The Hobbit Trilogy

[James Ape]

4d feels like cinema jumping the shark. Who needs a moving chair, flashing lights ,wind blowing and water spraying in your face to make their film better? It's totally distracting from the movie.

[RIKT]

Did you not see the CGI in 3D HFR? Because unlike SFR you can actually see the CGI.

And therein lies the problem I think. I think I did 'see' the CGI more in HFR. I also saw the sets, the lighting and the costumes more in HFR too (particularly the lighting, it looked dreadful in HFR in a way that it didn't at all when I watched the film again at 24fps on Blu-ray). In fact I saw them that much that it was to the detriment of me getting caught up in the story and the film in general.

Call me a Luddite or whatever, but thousands upon thousands of amazing films have been made in the last hundred years or so years of narrative cinema, a huge percentage of which artistically The Hobbit isn't fit to lick the boots of. Show me something in the future where the positives of HFR outweigh the negatives and I'll happily listen though.

[PopeSmokesDope]

I love HFR... It doesn't make it look fake, it makes it look like a play, real and believable.

Enjoyed the film, but blatantly padded out. Should have stuck with 2 films.

[macosx]

That's why I hated it - it looked like a play.

People pretending to be fictitious figures instead of believable world.

[PaB]

If what you're saying is true and audience apathy / dislike of HFR is causing it to die a death then as far as I'm concerned that's great news. :-)

Why do you care if you can still watch it in 24fps?

[Spacehost]

The only reason 24fps is the standard is because it was the slowest possible speed you could film moving images without a large number of the audience noticing the stutter and therefore the cheapest that studios could get away with. It was fine for relatively stationary shots in early cinema but it puts absurd limits on basic things these days, like how fast you can pan across a landscape shot without it degenerating into a squishy mess. It's not going to magically make a tedious mess like the Hobbit movies fun to watch but when you can actually pan a camera twice as fast that's a pretty big deal.

[makkuwata]

I kept getting distracted by Bard looking so much like a more rugged version of Orlando from the Pirates movies. Took a beat to convince myself it wasn't actually him!

[Sprite Machine]

How anyone could watch that and not be blown away is absurd to me. The fact that it seems everybody hates it bar me, is tragic... although only for me.

Add me to the "loving the HFR" crew. Do we have a crew? We should have a crew.

I like to see new things at the cinema, and the HFR 3D in these films is absolutely stunning. I'd forgotten just how good it looked last year, but this reminded me, and secured my booking for next year in the same format. Panning shots look superb, everything is crisp and smooth and life-like. Seeing the sort of framerate you'd normally only get on a TV soap or news report, only with super-awesome visual effects and action, is just incredible. It looks phenomenal. Really impressed by the 3D too, it's very immersive.

I'm a bit baffled by people saying it looks worse. It's the same but smoother, how can that possibly look worse?!

Anyway, I had a few issues with the film, such as the Beorn part being shorter than I'd like, the excessive need for action in every sequence and the expansion of the book to the point where they're just making shit up that never happened... but I guess that's to be expected. I also felt Bilbo didn't have much a character arc in this. He's already "found his courage", so now he just does uncharacteristically brave things all the time.

Overall, however, I found it a bit more exciting and action-packed film than the first film, which I also enjoyed. I don't think they're as timeless as the Lord of the Rings, and they don't have an identity of their own, but they're an enjoyable return to Middle Earth.

The conclusion, then, will encompass (book spoilers):

Smaug's attack on Lake Town, Bard killing him with his Magic Arrow of Significance, the dwarves returning from the mountain, the battle of five armies, Gandalf (and other Wizards?) fighting the Necromancer and sending him packing, and then finally Bilbo returning home with his riches, a changed Hobbit.

Should be plenty of material. Expect five endings again, probably.

[Mr Cochese]

I kept getting distracted by Bard looking so much like a more rugged version of Orlando from the Pirates movies. Took a beat to convince myself it wasn't actually him!

