I saw it! It's only in 15 IMAX theaters in the U.S./Canada?

60' x 80'? I think you meant to say 80x60, because horizontal is first, then vertical.

Even then, that's a 1.33:1 or 4:3 aspect ratio. The "true real IMAX" aspect ratio is a hair wider/vertically shorter at 1.43:1. perhaps there was a sliver of "black bars" above and below the 1.43:1 image (probably not noticeable in a darkened theater).

I didn't have to reserve seats, but there were like at least fifteen or so other people there on that Saturday morning, including something like half a dozen kids. I didn't count exactly. Everyone herded out the one exit door and I wanted to look watch the credits (even though the three minutes of credits had no visuals), so I didn't get a chance to encounter anyone except for brief assessments by one family and everyone else dispersed real quickly.

So, what would motivate people to take their kids to this? It is rated G, and is... sort of a spectacle, (but not as much so in this day and age of entertainment regularly looking cutting-edge and being cutting-edge in one sense or another)

It only grosses 55 grand in it's opening weekend, so there's only 5,000 or so people who have seen this movie, plus maybe another 5,000 when boxofficemojo.com lists how much it grossed more recently.

Yeah, this is the second IMAX documentary that I have ever seen. The first being the Louis and Clark one from apparently 2002 at the Omnitheater at the Science Museum of Minnesota. I forgot that not all IMAXes are OMNIMAXes with the curved enveloping screens.

So, that combined with me maybe embellishing how well I remembered it as an eleven-year-old (I don't really remember anything about the Louis and Clark 40-something-minute movie itself besides the bigness of the screen and landscapes), combined with me also seeing Sully the month before on that same IMAX screen and knowing that it just seemed kinda big, adds up to me really not being overwhelmed by this screen or projection quality.

But I am a fan of The Tree of Life, from watching it just one time (so far, I reckon it deserves a rewatch and I often think of it as my favorite 2011 release even tho I didn't watch it in 2011) in probably the first half of 2015. And I haven't seen any other Terrence Malick movies.

I don't think that most of the people in the theater were established fans of that director. He has the weirdest time gaps of making and releasing movies ever.

Yes, it at least deserves a Blu-Ray release, and also a 4K Ultra HD disc release. With the aspect ratio intact. Preferably within several months of whenever it stops showing at IMAX theaters. No more than a year.

And have it be the aspect ratio that is originally intended, without cropping out stuff at the top and bottom, even if it is just "empty sky" in scenes showing a lot of the open sky being in frame, or "just more ocean". The framing of the movie was meant to show all that stuff.

So far a lot of these IMAX home releases have been at 1.78:1 which is the exact aspect ratio of 16:9 displays.