“The geniuses at the Universal Citywalk IMAX theater appear to be screwing up the projection for Avatar in a major way,” tech guy Al Magliochetti has allegedly twittered. (Likely but unverified — I’ve been trying to find his Twitter handle.) “I’m trying to get them to fix it but until I post otherwise I would suggest seeing Avatar elsewhere.”

“A 3D frame is made up of two images, a left and a right,” he explains. “Polarizing filters are used on the projector along with convergence lenses to merge both images into one and then filter it so that each of the two images is sent to the appropriate eye and canceled out by the other.

“The goobs, however, appear to be projecting the film one half frame out of sync, which would normally invert the 3D and make it backwards (background objects appearing closer). And yet to fix that screwup they also inverted the polarizers, meaning that whenever anything is static or slow moving the 3D looks fine, but the minute any fast action occurs the 3D effect collapses and the whole film flattens out until things slow down again.

“This isn’t something that could be threaded incorrectly so I’m presuming it’s been incorrect since the opening last week, and thereby giving several thousand viewers several thousand headaches. The teenage ‘manager’ offered me passes to shut me up but refused to give me any names of people to contact, so this could get interesting.”

If anyone has experienced any projection problems of the 3D IMAX Avatar at Universal Citywalk, please advise.