That really bothered me in the trailers too. Of course, turns out it was Welsh bloke from the Fast And The Furious 6, but it's still a bit uncanny.

[DocG]

GNNNNNARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHHH! NONONONONONO!!!!

...

So thanks to people whining about the new technology it looks like HFR and crystal clear CGI movement will die a death. The multiplexes have lost faith.

Reality check: you're posting on the Internet to tell people that their subjective opinions are somehow objectively wrong. How's that working out for you?

[Mr Cochese]

I liked this film much better than the last one. It felt much less like a hollow retread of stuff we'd already seen in Lord Of The Rings, thanks mostly to finally visiting places that we hadn't already in those films. There were still a few bits though that were played massively like bits from the old trilogy that really didn't have to be, like a character making a load noise while trying to sneak around, which was very similar to the scene in Moria, or

Gandalf's confrontation with Sauron, in which he loses at sorcery and is pinned to the top of a tower. Also, great plan, fucknose.

It was also really funny how unsubtle all the references were to the great big

Chekov's Ballista

. I can't guess what's going to happen there.

[Sidewaysbob]

I thought it was ace and so did my 9 year old son.

We can't wait for the final film.

[Mr Cochese]

Also, I'm going to have to start taking a gun to the cinema if overseas students are really going to insist on using the middle rows of the cinema to hold their fucking AGM.

[Treble]

Add me to the "loving the HFR" crew. Do we have a crew? We should have a crew.


The conclusion, then, will encompass (book spoilers):

Smaug's attack on Lake Town, Bard killing him with his Magic Arrow of Significance, the dwarves returning from the mountain, the battle of five armies, Gandalf (and other Wizards?) fighting the Necromancer and sending him packing, and then finally Bilbo returning home with his riches, a changed Hobbit.

Should be plenty of material. Expect five endings again, probably.

To answer a point in your spoiler:

There are only five proper 'Wizards' named in all of Tolkein's books: Saruman (the white), Gandalf (the grey), Radagast (the Brown) and Alatar and Pallando (the blue wizards). The latter two never appear bar a brief mention.

Wizards (as opposed to any other type of magic user, like sorcerer, necromancer, demon etc.) are 'Maiar'; part of a pantheon of beings in the Tolkien books roughly equivalent to angels.

I'm going from memory, but it's a polytheistic mix: you have Iluvatar who made the world, the Ainur who he made as co-creators: a mix of Valar (Arcangels) and Maia (angels).

They're meant to guide and instruct rather than interfere too much (hence Gandalf's elliptical phrasing and nudges and winks) although they will use their power directly against evil, especially beings of their race (the Balrog is also of the Maiar). Their corporeal forms can be killed but the Maiar (like the Valar) are immortal and often reincorporated.

TL;DR, you can blame Tolkein for 'classes' in RPGs

[Wiper]

Reality check: you're posting on the Internet to tell people that their subjective opinions are somehow objectively wrong. How's that working out for you?

Well, he's actually posting to complain about the fact that something he likes might never take off because of other people not liking it, which is an understandable thing to be upset about.

Of course, beyond that there's the bit where he is right that HFR is objectively better, as it simply offering more freedom to film makers in terms of camera motion while having no negative affect aside from the fact that people currently associate the technique with low-budget dramas (and now a particularly stagey series of films), which is purely a fault of association, not of the technology. If the technology becomes more pervasive, that association will quickly subside, and then there would be no drawbacks.

It's not a compromised gimmick like 3D, where there are actual technical downsides (i.e. having to wear glasses, literally not working for everyone, reduction of colour saturation), it's simply a superior technology which people are struggling with because they're used to an older technique, and have previously only encountered this technology in straight-to-tv productions. It's like people decrying the introduction of sound to films (which, of course, they did), or the move to colour film (which, of course, they did), or the move from vinyl to CD (yep), or the gradual increasing of resolutions in games (...I think we actually avoided any outcry on that one).

