'I try to be as immersive as I can!' Why Angel Manuel Sotoshot Blue Beetle in Imax

Angel Manuel Soto shot 'Blue Beetle' in IMAX because he likes his movies to be as "immersive" as possible.

The 40-year-old director a big fan of the firm that manufactures high-resolution lenses, film codecs, projectors, and movie theater equipment and decided to utilise it for the production of the upcoming DC movie so cinema audiences could feel a "physical connection" to it.

He told Collider: "IMAX is the s***. It’s the immersive aspect of it. I try to be as immersive as I can, with the projects that I do. The scope of IMAX allowed you to be swallowed whole into the frame. My relationship with cinema is very spiritual, and it almost feels like you can have a physical connection to it. In the same way that we try our best to bring the audience in and come into this dance, with the story and with the characters, IMAX just advances it a little further. It feels like you’re dancing with your partner, instead of just being alone in a room with it."

The action movie -which stars Xolo Maridueña as a teenager who gains superpowers - was initially meant to be a TV project for streaming service HBO Max but Angel went on to explain that once work on the script had begun, the studio noticed that the project had "potential" for a cinematic release.

He said: " That is true, at the beginning of it. Once we started writing the script and I started to create concept art, the studio allowed me to run free in my creativity. Unbeknownst to them and to me, at the time, they were able to see the promise of how we pictured a city, and how we really wanted the city to be, and the bigger realm of this cultural zeitgeist and the impact that this can have culturally, but also in the superhero genre, to try something different. We hoped that people will see it for what it is, which is that it has a lot of love and a lot of heart, and the studio felt like it had the potential to be theatrical.

"The stories that we’re telling and the topics that we’re touching upon, even though it’s very grounded, we’re picturing this as the first act of a big saga. We really wanted to make the things that sometimes appear to be small, due to clouding of privilege, actually be worse than an alien invasion to some people. It was about translating that into a movie where a superhero can actually be a superhero, and it doesn’t really have to be about saving the planet from this alien invasion, but it can actually be something that we can relate to, which for some of us is bigger than life. The studio saw the potential in that."

'Blue Beetle' is due for release on 18 August 2023.