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Nolan's 'The Odyssey' packs IMAX theaters as fans take high-speed trains for better screens_我的网站

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    Moviegoers line up at a IMAX ticket hall in Dongguan, South China's Guangdong Province, on August 15, 2026. Photo: VCGChristopher Nolan's much-anticipated The Odyssey officially opened in China on Friday, quickly becoming one of the hottest tickets of the summer movie season, with moviegoers scrambling for premium IMAX screenings and some even traveling to other cities for better viewing experiences with better screens. 
Meanwhile, domestic hit Once Upon a Time in the Middle East has grossed more than 850 million yuan ($126 million), adding to the intense competition for audiences during China's packed summer movie season.
The Odyssey, which had already held limited previews in China, had grossed an estimated 240 million yuan as of Sunday, according to ticketing platform Maoyan. Its projected box office is expected to surpass 700 million yuan, potentially exceeding the 452million yuan Oppenheimer grossed in the Chinese mainland.
The Odyssey is the first feature film shot entirely using IMAX cameras and is being presented in IMAX 70mm at select theaters. Its large-format cinematography and expansive visual style have made the IMAX experience a major selling point for Chinese moviegoers.
Demand for premium IMAX screenings was already intense during the film's previews, with some theaters reporting full occupancy. After its official release, that enthusiasm has shown no sign of easing.
In Beijing, one longtime Nolan fan had been following the film since before its release and had repeatedly tried to secure a seat at the China National Film Museum's IMAX GT theater, one of the most sought-after formats for the movie. 
Unable to get a ticket, the moviegoer eventually chose another well-reviewed IMAX theater and paid 180 yuan for a seat, three times the price of a normal seat, that was not particularly well positioned.
The theater was nearly full when the audience arrived, the moviegoers were largely quiet as they waited for the screening to begin. But the large-format presentation delivered the immersive audiovisual experience the audience had been anticipating.
Another moviegoer, Lin Xiao, managed to attend an IMAX screening during the previews and also noted the high attendance. She told the Global Times that audiences had already formed a long line outside the theater before the movie began.
On Chinese lifestyle platform Xiaohongshu, or RedNote, some moviegoers have posted about traveling to other cities because their hometowns do not have IMAX GT screenings. Some have even taken high-speed trains specifically to watch The Odyssey in what they consider a better theater.
Zhang Peng, a cultural researcher and associate professor at Nanjing Normal University, told the Global Times that The Odyssey's strong reception and high attendance in China demonstrate that high-quality content, combined with the rare and highly immersive experience offered by premium formats such as IMAX GT, remains a key competitive advantage for cinemas. 
The film's strong quality, coupled with its cutting-edge large-format presentation, creates a theatrical experience that cannot be easily replicated at home, showing that when cinemas can offer a sufficiently distinctive immersive experience, the big screen retains its unique social and ceremonial appeal, with audiences willing to pay a premium for such exclusivity, said Zhang. 
However, film critic Liu Nandou offered a restrained forecast, predicting its Chinese mainland gross at 300 million to 800 million yuan ($41 million to $110 million). 
"Nolan's films have a ceiling," he told the Global Times in a previous interview. "The threshold for understanding The Odyssey is extremely high, and it doesn't fit the broad popcorn audience."
The appeal of premium formats is not limited to The Odyssey. Several films in China's summer movie season have also embraced IMAX and other high-end formats, giving audiences more options for immersive theatrical experiences.
Once Upon a Time in the Middle East, which has grossed more than 850 million yuan at the box office and is projected to surpass 2.5 billion yuan, according to Maoyan, was specially shot for IMAX. 
Rather than relying on grand battle scenes, the film is set almost entirely in a small Chinese restaurant in war-torn Iraq in 2003. Played by Shen Teng, Xu Fu is a chef looking to make a living abroad and find a quiet life. But when war suddenly erupts, he and restaurant manager Ma Junsheng, played by Jiang Qiming, choose to keep the kitchen running, serving authentic Chinese dishes and creating a safe haven for local civilians and children amid the chaos.
The film uses IMAX's large screen to present the warmth of everyday life and the details of the restaurant with greater clarity and immersion.
The Odyssey, meanwhile, uses IMAX film cameras to bring the epic scale of Homer's poem to the big screen with sweeping and visually striking imagery. All Wishes Come True! is also available in premium formats including IMAX, Dolby and CINITY, using enhanced audiovisual technology to amplify its visual effects and emotional atmosphere and help drive box-office growth, according to China's state media CCTV.
As more films made for premium formats continue to draw audiences, high-end theaters equipped with IMAX, CINITY and other technologies are seeing increased demand, giving moviegoers a wider range of viewing options.
Film industry experts said audiences are no longer satisfied simply with being able to watch a movie, but increasingly want to "watch a good movie" and "experience a film in an immersive environment."
