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The weather was mythical.
Ninety-something degrees in Manhattan, with Canadian wildfire smoke painting the sky a hazy orange. It smelled like a barbecue of rotten onions; the air was a spritz of acid to the eyes. “Stay
inside,” warned the weather app.
The gods hath forsaken us, I thought on the opening night of “The Odyssey,” washing me and 650 other castaways onto the shores of the Upper West Side, where a 2 a.m. screening of the Christopher Nolan epic in Imax 70mm was playing to an entirely sold-out room.
If staying up all night at the movies sounds crazy, then the Lincoln Square AMC was a psych ward. It should be noted that this screening was not a novelty — a one-off, all-night experience for Nolan nerds and Classics majors. No, AMC has set up 2 a.m., 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. screenings through the film’s fourth weekend to meet the demand for Imax 70mm. The theater chain is showing the three-hour film six times a day in the premium large format, which is only available in 25 cinemas in the U.S.
These tickets, in other words, were hard to get. (According to Imax, this multiplex has sold “essentially every single seat for all showtimes scheduled between midnight and 3 a.m.”)
Around 1 a.m., as I socialized with the other insomniacs outside the theater, it became apparent that while “The Odyssey” is what brought them here, the film projection technology was the real star. Asked why they chose to forgo sleep on a week
night to experience the Homer adaptation, the first words out of everyone’s mouth were not “Christopher Nolan” or “Matt Damon” but “Imax 70mm.” More important than the cast or the logline was the fact that “The Odyssey” is the first movie ever shot entirely on Imax film.
“I need to see the movie the way Christopher Nolan intended it to be seen,” said a 30-year-old New York resident named Christian. “Even though this is going to fuck my Friday.”
At 1:20 a.m., a line began snaking around the escalator. People crowded the entrance as if waiting for their boarding group to be called, which didn’t make sense to me — there were no overhead bins to claim! AMC staffers manned multiple checkpoints, monitoring the capacity like nightclub bouncers.
Despite the palpable enthusiasm, no one exactly wanted to be here. If there was one adjective to describe everyone at this 2 a.m. screening, it was desperate. “I had to fight for my life to book these tickets,” a 30-year-old man named Miraj told me. “They were sold out everywhere.”
When Nolan’s last film, “Oppenheimer,” came out, Miraj had to wait a month to see it on this towering silver screen, so he wasn’t going to make the same mistake again. “I had notifications turned on for Discord, Reddit and a bunch of other places.” He felt lucky to grab seats for even this showtime. Gesturing at his low-energy friends, he scoffed, “These guys are being ungrateful.”
At 2 a.m., hundreds of people buzzed outside the auditorium, hurrying in to secure their provisions. My spoils: a pepperoni pizza and a chalice of the divine elixir known as Diet Coke.
AMC had assembled a graveyard army for this siege. At one point I counted 12 employees working behind the concession stand, which is more than I’ve ever seen as a veteran A-Lister. I asked a staffer named Kiara what it’s like to work these overnight shifts. “I love it,” she said with a glowing smile. “I just love serving customers.” (Did AMC know a journalist was coming?)
Before the movie started, I noticed more than a dozen people cradling miniature Trojan Horses, which I thought, naively, might have been giveaways. It turns out they were popcorn buckets — there’s a hidden compartment in the horse’s belly — that cost $70. The other souvenir popcorn bucket, a replica of an Imax camera, sold out immediately, according to Kiara.
Not everyone was in a money-spending mood. I made eye contact with a guy who scurried into the theater with a water cup filled with cherry-flavored Icee. Somewhere, I imagined Athena shaking her head.
The clientele was hard to pin down: Most people looked between 25 and 35, but there were a few father-son duos, plenty of Tri-State area teenagers and what appeared to be an 11-year-old girl who’d been granted a severe bedtime extension. Roaming the theater, I heard Spanish, German, Hindi and Chinese.
I took my seat around 2:15, and finally, around 2:30, Nicole Kidman appeared on-screen to remind us why We Come to This Place. She was greeted with effusive applause. When a title card introduced a four-minute sneak peek of “Dune: Part Three,” I started thinking about my own bedtime.
Thirty minutes into the movie, I started showing signs of weakness. My head felt heavy, and, in solidarity with the Cyclops, I started squinting with one eye open. At 3:39 a.m., the middle-aged woman next to me bobbled in and out of consciousness and slumped her head onto my shoulder. She immediately apologized, and I thought about proposing we lift the armrest between us and figure out some sort of symbiotic sleep situation. It was too late: She turned the other way and buried her head in her husband’s lap.
By the time Odysseus and co. visited Hades, I had caught a second wind. Toward the end of the movie, I looked around and found everyone except for my neighbor wide awake. Miraculously, only a few seats were vacant. Somewhere around 4:30, when Odysseus finally returned home to take on the suitors leering at his wife, the audience roared with applause.
As the credits rolled, I stumbled out of the room and brushed the pizza crumbs off my T-shirt. AMC should sell a bacon, egg and cheese, I remember thinking. “We did ‘The Odyssey!” shouted a woman in red flannel pajama pants and a blue blanket-hoodie hybrid.
Outside, as the sky began to lighten, people weren’t in any rush to leave. They gathered in circles, gushing over the film and geeking out about their favorite moments. Everyone seemed to bring a friend or partner — a witness — to this insane event. That communal movie theater experience everyone talks about? Well, this is the hardcore version. These are the schlubby, sleep-deprived heroes hell-bent on preserving cinema.
“I’m putting this on my Instagram story with a time stamp,” one guy blabbed as he took a photo of his friend still eating from a large popcorn bucket. Another guy taking a selfie video raved, “Movie was great — 10 out of 10. Maybe 9 out of 10.” A group of young cinephiles stormed Letterboxd like soldiers at the gates of Troy.
“I have so much to say. No words,” one guy raved oxymoronically to his friends. I couldn’t tell if he was speechless or just tired.
Eventually, like Odysseus, most people started to find their way home, hailing cabs and heading to the subway. For others, the night was just beginning. “It’s five o’clock somewhere,” a man said to his friend as they considered hitting a bar.
Yes, I thought as I looked at the time. Here.
