Unimpressive "Mysteries of the Great Lakes" at the Omnitheater

by Brian Moen, East-Lake.net • 11/10/08 •

Not realizing until we heard the song twice this morning that today was the anniversary of the Edmund Fitzgerald sinking, Tricia and I went to the Science Museum of Minnesota for the Omnitheater showing of Mysteries of the Great Lakes yesterday afternoon.

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I love the Great Lakes and really enjoy learning about them so I was quite looking forward to this, thinking that it would have some amazing video of flying over the trees, along the shore, and crashing into the waves like we were a giant ship. Video like that is what makes movies at an IMAX screen so exiting—that queasy feeling you get from the large image surrounding you is so exciting and different.

Unfortunately, Mysteries of the Great Lakes had very little of this. The opening minutes had clips of Niagara Falls, Mackinac Bridge, and some shoreline along the Canadian coast. But that was about it. Most of the movie was about a biologist in Wisconsin that was trying to solve the sturgeon mystery of the Great Lakes: how there are 99% less lake sturgeon then there were just 100 years ago. It was a very interesting story, but not something that benefited from being on the large screen.

The movie also told the story of how the Great Lakes were created, and the computer graphics they used to show this was very impressive and looked great on the large screen, but even this was fairly short.

Mysteries of the Great Lakes was 45 minutes long and we left very unsatisfied and unimpressed. Partly because our expectations were so high, but also because of what we remembered most IMAX movies to be like. The overall story was great and very interesting, but I would have rather just watched it at home on PBS, rather than pay $15 for the two of us to see it on the big screen.

Maybe we should have just driven up to Split Rock Lighthouse for the Beacon Lighting and Commemoration of the Sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald.