The Hobbit

For this particular early example of HFR 48fps movie-making, I'm very mixed on the results.  To me, most everyone as touched on much-ness of this next step in movie-making.  Characters look artificially sped up when they move, the characters in tight and medium shots have more of the look of watching a zoomed in taping of a  theatrical play on stage (yes, like some of the footage you see of Masterpiece Theater on PBS) or daytime soap operas.  I hated the daytime scenes in the Shire early in the film, just looked terrible.  I almost let out an "Ugh" looking at the footage, it was that distracting.  I chalk it up with a combination of camera movements, as well as the lighting not be up to snuff just yet.  Perhaps I haven't learned how to take in the extra information that 48fps provides us on the big screen. 24fps has been with us for a long time, and solving most of the issues with camera movement (except for side-to-side panning shots for the most part) and lighting has created what we take for granted as the look of cinema in 24fps.   But as the film got darker in lighting, atlmosphere and backdrop (during night time or in caves and goblin dwellings and whatnot), the 48fps footage did not distract as much, but its strangeness was still very much with me as I watched the film.  Some of the battle and action scenes looked more like human actors stuck inside a fantasy video game environment.  It didn't feel as connected to the world of LotR that I remembered from 8-10 years ago, just saw bits of on cable TV a few nights ago too.  Again, just a weird feeling of artificiality seeped in more and more. 

As far as the rest of the film goes, it was long on spectacle (eye candy of the middle earth fantasy elements), short on substance (plot, but that's what happens when you adapt a short book into 3 films, and depend on fluffing it out with material from its appendices and extrapolating scenes from short paragraphs from the source material).  Sure, I liked some of the character development moments, but it's still a tough slog to sit through a lot of "action" and "adventure" bits to get there.   I thought the dinner scene at the beginning would never end.  The scene between Gollum and Bilbo was entertaining in spots (from the look on Gollum's face, I seriously thought Gollum was going to actually poop out an answer to the riddles in the riddle challenge), but they managed to drag that scene out a few beats too many.  I'm not super-hyped about Martin Freeman's work as Bilbo yet, some of his scenes just didn't work for me, don't know if it was the acting or the directing, but his performance came off a little clumsily for me.

I realize this is a huge undertaking of a film project, just wished they left us wanting for more (or save it for the extended editions later), rather than just overloading our cinema wheelbarrows, just felt a little indulgent at times.  That being said, there is a lot of cool stuff to look at and enjoy.

I give it 2.75 stars, or a grade of B- (there's a leaner 2-hour cut in there somewhere).