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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Topic: The Hobbit
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David Buckley
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 525
From: Oxford, N. Canterbury, New Zealand
Registered: Aug 2004
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posted 12-15-2012 12:24 PM
I saw Hobbit last night (RealD HFR).
Background: I've not seen any of the LoTR movies, never read anything by Tolkien, have no middle earth tendencies. Just went along to see what HFR looked like. Expecting the worst, based on comments here and elsewhere.
But, as a movie-going experience, I was blown away.
Knowing nothing of the story, I was hooked. Three hours that seemed to pass in a flash.
The movie just looked lovely. Breathtaking.
The biggest surprise was that it actually had humour in there; that I was not expecting.
Worth every cent of the admission. Though I well overdid the sweeties at concessions, thinking I'd be muching my way non-stop through boredom, failing to finish the first bag...
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Kurt Zupin
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 989
From: Maricopa, Arizona
Registered: Oct 2004
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posted 12-16-2012 01:37 AM
I saw this last Monday when I did the IMAX build and screened it after. I waited until I had seen it again before posting my review just to make sure sleep deprivation didn't have any effect on my thoughts.
While I'm not a huge fan of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I did enjoy them. Some how in my life I've never seen the Animated Hobbit feature nor read the book. I went into this just knowing what I had heard from people for the past year or so and watching the Production diaries that PJ puts out. While I enjoyed the film, the one time viewing was all I'd need. As already mentioned, the first hour takes forever, however this was by far my favorite part of the movie. Martin Freeman is inspired casting for Bilbo, he plays the character with a quirk and charm that no many could of pulled off. Elijah Wood did not do this with Frodo, he felt wooden where Martin feels like the character he is portraying. I've always rather enjoyed the Shire and liked the scenes that took place there this time around.
Richard Armitage is great, I really enjoyed the BBC Robin Hood series where he portrayed Guy Gisborne. Some of the other Dwarfs are great, but most are just filler. From what I'm told they will all get their own chance to shine in the sequels.
The IMAX print for the first hour or so has some very washed out/over saturated scenes. I'm not sure if this from the scenes needing to be a little brighter for Digital release due to the lack of light out put but it makes some of the blacks gray and some of the greens almost neon green. Seems the color correction gets fixed after they hit Rivendale (Sure that's not right)
I've only seen about 20 minutes of the HFR and I'm on the fence, some instances it looked good, other's I was waiting to hear Benny Hill music play while they were moving. I'll need to sit down and watch it in the next couple months to get a full idea of it.
Overall 3.25/5 ![[thumbsup]](graemlins/thumbsup.gif)
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Marcel Birgelen
Film God
Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012
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posted 12-17-2012 09:12 AM
My primary interest wasn't in the movie itself. I guess regarding the story, I got exactly what I expected. So, I withheld judgement until I had seen this in both 24 and 48 fps. I've seen this 2.5 times now...
The first time was in 3D HFR using Dolby3D. This presentation started off on the wrong foot: First they moved us from one of their biggest houses to a smaller one. The bigger house has a dual Barco projector setup and I guess that one couldn't handle HFR (yet). The 3D trailers in front of the main feature were in plain 24 FPS off course, but the color wheel timing was off: All 3D trailers had their left and right frames mixed with a huge dose of flicker. When the HFR kicked in, it took about 5 seconds for the projector to adjust: The first seconds of the WB logo were messed up. All in all, it left a very amateurish first impression.
The second time was in "24 FPS Dolby3D" in the same theater, essentially using the same gear and comparable screen size. This way I had the best comparison between the HFR and non-HFR version.
The last time was in HFR 3D using RealD. This screening was much darker and had there was a huge amount of ghosting present. The transition between 24 FPS and 48 FPS was entirely smooth although. I didn't watch this presentation until the end, because frankly, I had my fair share of The Hobbit already...
In both Dolby3D presentations (HFR and 24 fps), the picture looked extremely vivid and sharp. Maybe even a bit too realistic, especially for a fantasy movie. The fact that you're looking at just a 2K picture was merely revealed by the subtitles and credits in this case.
Having seen both the HFR and normal 3D version, I can say that much of the "TV/documentary/soap opera" look is also present in the normal (3D) version. Actually, the darker RealD presentation in HFR I've watched looked more "cinematic" than the brighter normal 3D projection. The 24 fps version doesn't suffer from the "fast forward/Benny Hill" look, it is obvious that they've added extra motion blur in post here. I guess the "fast forward look" is the result of the motion blur in those scenes not being adjusted to our own vision, it probably exceeds our own vision and thus is perceived as being sped-up.
The HFR is noticable from the very first seconds. Even the Warner Brothers, New Line Cinema and MGM logos look much more fluently animated in HFR. Also, there is no judder visible in any of the exorbitant camera moves. Actually, you can now even see unstable camera moves in several shots, that would otherwise be perceived as judder or would've been almost unnoticed due to the motion blur.
Personally, I think HFR is a step forward in creating more realism and a better cinema experience overall. But it is a tool that needs to be used with great care. Additionally, I guess we still need to learn how to adjust shutter speed during recording and how to apply motion blur in post production, especially for close-ups, to avoid this "fast forward" effect in future releases.
Many people are claiming that the CGI in this movie is obvious and looks fake. Well, I watched pieces of the "old" trilogy on BluRay recently and those effects looked much more fake and "green-screeny" than the ones in The Hobbit. I guess it is often difficult to say how things from fantasy movies would look in real life... Gollum, for example, looks far more CGI in LOTR than in The Hobbit.
In my opinion, most of the movie looks great and sometimes even breathtaking. It's got all the ingredients of a real movie epic, just the story falls flat.
I've read the original LotR novels about 15 years ago and I liked most of the original movie trilogy. It probably was already stretched to the maximum bearability back then, but they had about 1300 pages worth of material. Although I've never read The Hobbit, I fully agree with the critics when they say that creating a fully blown trilogy out of 250-300 pages worth of material is really pushing it, probably right over the edge. As a whole, I got what I expected and story-wise, and I didn't expect very much.
I don't know how that neat "Spoiler" tag works, so I do it this way:
Spoiler alert below this invisible line:
quote:
I also can't get over the fact that they are traveling on foot probably hundreds of miles, and yet it wasn't until everyone gets trapped into a burning tree leaning over a cliff (that they ignite) does the wizard get the idea to tell a butterfly to go bring some big birds to carry them away so they don't have to walk the last hundred miles.
That was one of my points too, but that's also a problem in the last LotR part, isn't it? They also got those big birds (Eagles if I remember correctly) there. So why couldn't they fly right into Mordor and drop the ring right in the volcano, or at least drop Frodo and gang right at the entrance of Mount Doom?
I guess those plot holes are quite omnipresent in most of those fantasy movies (and novels alike), especially those involving wizards. Sometimes you ask yourself why nobody used magic trick #24 a few minutes earlier and saved the day and maybe even the movie... The Deus ex machina is always around the corner in those kind of stories.
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