blockbuster. Filmmaker and author Lenny Lipton called the film the giant screen industry's "signature film". Wilkman, writing for Literary Hub, listed the film in 2020 as one of the "21 Documentaries That Redefined the Genre". The Washington Post listed the film as one of the top three reasons people visited Washington, D.C. in 1980. The film has a significant history with political figures; it was viewed by government officials of the Soviet Union, Spain, United Kingdom, Egypt, Indonesia, the US, and Greece. During his first inauguration (1981), US President Ronald Reagan handed a copy of it to Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev; Reagan later attended the film's Soviet premiere in Moscow. When George H. W. Bush met Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir on April 6, 1989, they went to the NASM and watched To Fly!. Contrary to popular belief, To Fly! is not the first in IMAX, though was instrumental in introducing a larger audience of the then-new format. Many IMAX filmmakers also acknowledged the film's significance. Kieth Merrill credited To Fly! with the success of IMAX. Ron Fricke made the art film Chronos (1985) in IMAX after seeing To Fly!, and regretted not filming his more-popular film Koyaanisqatsi (1982) in IMAX; MacGillivray was the latter's Second Unit aerial photographer. Brian J. Terwilliger, who made the IMAX documentary Living in the Age of Airplanes (2015), chose to theatrically premiere it at Lockheed Martin as a tribute to To Fly! which he watched when he was in eighth grade. Christopher Nolan was inspired to make visually immersive films after watching To Fly! at the age of 14 and noticing the audience tilted their heads during the flying sequences; MacGillivray consulted Nolan on the IMAX cameras for The Dark Knight Rises (2012), whose aerial scenes were inspired by it. Astronaut Terry W. Virts, who starred in the IMAX documentary A Beautiful Planet (2016), called To Fly! one of his most-memorable childhood IMAX films. The film was also cited as a great influence on the legitimization of IMAX and the use of multi-screen scenes in IMAX films, which has been common practice ever since. In a contemporary review, major film companies were urged to "watch out", predicting To Fly! would set IMAX as a leading cinematic format. In 1995, the Library of Congress called To Fly! a pioneer of the IMAX format, thus "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" enough to be preserved by