There are certain albums that change music. There are certain films that bend cinema. And then there’s Tommy, the rare beast that did both.
If you’re arguing about The Who’s greatest achievement, you’re spoilt for choice. Who’s Next is thunderous. Live At Leeds is feral. Quadrophenia is layered and ambitious enough to keep dissertations alive for decades. But Tommy? Tommy was different. It wasn’t just a collection of songs. It was a narrative, a risk, a declaration.
Released in 1969, Pete Townshend’s rock opera didn’t flirt with the idea of storytelling like others had done. It went all in. Trauma. Isolation. Messianic fame. Pinball. The lot. It was bold enough to ask audiences to follow a character through silence, blindness and spiritual chaos – and people did.
Translating that to film could have been a disaster. A mess. A well-intentioned curiosity that lived in footnotes. Instead, Ken Russell did what Ken Russell did best: he turned the dial up and refused to apologise.
His 1975 adaptation of Tommy wasn’t subtle. It wasn’t restrained. It was maximalist, unhinged and visually overwhelming in the exact right way. Roger Daltrey took the title role and committed completely, while the supporting cast read like a fever dream of 1970s iconography – Oliver Reed, Ann-Margret, Elton John, Eric Clapton, Jack Nicholson, Robert Powell and Tina Turner all orbiting the story like volatile planets.
It shouldn’t have worked. It absolutely did.
Now, fifty years on, Tommy is returning where it arguably belongs: the biggest screen possible. For two days only, March 17 and 18, 2026, the film will screen in IMAX cinemas across the UK.
And this matters.
Russell’s vision was never meant to be consumed casually. It’s sensory overload by design. The colours are aggressive. The performances are theatrical to the point of delirium. The music doesn’t just accompany the images, it crashes through them. Watching it on a laptop or a standard television has always felt like shrinking something that was built to tower over you.
IMAX restores the scale. The intensity. The sheer audacity.
Fifty years later, Tommy still feels like a swing that could have missed entirely. Instead, it connected. Not neatly. Not quietly. But emphatically.
Some anniversaries feel like nostalgia exercises. This one feels like a reminder. Of ambition. Of risk. Of a band and a filmmaker deciding that “good enough” was nowhere near enough.
See it. Feel it.
And maybe, just maybe, play a mean game of pinball afterwards.
