I saw 'The Hobbit' tonight...(Spoiler free)

[wolf_2099]

Going to keep this spoiler free, so it'll be kind of vague.

 

I thought it was terrible. My girlfriend who's been excited for it for over a year, though so too.

The 48 FPS made it seem like we were watching the movie as it was being filmed, not polished at all.

The special effects, at times, were not up to 48 frames per second. You could easily notice the live character moving much faster than the CGI characters. It made me feel like I was watching a film in fast forward. Throw in the fact the camera angles were inconsistent and hard to follow, I could never get into the movie.

 

The other problem I had getting into it was the fact they didn't make you care about any of the characters outside of Bilbo, and maybe Thorin. LOTR took time to make you care about all the characters in the Fellowship. This movie did not, they could all die and I just wouldn't care.

 

The film dragged. Badly. It had about 45 minute of excess in it that was unnecessary. Every scene dragged too long, especially at the beginning, and with the goblins (which was ridiculous all its own).

 

Finally, what was with the fight scenes? They were terrible. CGI enemies are not scary, or intimidating. There was also 0 blood, it seemed like no one was getting hurt, at all. Deceptions, disembowelling, throat slitting, hamstrung, and not 1 drop off blood.

[koollectablz]

Saw it in 2D.

 

Lot of positivity here but I felt it was realllllllly drawn out. Just no way this should be two films, let alone 3. And not even 3 short 90 minute films are they!!! This was 3 hours of one heck of a lot of padding....

 

I mean how long did those dwarfs had dinner at Bagend? That should have been 5 minutes max, the kind of scene where you could turn up late to the cinema and ask if you missed anything, just to be told 'nah, just some dwarfs turned up and ate all his food'.

 

Got a little better when they actually got into some action, but I was only really interested in it when gollum showed up, but that was over two hours of boredom in!

 

My wife actually fell asleep for a large section and when she woke up and asked what she had missed I could hand on heart say 'nothing'.

 

I'll be giving the next two!!!! a miss.

[Doohickamabob]

i'm cool with radagast keeping birds under his hat. thats kinda cute and real protective of him. a real woodlands buddy. However he's not allowed over for dinner until he takes a shower and promises to keep the bird dupe in check.

Jackson showing a huge trail of white bird poop going down the side of his head was a particularly nice touch.

So THAT'S what that was!

Were you thinking more along the lines of "There's Something About Radagast"?

[Doohickamabob]

no he was a wizard from gandalf's order.

We're to assume, then, that only humans can be wizards? He looked small, so I assumed he might not be human.

I don't think wizards are actually humans. They are more like aliens in the shape of humans.

[Doohickamabob]

The special effects, at times, were not up to 48 frames per second. You could easily notice the live character moving much faster than the CGI characters. It made me feel like I was watching a film in fast forward.

There is definitely a trade-off there: The minus is the weird motion effect, but the plus is that the 3D does not flicker and the brightness of the image is not dulled -- it's much more lucid (some might say too lucid). The "fast foward" effect does take getting used to. I thought the prolonged opening scenes served that function well, in a way, because they gave you time to warm up to the different style and they also provided some time to warm up to the idea of watching 12 dwarves and maybe even get to know a few of them, so you had something to care about later.

 

The other problem I had getting into it was the fact they didn't make you care about any of the characters outside of Bilbo, and maybe Thorin. LOTR took time to make you care about all the characters in the Fellowship. This movie did not, they could all die and I just wouldn't care.

The movie seems to be created with the assumption that most people in the audience have a running familiarity with the main characters (Gandalf, Bilbo, the Rivendell elves), which is a reasonable assumption. Of course Bilbo needed to be the focal point who cements the viewer's concern for everything else going on, and I felt like they handled that well. Again, I thought the opening scenes served the purpose of at least giving you a feel for the dwarves and why they are likeable even though they are such unkempt, cantankerous beings. Not only did we get to know Thorin, but also the old white-haired dwarf, the two young siblings, the burly slightly-balding one (the first one to show up), and the funny-looking young dwarf with the slingshot.