So, yeah, it's a system with objective benefits, and subjective downsides, so it's naturally a little frustrating to see it stalling thanks to said subjective issues that would otherwise disappear with familiarity.

[Mr Cochese]

People went back to vinyl though, because they're assholes.

[Hanzo the Razor]

Well I bloody loved it. It did feel a bit chopped down in places though. Beorn and The Master in particular felt like characters that probably had more scenes filmed but have been pared down to the bare minimum for the theatrical cut. There's certainly footage on the Appendices discs of AUJ of Jackson directing Stephen Fry eating in a glutenous manor that didn't appear here.

[Treble]

I thought it was pretty terrible, and I'm a Jackson apologist who got squeak-inducing pleasure from the messy first film.

Review here if you can be arsed, but basically Roskelld nailed it.

[Mr Cochese]

Gorf King nails it again.

[RIKT]

Why do you care if you can still watch it in 24fps?

Ummm because films are supposed to works of art and hopefully the directors vision, not video games where settings can be changed to suit each viewer. While some directors may well prefer HFR, if it proves unpopular then hopefully it's not going to foisted onto everything in the same way that 3D was.

Subjectively I think it looks like shit and therefore I'll be happier if that's the case.

[Radish]

Ummm because films are supposed to works of art

Fuck off.

[Sprite Machine]

Ummm because films are supposed to works of art and hopefully the directors vision, not video games where settings can be changed to suit each viewer.

They already can be changed to suit each viewer. Different TVs, different sound set-ups, different resolutions.

[Spacehost]

Ummm because films are supposed to works of art and hopefully the directors vision, not video games where settings can be changed to suit each viewer. While some directors may well prefer HFR, if it proves unpopular then hopefully it's not going to foisted onto everything in the same way that 3D was.

Subjectively I think it looks like shit and therefore I'll be happier if that's the case.

Yeah, I mean look at the last Hobbit movie, you couldn't even see it in 2D if you wanted to. You're lucky if you can find anywhere doing 2D screenings these days.

[makkuwata]

That really bothered me in the trailers too. Of course, turns out it was Welsh bloke from the Fast And The Furious 6, but it's still a bit uncanny.

It was also the fact that they cranked up the blue effect on Orlando's eyes, relative to the old movies. Evans ended up looking more like Orlando Bloom than Orlando Bloom.

[Mr Cochese]

No, thank you.

[Camel]

Yeah, I mean look at the last Hobbit movie, you couldn't even see it in 2D if you wanted to. You're lucky if you can find anywhere doing 2D screenings these days.

I haven't had any problems finding 2D screenings of films. We watched The Hobbit in 2D. Odeon are good at screening both 2D and 3D versions of films, but that probably depends on where you live.

[Mr Cochese]

Oh, I thought he was being sarcastic.

[Camel]

Ah. That'll be my brain running at LFR.

[RIKT]

Fuck off.

No. You Fuck Off. Cunt.

They already can be changed to suit each viewer. Different TVs, different sound set-ups, different resolutions.

Films are made to be seen in a cinema. However if you want to mess about with them in the privacy of your own home then fine.

[c-cat114]

I'm not sure I agree that hfr is a no compromise gimmick. In the first film the pacing seemed extremely odd of some character movements and the action, possibly while my brain was readjusting, possibly because the equipment was a bit bilked, and the latter half of the film turned into a succession of POV shots of potential theme park rides which had visual clarity in shot but were a jumbled mess of silhouette and depth of field. The escape from the Goblin mines is easily my least favorite part of all of Jackson's films.

This time around I thought I'd stick with it and the motion weirdness wasn't there but the Daikatana sheen on every object was. My mate and I always go to the opening night, which seemed to be only 3d and hfr, but if I could ditch hfr I would like a shot. It creates crystal clear distraction for me, the sfx might look better but the world looks less real and more fake, whether it was or not.

May be the future but of the two experiences I've had of it very much not something I see as a massive no compromise advance.