Is 4DX real­ly the future of cinemagoing?

Ever since the inven­tion of pho­tog­ra­phy, the tech­nol­o­gy of rep­re­sen­ta­tion has been involved in a seem­ing­ly unstop­pable move­ment towards an ever greater real­ism. Despite some impuls­es of abstrac­tion and arti­fi­cial­i­ty, progress in the visu­al arts has been defined by and large by how faith­ful man-made images can be to reality.

From draw­ings and paint­ings to pho­tographs, from still to mov­ing images, from black-and-white to colour, from 2D to 3D, it is as though the human race, in its mad­den­ing desire for pow­er and con­trol, also sought to cap­ture and recre­ate real­i­ty itself. From there, it does not take a genius or a degree in Film Stud­ies to see in this incli­na­tion some attempt to chal­lenge the ulti­mate cre­ator, God.

The lat­est play­ground for such philo­soph­i­cal mus­ings is none oth­er than the Cineworld in Wandsworth, Lon­don, one of the many mul­ti­plex­es of a cin­e­ma chain spe­cial­is­ing in big-bud­get Amer­i­can block­busters. What dis­tin­guish­es this branch from the oth­ers is the instal­la­tion late last year of a spe­cial screen equipped with the motion seats and spe­cial effects already famil­iar from amuse­ment parks.

In coor­di­na­tion with the action on screen, seats move back and and forth or side­ways, while tiny air jets installed next to the head­rests give the sen­sa­tion of a bul­let fly­ing past. Wind tur­bines match a feel­ing of speed to the char­ac­ters’ rapid move­ment on screen, or recre­ate the sen­sa­tion of a storm, accom­pa­nied by bright flash­es of light and water falling from the ceil­ing with var­i­ous lev­els of inten­si­ty. Spe­cif­ic smells can even emanate from the seats, while tiny tubes by the feet can give ankles the tick­ling sen­sa­tion of walk­ing through a field, or the ter­ri­fy­ing impres­sion of hav­ing almost stepped on a snake.

Although the appa­ra­tus seems to me way supe­ri­or to what I last expe­ri­enced at Dis­ney­land, the inno­va­tion here is not so much the tech­nol­o­gy but its appli­ca­tion. Cre­at­ed by CJ CGV, the num­ber one cin­e­ma chain in Korea, ​‘4DX’ tech­nol­o­gy does not bring motion seats and spe­cial effects to a fake train ride pro­ject­ed onto the screen, but to almost any of the lat­est Amer­i­can block­busters on release. For exam­ple, at the Cineworld Wandsworth recent­ly you could pur­chase tick­ets to see Alien: Covenant in 4DX 2D. Or rather not see it, but ​‘be in the movie’.

This delight­ful­ly cheesy mar­ket­ing slo­gan is actu­al­ly quite accu­rate, as the tech­nol­o­gy does indeed aim to offer the most immer­sive cin­e­ma expe­ri­ence pos­si­ble with­out the view­er hav­ing to be alone – as with vir­tu­al real­i­ty head­sets – or to actu­al­ly stand in the mid­dle of a film set. Gone are the days when all movie sen­sa­tions were mere emo­tions, summed up by flat images on a two dimen­sion­al screen. 4DX adds a phys­i­cal dimen­sion that was pre­vi­ous­ly denied them by virtue of the very mech­a­nism of cin­e­ma – the cam­era thus far only cap­tured the look, not the feel(ing) of a place.

Like 3D and IMAX before it, 4DX was evi­dent­ly intro­duced as a strat­e­gy to attract film view­ers away from home and back into cin­e­mas. If admis­sions have been dwin­dling ever since the days of the VHS, the ever-increas­ing cat­a­logue of films avail­able on stream­ing plat­forms, viewed on increas­ing­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed home enter­tain­ment setups, has been mak­ing mat­ters sig­nif­i­cant­ly worse. Incen­tives to pay the price of an often expen­sive cin­e­ma tick­et are few­er and fewer.

4DX is sim­ply the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy to offer audi­ences some­thing they can­not get at home, turn­ing a vis­it to the cin­e­ma into a real event. Look­ing at the num­bers, it works. Launched in 2009 with the 4DX release of Jour­ney to the Cen­ter of the Earth in Seoul, South Korea, the tech­nol­o­gy has been grow­ing ever since and is now avail­able in 45 countries.

Despite this suc­cess, 4DX has yet to resolve an issue that great­ly impacts its enjoy­ment. While movies gen­er­al­ly work to align spec­ta­to­r­i­al sym­pa­thies with one char­ac­ter over oth­ers, 4DX can con­fuse this process of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, tran­scrib­ing every phys­i­cal con­tact in the film regard­less of char­ac­ter allegiance.

Put sim­ply, if the good guy hits the bad guy, the view­er will feel a hit in the back of their chair as if they were sud­den­ly required to iden­ti­fy with the vil­lain. This is all the more jar­ring in super­hero movies, which often evolve in a black-and-white moral world and con­sti­tute most of the films screened with the tech­nol­o­gy. As such, 4DX view­ers are not so much ​‘in’ the movie as they ​‘are’ the movie, expe­ri­enc­ing all of the phys­i­cal sen­sa­tions that occur with­in its world.

This con­fus­ing con­fig­u­ra­tion is large­ly due to the fact that no film has yet been made specif­i­cal­ly for the 4DX tech­nol­o­gy. As of today, 4DX effects are not cre­at­ed by the film stu­dio itself, but by a spe­cial team of edi­tors work­ing for CJ 4DPLEX, an affil­i­ate of CJ CGV. This issue might soon be solved though, as the com­pa­ny is look­ing into mak­ing a film espe­cial­ly designed for 4DX screens.

In much the same way that cer­tain direc­tors craft their film with its 3D ren­der­ing in mind, 4DX direc­tors would have to con­sid­er not only the visu­al aspect of their film but also its phys­i­cal, ​‘sen­sa­tion­al’ dimen­sion. A first step was tak­en just this year by James Gunn, who got per­son­al­ly involved in the cre­ation of the 4DX effects for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2. And with Grav­i­ty direc­tor Alfon­so Cuaron indi­cat­ing his enthu­si­asm for the medi­um a few years ago already, it seems safe to expect a real 4DX pic­ture very soon. Brace yourselves.