'Dark Knight Rises' Features More Than An Hour Of IMAX Footage

Here's an amateur hypothesis, motivated by nothing but conjecture and heresy: if you see "The Dark Knight Rises" once, you'll probably see it again. Realistically speaking, you'll probably see it another time after that. You may consider, then, heading to an IMAX theater for one of those screenings, as "Rises" will contain more than an hour of IMAX footage. That's the most ever for a Hollywood feature, a decision that was motivated by director Christopher Nolan's appreciation for the format.

"I remember looking at the audience every time a helicopter banked, and everyone was leaning slightly to the side," Nolan told the Wall Street Journal about watching IMAX movies as a kid. "I had never seen an audience so immersed in a film."

The Journal notes that most feature films that screen in IMAX are converted to the format in post-production. By contrast, "Rises" was specifically filmed with IMAX cameras. Last week, Nolan explained why.

"The operatic quality of 'The Dark Knight' and 'The Dark Knight Rises' felt very well suited to IMAX's larger canvas," he said. "So it's different depending on what film you want to do... We didn't shoot IMAX for 'Inception' because we were trying to portray the reality of dreams rather than their extraordinary nature, so we used a handheld camera and shot it in a more spontaneous way."

With that in mind, here's another amateur hypothesis: The IMAX scenes in "Rises" will be the grandest ones, the most explosion-y, the biggest examples of showmanship that Nolan could muster for his Bat-finale. Either that, or a really dramatic shot of Michael Caine cooking dinner. "The Dark Knight Rises" is out on July 20.

Tell us what you think of the news in the comments section or hit us up on Twitter!