The Dark Knight Rises Advanced tickets

If you want to see The Dark Knight Rises on opening weekend, in full IMAX grandeur, you need to get your ticket well in advanced – and the way things are looking, even five weeks in advanced may not be enough.

Advanced tickets for The Dark Knight Rises are now on sale over at Fandango, and they are selling like hot cakes. If you are were hoping to get tickets to a midnight screening of TDKR on opening night, you may want to readjust your expectations. Shows in major metropolitan areas have been selling out left and right. If you were hoping to get a ticket for an IMAX show in general – again, you may want to adjust expectations, because if you are still reading this instead of clicking that Fandango link and ordering, you may find yourself having to wait a few days for a seat. Planning a big group outing for the movie? Better act even faster.

Here in New York, midnight shows are largely sold at the major IMAX theaters; I expect some of the second-tier theaters will sell out as these “Get your advanced tickets now!” articles and ads start to circulate the Web. In fact, the volume of sales have been so strong (exact stats are still forthcoming) that Fandango users have reported server crashes and/or errors as they try to buy. If you experience something similar, don’t be daunted: just refresh and try again until you either secure tickets or are met with a “sold out” notice.

Chris Nolan filmed over an hour of Dark Knight Rises using IMAX cameras. For those who don’t remember, a few scenes in The Dark Knight (the opening heist, the hospital explosion, exterior shots of Gotham City and Hong Kong) were also filmed in “true IMAX,” and the results were pretty spectacular. You may be thinking to yourself that going to see TDKR in any theater that boasts an IMAX screen is good enough – but that’s not the case.

There are two types of IMAX screens: digital IMAX and 70mm IMAX. While digital is indeed impressive, you aren’t really getting “the full” IMAX experience – especially the one Chris Nolan intended – without that 70mm IMAX theater. 70mm is the only way you will be able to see everything that Nolan shot on IMAX cams.