GREAT WHITE SHARK 3D

Featuring: Frederic Buyle, William Winram, Mike Rutzen, Dr Chris Lowe and Dr Mauricio Hoyos Padilla.
Directors: Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas.

Rating: 4/5

Having demonised the Great White Shark with the blockbuster horror film Jaws, it seems only fair that cinema should also beatify the ocean’s alpha predator. Directors Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas achieve that goal with a spiritual grace in the latest nature-themed IMAX feature, Great White Shark 3D.

Employing the large-screen format to convey the majesty of the king of the underwater beasts, the long-time collaborators re-apply the same sense of scale and mega-screen framing they perfected on the 2012 IMAX feature The Last Reef to their pro-protection advocacy project. Utilising on-screen contributors to capture cage-free footage of man at one with the most unjustly maligned creature of the ocean, the production paints a loving portrait of an animal that traditionally strikes fear into the hearts of instinctively cowardly men.

Based upon the film’s message, one concludes that modern man need treat the Great White Shark with a mixture of awe, respect and fear. Utilising footage captured from as far afield as Mexico, South Africa, Los Angeles and New Zealand, the production solidifies modern conjecture that the Great White Shark is not particularly enamoured with human flesh (as humorously pointed out in the film, you are more likely to die driving to the beach than be eaten by a shark at the beach).

The most stunning images provided by Cresswell and McNicholas are the scenes filmed in the waters off Guadalupe Island, on the Western Coast of Baja, Mexico. They feature a trio of divers with a school of Great White Sharks, administering tracking tags at close range. The scenes depict the mutual respect of the land-based alpha species and their aquatic equivalent and capture an understanding that makes for breathtaking factual filmmaking.

The obligatory 3D application is not always necessary. Tellingly, the most vivid use of the format is in capturing the seals that provide the shark’s primary food source and the predators themselves in fierce, breaching attack mode, leaping from the briny deep in displays of their predatory prowess that only play into mankind’s fear of the sea’s savagery. When filmed emerging from a background of various blue hues, the Great White Shark defies definition or dimension; this is a creature of the ocean, an environment symbolic of its power and fragility.

Of all the IMAX features that have conveyed the complexity and importance of the natural world’s hierarchy, Great White Shark 3D is arguably the most crucial. Man’s struggle with fellow top-tier life forms will ultimately define our future; Cresswell and Nicholas’ film clarifies that via stunning images and profound insight.