 

Really, with 12 dwarves, how much could we expect to get to know them all? I thought it was a nice touch that the movie showed not only them overtaking Bag's End and devouring all the food, but also briskly doing the dishes afterward and then leaving the place completely spotless by morning. They might be obnoxious but they aren't jerks; they naturally care to make things right.

 

The film dragged. Badly. It had about 45 minute of excess in it that was unnecessary. Every scene dragged too long, especially at the beginning, and with the goblins (which was ridiculous all its own).

I wasn't sure if the movie was going to end after the underground scene, but I didn't mind that there was more, since I'm happy to bask in Middle Earthness even if it does go on and on a while. I think the "it's too long" complaint is in some ways a case of looking a gift Shadowfax in the mouth. As I said about the beginning, I really think it helped to set up the character of the dwarves and get people used to them for a while, so that later on we'd have more reason to care about whether they survived rockslides or giant hounds or whatever.

 

Finally, what was with the fight scenes? They were terrible. CGI enemies are not scary, or intimidating. There was also 0 blood, it seemed like no one was getting hurt, at all. Deceptions, disembowelling, throat slitting, hamstrung, and not 1 drop off blood.

I thought some of the CGI monsters were scary enough. There's not much way to create these monsters without using CGI! I would say that I hope the filmmakers realize that character POV is really important when creating CGI effects, so that we're not looking at things from a stagey distance, but seeing the CGI monsters at angles similar to how you'd see them if you were there in the middle of the action. The way the cave troll in "Fellowship of the Ring" was depicted was very good, I thought, since when he's peeking around the pillar with Frodo, you had a real sense of what Frodo was seeing, rather than a bird's-eye-view that doesn't put you into the action. But I thought "The Hobbit" did at least a partially good job on that count, as much as possible without compromising our understanding of the location of characters in the midst of the action.

 

Regarding the lack of blood, I can't say that I wanted more. I mean, it's a PG-13 movie intended to be something that at least older kids could go see. I think it possible that Peter Jackson would have preferred to show a bit more blood (he is after all the creator of "Dead Alive") but had to hang back to keep from getting an R rating.

 

There are a lot of things I could pick at in terms of the movie not getting this right, or having an action sequence that stretched credulity. But to me, what was remarkable about "The Hobbit" is how much the filmmakers did not get wrong.

[Shaven Kev-migration]

The goblin king design was very dead alive/ bad taste feeling in my opinion. The tone is different in the Hobbit than LOTR. This is a much more naive and whimsical time in Middle Earth. I thought a lot of the stuff people were bored by was fun. I'm sick of overly serious genre movies. I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of them in HFR as soon as they release them. I thought the HFR helped the CGI a great deal. The movement was much more natural in the HFR showing than when I saw it in IMAX. It eliminated a lot of the videogame/cgi cartoony movement that gives it away as fake.

[jimjum12]

One of my friends said it felt like we were watching it while it was being filmed.

 

That's been the chief complaint with the movie since people have started reviewing it.

 

i think that's the idea of realistic 3D. feeling like you're there?

 

The movie doesn't look "realistic"though, it almost looks too clear. This is one of the first times a major movie is filmed using 48 frames per second but it does something to the way the movie presents on the screen...and I'm not sure it's because the movie looks funny or we're just not used to seeing it that way but it does something to the depth perception (or better said, how it appears on the big screen).

 

So far I haven't been a huge fan of it.

 

^^ yep.

 

I also heard people were getting sick during some test screenings. I didn't see any of that in my theater, but I was kind of hoping too.

 

....I've mellowed a bit with age, but when I was younger I was a pretty big fan of activities that made me vomit GOD BLESS....

 

-jimbo(a friend of jesus) (thumbs u

[Giroux]

So im going to see it tomorrow, so should i see it in 2d, 3d imax, 3dHFR?