。    WASHINGTON -- With the growing popularity of disposable e-cigarettes, communities across the U.S. are confronting a new vaping problem: how to safely get rid of millions of small, battery-powered devices that are considered hazardous waste.For years, the debate surrounding vaping largely centered on its risks for high school and middle school students enticed by flavors like gummy bear, lemonade and watermelon.But the recent shift toward e-cigarettes that can’t be refilled has created a new environmental dilemma. The devices, which contain nicotine, lithium and other metals, cannot be reused or recycled. Under federal environmental law, they also aren’t supposed to go in the trash.U.S. teens and adults are buying roughly 12 million disposable vapes per month. With little federal guidance, local officials are finding their own ways to dispose of e-cigarettes collected from schools, colleges, vape shops and other sites.“We are in a really weird regulatory place where there is no legal place to put these and yet we know, every year, tens of millions of disposables are thrown in the trash,” said Yogi Hale Hendlin, a health and environmental researcher at the University of California, San Francisco.In late August, sanitation workers in Monroe County, New York, packed more than 5,500 brightly colored e-cigarettes into 55-gallon steel drums for transport. Their destination? A giant, industrial waste incinerator in northern Arkansas, where they would be melted down.Sending 350 pounds of vapes across the country to be burned into ash may not sound environmentally friendly. But local officials say it’s the only way to keep the nicotine-filled devices out of sewers, waterways and landfills, where their lithium batteries can catch fire.“These are very insidious devices,” said Michael Garland, who directs the county’s environmental services. “They’re a fire risk and they’re certainly an environmental contaminant if not managed properly.”Elsewhere, the disposal process has become both costly and complicated. In New York City, for example, officials are seizing hundreds of thousands of banned vapes from local stores and spending about 85 cents each for disposal.HAZARDOUS WASTEVaping critics say the industry has skirted responsibility for the environmental impact of its products, while federal regulators have failed to force changes that could make vaping components easier to recycle or less wasteful.Among the possible changes: standards requiring that e-cigarettes be reusable or forcing manufacturers to fund collection and recycling programs. New York, California and several other states have so-called extended product responsibility laws for computers and other electronics. But those laws don't cover vaping products and there are no comparable federal requirements for any industry.Environmental Protection Agency rules for hazardous waste don’t apply to households, meaning it's legal for someone to throw e-cigarettes in the garbage at home. But most businesses, schools and government facilities are subject to EPA standards in how they handle harmful chemicals like nicotine, which the EPA considers an “acute hazardous waste," because it can be poisonous at high levels.In the U.S., the push to manage disposable e-cigarettes has chiefly come from schools, which can face stricter regulation if they generate more than a few pounds of hazardous waste per month. Monroe County schools pay $60 to dispose of each one-gallon container of vapes. More than two thirds of the e-cigarettes collected by the county come from schools.“Our schools were very relieved because they had confiscated so much of this material,” Garland said. “If you think of all the high schools across the country, they are in a very difficult place right now.”Lithium in e-cigarette batteries is the same highly sought metal used to power electric vehicles and cellphones. But the quantities used in vaping devices are too small to warrant salvage. And nearly all disposable e-cigarette batteries are soldered into the device, making it impractical to separate them for recycling.Disposable e-cigarettes currently account for about 53% of the multi-billion U.S. vaping market, according to U.S. government figures, more than doubling since 2020.Their rise is a study in unintended consequences.In early 2020, the Food and Drug Administration banned nearly all flavors from reusable e-cigarettes like Juul, the cartridge-based device blamed for sparking a nationwide surge in underage vaping. But the policy didn't apply to disposables, opening the door to thousands of new varieties of fruit and candy-flavored vapes, almost all manufactured in China.In recent months the FDA has begun trying to block imports of several leading disposable brands, including Elf Bar and Esco Bar. Regulators consider them all illegal, but they have been unable to stop their entry to the U.S. and the devices are now ubiquitous in convenience stores, gas stations and other shops. FDA’s tobacco chief, Brian King, said in a statement that his agency “will continue to carefully consider the potential environmental impacts” of vaping products.THE COST OF CONFISCATING DISPOSABLE E-CIGARETTESIn 2020, New York City outlawed the vast majority of e-cigarette types, banning flavors that can appeal to youngsters.City employees conduct thousands of inspections annually, and last year issued more than 2,400 citations to corner stores and bodegas selling illegal flavored products. Adding to the challenge are THC vapes sold at hundreds of unlicensed marijuana shops, a separate but related problem that has mushroomed since New York's legalization of recreational pot.Since last November, officials have seized more than 449,000 vape units, according to city figures. New York City is spending about $1,400 to destroy each container of 1,200 confiscated vapes, but many more remain in city storage lockers. “I don’t think anyone ever considered the volume of these in our community,” said New York Sheriff Anthony Miranda, who leads a task force on the issue. “There’s a tremendous amount of resources going into this effort.” A recent lawsuit against four large vaping distributors aims to recoup some of the city's costs. For now, New Yorkers who vape can bring their used e-cigarettes to city-sponsored waste-collection events.Ultimately those vapes meet a familiar fate: They are shipped to Gum Springs, Arkansas, to be incinerated by Veolia, an international waste management firm. The company has incinerated more than 1.6 million pounds of vaping waste in recent years, mostly unsold inventory or discontinued products.Veolia executives say burning e-cigarettes' lithium batteries can damage their incinerators.“Ideally we don’t want to incinerate them because it has to be done very, very slowly. But if have to, we will,” said Bob Cappadona, who leads the company’s environmental services division.Veolia also handles e-cigarettes from Boulder County, Colorado, one of the only U.S. jurisdictions that actively tries to recycle e-cigarette batteries and components.Historically, Boulder has had one of the highest teen vaping rates in the country, peaking at nearly 33% in 2017. “It was like someone flicked the switch. Suddenly e-cigarettes were everywhere,” said Daniel Ryan, principal of Centaurus High School. Beginning in 2019, county officials began distributing bins to schools for confiscated or discarded e-cigarettes. Last year, they collected 3,500. County staffers sort the devices by type, separating those with removable batteries for recycling. Disposables are packed and shipped to Veolia's incinerator. Shelly Fuller, who directs the program, says managing vape waste has gotten more costly and labor intensive with the shift to disposables.“I kind of miss the days when we had Juuls and I could take each battery out and recycle them very easily,” Fuller said. “No one has time to dismantle a thousand Esco Bars.”___AP video journalist Joseph Frederick contributed to this story from New York___Follow Matthew Perrone on Twitter: @AP_FDAwriter___The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.。

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