NORWALK, CT – If you’re impressed by the sharks in The Maritime Aquarium at Norwalk, wait until you see – awesomely, in IMAX – creatures that ruled the seas long before the first modern shark.
Opening Fri., Jan. 13, the IMAX movie “Sea Rex: Journey to a Prehistoric World” will take Norwalk audiences back 200 million years to an ancient underwater world filled with enormous marine reptiles … including “the T-rex of the seas.”
“Sea Rex” will play at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. daily in Connecticut’s largest IMAX theater, with a screen that’s six stories high.
“The film is a great family-friendly way to visit a time on Earth when the largest, baddest creatures lived in the sea, not on land,” said Chris Loynd, the Aquarium’s marketing director. “Kids love dinosaurs, and we think they’ll be equally impressed by the creatures that ruled the water; some of them millions of years before Stegosaurus or Triceratops or Tyrannosaurus rex. Especially when they see them come to life life-sized in IMAX.”
IMAX is the world’s largest film format. Outstanding image clarity and the enormous screen size, combined with The Maritime Aquarium’s 12,000-watt surround-sound audio system, results in an immersive thrill that is so unique that it’s been trademarked: “the IMAX Experience®.”
“Sea Rex: Journey to a Prehistoric World” launches its exploration by joining up with an imaginative young woman named Julie as she visits a modern-day museum. She encounters the friendly ghost of Georges Cuvier, a 19th-century French scientist considered to be the father of vertebrate paleontology.
Cuvier becomes Julie’s – and the audience’s – guide through a catalog of marine reptiles from the Mesozoic era, all shown in lifelike action via striking computer-generated imagery and also shown as large as life on the huge IMAX screen. The animals aren’t as familiar as dinosaurs but are no less impressive. There’s the powerful Liopleurodon, the long-necked Elasmosaurus, the "eye-lizard" Ophthalmosaurus, the ferocious Prognathodon, and the gigantic 75-foot Shonisaurus.
The Sarasota Herald-Tribune said, “It’s fascinating stuff whether you’re a science buff or not, and rookie directors Ronan Chapalain and Pascal Vuong, who co-wrote the script with Richard Dowlearn, smartly concentrate on the shapes and sizes of the various creatures, and what they ate – which was often each other.”
“Sea Rex” brings paleontology to life – and it is current science from an impressive global roster of researchers who all appear in the film. Lead scientific advisor for the film was Dr. Nathalie Bardet of Paris’ National Museum of Natural History.
“This film is very much my childhood dreams come true,” Bardet said. “I get to see these marine reptiles that I’ve studied for years come to life right before my eyes in a way I was never able to experience before. And they are so incredibly realistic!”
Audiences also hear from Dr. Olivier C. Rieppel, Rowe Family Curator at the Field Museum in Chicago; Dr. Ryosuke Motani, professor at the University of California, Davis; Dr. Zulma Gasparini, paleontologist at Argentina’s La Plata Museum; and Dr. Benjamin Kear, paleontologist at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia.
“Sea Rex: Journey to a Prehistoric World” is 41 minutes long. It stars Chloe Hollings as Julie and Richard Rider as Georges Cuvier.
Tickets for “Sea Rex” are $9 for adults, $8 for seniors 65+ and $6.50 for children 2-12. To include a visit into The Maritime Aquarium with “Sea Rex,” tickets are $19.45 for adults, $17.95 for seniors and $14.45 for children 2-12.
“Sea Rex” will play daily Jan. 13-April 20, along with “Search for the Great Sharks” at 1 & 3 p.m. daily and “Born to Be Wild” at noon daily.
Learn more, view the “Sea Rex” film trailer or reserve tickets at www.maritimeaquarium.org. Or call (203) 852-0700.