Avatar movie appears to be crashing some Japanese cinema projectors

The recently released movie Avatar: The Way of Water appears to be responsible for cinema equipment crashes in Japan. This new film uses both 48fps and 24fps, but not all projectors seem to be able to handle this without any problems.

Bloomberg reports that there was evidence of crashed film equipment in some cinemas in Japan, which was allegedly responsible for the showing of the film Avatar: The Way of Water. Moviegoers have reported abrupt cancellations and apologies from cinema staff, with tickets reportedly also being reimbursed. The relatively outdated Japanese cinema equipment is probably to blame for this issue.

Taking to Twitter, a Japanese cinema in Nagoya took to Twitter a day before the film’s release notification of the fact that the IMAX version of the film was originally planned for 48fps, but due to ‘various circumstances’ only the normal version was shown at 24fps.

Usually 24 frames per second is the standard, but in the past films with a high frame rate have been shown more often, such as The Hobbit in 48fps and Gemini Man was even shown in a maximum of 120fps in certain theaters. The new Avatar film uses 48fps for the action scenes, which should improve the sharpness and the 3D effect, but switches back to the regular 24fps for quieter scenes. The latter is probably done via merging frames.