[Reno McCoy]

So im going to see it tomorrow, so should i see it in 2d, 3d imax, 3dHFR?

 

I saw it in 48fps 3D (not IMAX) and thought it was a pretty solid presentation. Based on what I saw, however, I wouldn't do the high frame rate unless it was also in 3D.

[sufunk]

I thought it was VERY good! I was a little worried after reading the reviews but other than the whole radaghast , i thought it was VERY solid (thumbs u

 

 

I am SHOCKED to see that it did 85 million though. I went Friday night and got there extra early figuring i'd have to fight every other Tolkien nerd on the planet but there was literally only like 15 people in the entire theatre. There were less people there opening night than when i saw the Avengers for the 5th time like 2 months after it came out.

 

I went again on Sunday afternoon with my son and same thing. At absolute most there was like 15-20 people in the theatre. I was expecting to see articles about how disappointing the box office was this weekend but it did $85 million. Either its just my theatre or EVERY ONE saw it in 3D since i saw the regular version both times

[mrlatko]

Me and my son will see it over the Christmas break. He is super excited (counting down the days) and I am too. I don't expect a life changing film but I think it should follow the book to a reasonable degree and it should be enjoyable to watch. So far, I think it will meet these two criteria.

 

Saw the 2-D version and your wishes were my exact impressions: Not life changing. Followed book to a reasonable degree. Enjoyable to watch. They definitely took some liberties with the story to further tie things into the LOTR cinematic trilogy. I had fun, was of course impressed visually and can't wait for part 2.

[mrlatko]

i'm cool with radagast keeping birds under his hat. thats kinda cute and real protective of him. a real woodlands buddy. However he's not allowed over for dinner until he takes a shower and promises to keep the bird dupe in check.

 

Jackson showing a huge trail of white bird poop going down the side of his head was a particularly nice touch.

 

 

So THAT'S what that was!

 

This is the look they should have used when he played the 7th Doctor Who.

[Hado]

I've seen it twice now, 2D was first and I enjoyed it but it was a little blurry at times. The second time I saw it I tried the 3D and was really impressed because I normally feel a little ill. Everything was a lot clearer and I had a great time. (thumbs u

[Giroux]

Coming from someone who hates 3d, i saw it in HFR 3d and was blown away. Eyes adjusted to the realistic picture in about 15 minutes and the movie was awesome

[Shootydog]

Seeing it this friday in the Directors Suite of our local Warren theater. Cant wait. Alcohol and big screens go well together.

 

I was a little concerned at the early negative feedback but Im pleased to hear more people have enjoyed it since then.

[ss5rmp]

i loved this movie....i dont get why people hated it, but then again i hated avengers so maybe its just me..

[ComicConnoisseur]

I just came back from seeing it,and it was a masterpiece!

I got chills watching it.

It was epic.

[Tsimanga]

I just came back from seeing it,and it was a masterpiece!

I got chills watching it.

It was epic.

 

I have to agree... well, to a point. The first half was pretty slow, but the second half was all action. I thought it was a great movie and I'm not sure what all the talk about is over the 'frame rate' ?? Looked fine to me...

 

 

-Only pet peeve I have is that they loaded up the beginning with voice-over and then it all ended... they really should have put some in the middle or at least ended the story with a voice-over and old Bilbo writing... the last shot they used was pretty weak.

[fantastic_four]

Only pet peeve I have is that they loaded up the beginning with voice-over and then it all ended... they really should have put some in the middle or at least ended the story with a voice-over and old Bilbo writing... the last shot they used was pretty weak.

 

What difference does it make? Jackson did the exact same thing at the start of "Lord of the Rings" with Ian McKellan (Gandalf) doing narration summarizing the war that led to the ring being taken from Sauron.

[Larryw7]

I really liked Howard Shore's music. Gave me chills at all of the appropriate moments.