How will you be seeing 'The Hobbit'? In 3D? IMAX? 48fps? Digital? 4K? (Page 3 of 7)

Just saw it in 2D. I absolutely LOVED it. I really didn't know what to feel about it Thursday night, but seeing it in 2D made a massive difference. It's amazing what dropping a dimension does for the movie. I've never been a fan of 3D, but I wanted to give The Hobbit a chance. I'm now officially in Christopher Nolan's camp. 3D sucks. It's more immersive, yet somehow pulls you out of the story. Maybe some day they'll come up with a better way to do it, but for now, I'll stick to 2D when I can.

Of course the movie wasn't perfect, but now I'm really excited to see the next two.

You'll have to elaborate what you mean by geographical mismatch. I always thought they did a good job in LOTR e.g. walking left (west) to right (east) and having the right mountains/rivers where they should be (knowing the map well).

Agree about the overuse of CG in creating unrealistic stunts. Poor stuntmen must be fuming - they're going to lose work.

Also, no movie generated from scratch would have 15 main characters. I'm surprised they didn't bump off a few of less well known dwarves to demonstrate vulnerability. Maybe one or two get eaten by the trolls, an Orc raiding party knocks off another couple, and they lose a few in the mines, and so on until it becomes a more manageable number.

After seeing it in 48fps 3D theatrical, I'm seeing it again tomorrow in IMAX 3D 24fps - so it'll be a good comparison.

It's the geography of the scene rather than of the literal geography; the most obvious example in FOTR was when Aragorn crashes into Lurtz and they have their little battle, which takes place in a totally different part of the forest than where Boromir is - they just rolled a few feet away but Boromir etc. are nowhere to be seen in all the wide shots. It's this way because they did film the scene in a different part of the forest. I always seem to notice things like that, and sadly I noticed it again for the Hobbit.

Similarly, it wasn't very clear where certain characters are in a scene in relation to other characters, or how one cavern was linked to another. I had this complaint whilst watching Helm's Deep in TTT, where it's never made clear how the staircase from the Deeping Wall connects to the Hornburg, it sort of looks like it goes around the back. One moment Aragorn's running up it being chased by uruks and the next he's on the main battlements with Theoden. There's apparently this whole 'front' of the battle that's completely omitted. As for the Hobbit, at one point, one of the dwarves is clearly separated but then magically appears with the others later on. The most egregrious example of poor 'mis en scene' was the warg chase. The criss-crossing of the two groups was maddeningly vague and didn't make any sense at all. 

Often, all it needs is a good master to show what's happening, but so too do we need to return to that master after numerous switch arounds and movements in close ups have taken place. I've found PJ's presentation to be a bit muddled on these adaptations. It's not so much that he's a bad story-teller, but that he probably just lacks the required shot to complete the scene's flow in the editing room - or he's got a bad editor who's taken them out.

Addendum to add - and making sense of what's happening is made extra hard in the Hobbit due to the sheer amount of crap that's happening on the screen at any one time. Someone over there needed to tell Peter Jackson to take it down a notch. One goddamn staircase moving precariously and 3-4 goblin archers was enough to make a great sequence. Here, however, we have what looks like several hundred goblins and all manner of objects falling apart... and it's too much.

Last edited by redxavier (2012-12-16 18:29:40)

I actually really disagree RedXavier. Especially with the Helm's Deep battle, I always hold that up as a gold-standard of battle editing and geography. Considering how much crap is going on, I almost always have a clear idea of where all the main characters are, what the flow of battle is, where the enemies are, etc.

Most movies with big battles really fuck this kind of thing up, see something like the 13th Warrior, which has major continuity and geography issues, or Gladiator.

In fact, the only real example that I can think of off the top of my head that did it equally well is the end battle of Saving Private Ryan, where we get a clear picture of the layout of the town, what the fall-back points are, and have a good idea of where the different squad-members are as the nazis are rolling in.

Last edited by bullet3 (2012-12-16 20:33:45)

I just saw it and liked it a lot. I think they fuckin nailed the Riddles in the Dark sequence.

And I also don't have any major complaints. I'm just happy to see another adventure in Middle Earth.

Just came back from IMAX 24fps (after first seeing it elsewhere at 48fps) and there's a world of difference with the panning shots. The sequences where (1) Randagast leads the orcs away, and (2) the breaking out of the mines escape action sequence are MUCH clearer at 48fps. Frenetic action in 24fps 3D is blurry.

Spoilers:
The humour is just as flat in both. The combination of Martin Freeman's understated (even bland) performance combined with the camera lingering on him doesn't work. Four examples: (1) the fainting scene needs to shortened - it's not funny, (2) the scene where Bilbo changes his mind in the morning about joining the adventure is done without any emotion,  (3) the reaction to 'if we win we eats it?' is too long (3) and the scene where Bilbo pulls the sword out of the dead warg and stares expressionless (forever) at the charging wargs. All four scenes need a trim or better take. They could have almost cast Sam Worthington. Perhaps blandness works better for international box office - as its not culturally specific.

Wrote this for Facebook, I'll repost it here.

I just got out of The Hobbit in 48 fps. I HATED HATED HATED it. Totally distracting, tacky, and unnecessary. There's nothing this format offers that IMAX doesn't already provide, and better. It is heinous to behold, an embarrassment to cinema. I had to walk into another screening afterwards for a few minutes just to wash the bad taste out of my mouth. An hour in I contemplated leaving altogether. It was a horrendous experience. It was like I was watching it on TV. It actually made me tune out of the movie, like I could go on Facebook and just let it play in the background. HFR 3D is an interesting idea, but in execution it is a complete and total failure. Don't waste your time or your money.

We don't.

Next! 

There you go. We're had the full gamut of reactions to HFR on DIF - from vehemently against to 'meh' to 'road to Damascus conversion'

The box office is going to be huge on this movie as all of us film nerds will be paying double or triple to see a movie that probably doesn't deserve multiple viewing on its own merits.

The action scenes were the parts that I least hated the HFR. But let's be honest, there aren't really all that many of those. This is a pretty talky movie, to the point that Jackson inserts big epic battles for really no reason. Did we really need that Azog flashback? No. That's something that should have gone in an extended edition.

I mean, I liked Azog as a character and as a foe for Thorin and the gang, I guess. I hated the CGI on him, though. His skin was too smooth, so it looked like there wasn't much detail on him. Made him look like a video game character.

I guess Azog is like the Saruman of this franchise. But is he enough of a presence to sustain it? Maybe the Necromancer will take some of that in Part II.

If there ever was a movie that exemplified "Cut Act One", this is it.   The "Unexpected Journey" doesn't even begin until 41 minutes into the flick.   Good lord.

After repeat viewings I will admit the movie's growing on me - but two dwarf musical numbers is still two too many, and Radagast better become important in movies 2 and/or 3 or I'm gonna hate him even more than I do now.