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April 21, 2015: A Report From the "Batman v Superman" Special IMAX Event

By Kaman Stowell

Wow!

Okay, so I am writing this as I have just returned from the IMAX theater for the "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" IMAX Event! I have to start this by saying I think this was a perfect way to release the trailer. As I was telling fellow fans at the theater this is the first time Batman and Superman are appearing on the screen together and having the trailer just released like any other trailer would have been a letdown. For something of this magnitude you need an "Event"!

This event did not disappoint.

I was able to leave work early today to anxiously stand in line for 2 hours waiting to see a trailer I watched a million and one times over the weekend online. When I arrived at my theater I was surprisingly second in line! I was lucky enough to share this whole experience with my very good friend and fellow collector, Jamie Reigle of CMOS collectibles!

The theater lobby filled up quicker than I had anticipated. By 6pm there must have been 20 or 30 people waiting in line. After a lot of anticipation, we were finally able to enter the theater. On our way in we were told to put our names and email on a sheet that would allow us to receive an email to see the movie a WEEK EARLY in IMAX next March! That was enough "swag" that Zack Snyder had promised for me, but we got so much more in that ten minutes we were all there.

Jamie and I had excellent seats to view the teaser. Before the trailer started it was a blast getting to talk to fellow fans about the movie, the trailer, what we were expecting, and just how epic this whole experience was! Then it was 7pm... the same representative who had told us we would see it early walked in and couldn't warn us enough about not being able to film what we were about to see! I'll be very surprised if bootlegs of this actually leak online.

The lights dimmed, and Zack Snyder himself came on screen, standing in front of the Batmobile! He asked us yet again very politely to not film the trailer and that this was an exclusive IMAX trailer! As I said, I had spent all weekend watching the trailer over and over again. I can recite it verbatim! Seeing it in IMAX though, as Zack Snyder said before the show "The way this trailer was meant to be seen" was a whole new experience! The blues of the new Superman costume explode off the screen! The visuals and dialogue came off the screen in a way I wasn't expecting, I was seeing this trailer for the first time. It had all the familiar shots, until the "S" came up with the Bat symbol behind it, then it all changed.

Suddenly I'm watching Superman, out of breath and with a distinct curl in his hair that we are all familiar with, and he starts running and flies over the edge of the inside of an abandoned building. We see Batman in a running stance and he charges at Superman, then for a split second we are looking at Batman and Superman on screen together in IMAX for the first time. Just as the punch is about to be thrown it cuts to black, end of teaser.

Zack Snyder then comes back and says that a lot of the film was actually shot in IMAX and that the final epic scene of them clashing, that had everyone in my theater screaming at the top of their lungs, would only be seen in IMAX until the movie is released in March.

Then we got to see it again, and everyone was just anticipating the final few seconds of the beginning of the throw down of the century. Again the audience went into an uproar! Screen faded to black and all we saw was #BatmanvSuperman.

I've been a Superman fan my whole life, this will go down as one of my fondest Superman memories ever. The whole experience was beyond amazing. The people, the environment, the trailer, it was so well put together and such an incredible way to show the first footage from a historic movie. To top it all off we received the teaser posters that Zack had tweeted out last night! You had your choice of Superman or Batman, me and Jamie scored a few of each!

I can't wait for the rest of the world, and myself, to be able to experience the entirety of "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" when it hits theaters March 25, 2016.