The Irvine Spectrum Center has been renovating their theater for several months, and we’d say the result is pretty worth the wait. Goodbye flimsy plastic 3D goggles: the new Regal Edwards Cinema 50D movie theater experience is unlike any other 1D, 2D, 16D, XD, you name it.

As soon as the theater opened, we got front-row seats to see the blockbuster hit “Tarantula Man: A Long Distance From My Beloved Abode” (2019) starring Ham Tolland. We were quickly escorted to our seats, complete with fivepoint harness seat belts and straps for every part of the body. Custom-made helmets included a large black forehead band with thick wires and metal pincers that held our eyelids open for the whole movie. At the start of the movie, a single strand of silk descended from the ceiling and latched onto each audience member’s seats with immaculate accuracy and proceeded to suspend us with our feet in the air for two hours straight, hanging as the seats jolted up and down. Our perspective of the movie completely shifted as we watched the whole film upside down. 

Special effects were so realistic that during the battle against the fire elemental, the aisles and walls spontaneously burst into flames (which probably explains why construction took so long, with them having to rebuild the theater each time the movie showcased explosive effects.)

Moreover, the effects were integrated masterfully with the overall plot of the movie. We almost jumped from our seats (but were quickly restrained by the seatbelts) when the villain, Tintin Beck, was revealed. During his classic villain monologue, staff members approached individual seats to directly whisper the monologue in each audience member’s ear. The ASMR whispering breath made it seem like Beck was right behind us. Maybe he was. The 50D experience is almost as if people were acting in real life on a stage-like platform. It’s such an amazingly unprecedented modern concept! It’s definitely worth the low price of a $20,000 ticket. Even though some members of the audience had to be carried out and excess fires extinguished, we strongly recommend the 50D cinema experience to everyone who’s in for some casual fun.