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| IRON MAN 3 and the 4DX advertising |
“So, what is 4DX?” I hear you ask. Well, have you ever been to Disneyland and gone to the Honey I Shrunk the Kids attraction, or the Terminator attraction at Universal Studios? 4DX is kind of like that. If you haven’t been to these places then 4DX is an interactive movie experience.
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| 4DX! |
Not only is the film in 3D but the seats that you sit on are attached to hydraulics that move them during the movie. So, for example, during a car chase the seats will move left and ride and bump up and down in reaction to what is going on on the screen. 4DX is not just limited to moving seats though. In the back of the seat in front of you and in your own seats headrest there are air jets. These blast air passed you head or in to your face to simulate moving quickly or objects that are passing by. Alongside the air jets are water jets that, surprise surprise, squirt a small spray of water at you.
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| The screen IRON MAN 3 was shown in |
The side walls of the cinema have extra strobe lighting attached that add extra atmosphere during action scenes by flashing away with explosions etc. Also included in the experience but not used much during Iron Man 3 were smoke and smell machines.
I had decided to pre-book my tickets as I figured it would be a busy event and I’m glad I did as when we arrived the showing had already sold out. Using a QR-code that had been sent to my phone we easily retrieved our tickets. The price of ¥2,800 is not cheap by anyone’s imagination but when tickets for normal 3D movies here cost between ¥2,000 and ¥2,300 then the little extra for the 4DX experience didn’t seem that bad. We also got a free drink and popcorn thrown in. Unfortunately, for obvious reasons you weren’t allowed to eat or drink whilst watching the movie so we munched through them whilst we waited to go into the screen.
The screen wasn’t huge and only held around 100 people but that was expected as it is quite a niche thing at the moment. There was only 4 blocks of seats with 7 rows in each block. Each row was made up of 4 seats that sat on a hydraulic system. The seats were very comfortable and there was plenty of room. Because of the hydraulics there were much higher than normal seats and that felt a little odd to start with but soon gotten used to.
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| The 4DX seats |
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| Hydraulics under the seats |
The 3D glasses provided were nice and light and you were free to take them home with you.
Soon the lights dropped and the trailers started and then we got the notice to put on our 3D glasses.
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| 3D glasses |
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| They were very comfortable |
The next clip shown was devised as an introduction to the 4DX experience, and what an introduction! First a car appeared on the screen being chased by a police car. Then a man sat in a cinema-style chair appeared, following the two cars. When this happened the seats we were sat in suddenly lurched forward and in unison, as I had a great view of it from the back row, everyone in the cinema threw out their hands and grabbed onto their seat arms.
This was followed my many comments of “waaaah” and “sugoi!”.
Now we were set for the movie.
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| Our view of the screen |
To be honest, I really had no idea how well 4DX was going to work for a full length movie. I can imagine for a short, say 15 minute piece it would be great, but Iron Man 3 is a 2 hour long movie and I had wondered whether the novelty would wear off quickly.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. I absolutely LOVED it! The first action scene was just epic; bullets firing passed your head, water splashing your face, explosions filling the room with light and your seats going crazy every time something exploded or someone got punch/shot/hurt/killed. I found myself, during the more quite scenes really hoping that something was about to blow up just to get my pulse rate rising again.
I won’t be reviewing the movie itself here. I’ll leave that to the professionals but I will say that I really enjoyed it and felt that the 4DX really added to the whole experience immensely.
I went with my wife and father-in-law and we were all physically tired after the show, surprised at how much it took out of you.
I am very excited to see where they are going to go with this and would love to see something like the new Fast and Furious (the car chase scenes would be amazing!) or The Expendables 3 in 4DX.
Overall I would definitely recommend checking this out if you can. I would guess that only action movies are going to be paired with the 4DX experience and if you like action movies you are going to LOVE 4DX
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