new cinema a reasonably exciting kick-start. Certainly, anyone with an interest in space or astronomy should get a visceral thrill from Imax's vast images of the space shuttle gliding over our blue planet.
Nevertheless, it is noticeable that both films were made in the early years of the decade, and ever since have been doing the rounds at Imax venues across America and Canada in a bid to pay back their production costs. For example, the dramatic denouement of Destiny in Space is the filming of the repair of the Hubble Space Telescope - which took place six years ago.
The slightly dated feel of the films - for all their exhilarating footage - contrasts with the efforts that have gone into making the new £20 million theatre, designed by architect Bryan Avery, a state-of-the-art, high-tech pleasure dome.
Built over Waterloo's cardboard city, where London's homeless once huddled, the theatre's 65ft high screen - the height of five double-decker buses - is the biggest in Britain. The whole building is supported by hydraulic dampers, ie springs, to censor the vibrations of the tube trains underneath, and the taxis and buses that circle the theatre like Indians round a wagon train.
And it works. The building is the calm eye of a traffic typhoon, and once its rather grim approach tunnels have been tarted up, and the jasmine and wisteria have taken over its entrance arena, the BFI London Imax will be a fine addition to the capital's Southbank art complex.
Certainly, it deserves to succeed, both on architectural and cinematic grounds. Less persuasive is the quality of Imax films on the market at present. Ultimately, they will be the real crowd pullers. Giant film versions of Discovery channel hits will simply not be enough.
There are some hopeful signs, however. The real hits of last week's press night were two Imax shorts. The first is a pre-show entertainment, made by Terry Jones and John Cleese, which introduces audiences to the Imax system, and which ends with Cleese being blasted into orbit. The second was a wonderful two-minute, three-dimensional cartoon in which the audience was sprayed with paint - virtually.
Both were made with a sense of fun and verve, and made welcome alternatives to the rather portentous documentaries that they accompanied. If nothing else, they showed that it is certainly possible to take the world's most exhilarating cinematic technology and use it to make a film that is actually entertaining from start to finish.
The BFI London Imax Cinema is located directly outside Waterloo station. Call the ticket hotline on 0171-902 1234.
Five things you should know about Imax
1. Imax uses a 70mm format that is more trhan 10 times the size of a conventional frame
2. Imax cinemas are scheduled to open in the next few years in Manchester and at London's Science Musuem
3. There are more than 130 Imax films in distribution
4. Imax films use a projector with a 15,000 watt lamp
5. More than 70 million people around the world will attend an Imax cinema this year.
