Like many this past weekend, I decided to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I wanted the full experience of seeing it in IMAX. Director Michael Bay extended some of the fight scenes in "The IMAX Experience" as they are calling it. He claimed in his blog that seeing the movie in the larger screen format made the robots look like they were the actual size they would be in real life on screens at least 50-feet tall. That had me sold! I purchased my tickets online a few weeks back in anticipation that it might be sold out and I wasn't wrong. I was only able to get a 9:45AM show.

I remember hearing a few weeks back comedian Aziz Ansari, star of NBC's Parks and Recreation and MTV's Human Giant, had a bad experience viewing an IMAX movie. He blogged on his website that he went to go see Star Trek and paid extra $5 for the IMAX show. Instead he got to see Spock and Kirk on a normal-sized screen. Turns out some movie theaters are showing the films on digital projectors but selling it to you and me as an IMAX film. Most theaters have slightly widened their screens and removed the few front rows of seats so the screen can be moved 30 feet forward.

What is upsetting about this is some theaters don't charge you to see a movie shown in the digital format. For example the Lincoln Square IMAX in New York City is the true IMAX screen size of 76 x 97 feet, while the Empire 25 IMAX down on 42nd St. is 28 x 58 feet. There is a huge difference there, and we, the paying customers, are not being made aware of this.

Right before I bought my Transformers 2 tickets I went to the Web in hopes of avoiding this happening to me. There are a few good sites out there that tell you what you will be seeing for that extra fee. Destroy Fake IMAX is one site that is constantly updated by bloggers about screen sizes in different cities.

Problem I had was the movie theater that still had tickets for "The IMAX Experience" had no listing. It appears the site is being updated by angry customers, and it hasn't made it around to all places. I rolled the dice and purchased my tickets anyway. Sure enough I got duped, it wasn't the larger IMAX screen. As far as I am concerned, max means maximum so if you are going to use the name IMAX, that means a big screen. Otherwise, it should be IMIN as in minimum, as in small screen.