The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

[lumpenprol]

you guys know it will be bad, but will see it nonetheless....

 

Peter Jackson is by and large a hack who had the good fortune to copy beats from the Bakshi animated version for the first of the three films, which is still the only installment with any semblance of suspense, subtlety, and character-based drama.

[Guest zaphod]

subtlety?

 

[youtubehd]FgnfQKJEJ2g[/youtubehd]

[azatoth]

Never managed to get myself to see the first one in the cinema, perhaps maybe I will for this one, mainly to see how HFR looks.

[spratters]

I still need to watch the first one actually. Think it's on Netflix so may have a go tonight. I've never been too keen on Freeman though, probably because I thought Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was a bit of a failure.

[Silent Member]

I'll be watching in the cinema, but I think I'll skip the 3D and 48FPS this time round, I found it incredibly distracting, I recently rewatched it at home and it was a much nicer experience.

[dumplings]

Weirdly enough, I didn't see the first one in the cinema either. I'll be seeing the 2nd there this time around though.

 

The thing I'm weary of is the pacing over 3 films. The first Hobbit film felt a little long winded and stretched. I found I had to rely on 'being in middle-earth' to help string it along better because of the longed out scenes.

 

Two segment films would have been aproppriate for the length of the book. A shame really but they'll be getting my money whether I like it or not, which is what they aimed for I guess haha.

[BCM]

I'll go and see it with my girlfriend for something to do if I've got time, but I'm really not that bothered either way... didn't see the first one at the cinema, caught it on netflix... to be honest, i'm pretty meh about most films these days...

[Terpentintollwut]

Also, remind me to never go to a midnight showing ever again. I saw the local Gamestop manager come in, walk up to a friend in the theater and show him a picture of his newborn son (born yesterday) on his iPhone and say "He really wanted to be here tonight but he was sleepy".

 

 

He really wanted to fuck up his hearing for the rest of his life tonight but he was sleepy.

 

[Redruth]

i care

[J3FF3R00]

Everyone I know who saw it show in 48fps hated the first hobbit movie.

I saw it in good-old 24fps and thought it was pretty good.

 

I'm definitely sticking to 24fps. I'm really curious to see what the numbers show, as far as how many people view H2 in 48 vs 24, compared to those who saw H1 in 48 vs 24.

 

Edit

 

I'm frankly surprised they are still planning to show this in 48fps. Seems as if Jackson is alone in the 48-frame filmmakers camp.

[Soloman Tump]

I think I will go see that at the cinema, but only in 2D.

[beerwolf]

As with some of you I didn't see The Hobbit at the cinema either, which is a bit odd as I watched all LOTR's on the big screen. I think for some reason I was a bit miffed with the thought of such a small book being made into 3 films, I think that put me off.

 

I really liked the first film on Blu Ray so I booked my ticket for IMAX Waterloo London the other day. Looking forward to it.

[MadameChaos]

I think I will go see that at the cinema, but only in 2D.

 

yeah i'm pretty much over 3D for most things... apart from Gravity which i intend to watch in glorious 3D at the IMAX.

[Terpentintollwut]

Everyone I know who saw it show in 48fps hated the first hobbit movie.

I saw it in good-old 24fps and thought it was pretty good.

 

I'm definitely sticking to 24fps. I'm really curious to see what the numbers show, as far as how many people view H2 in 48 vs 24, compared to those who saw H1 in 48 vs 24.

 

Edit

 

I'm frankly surprised they are still planning to show this in 48fps. Seems as if Jackson is alone in the 48-frame filmmakers camp.

 

I saw the 24fps version and still disliked most of it.

Ideally, I'd have watched the 24fps version in 2D, but 3D couldn't be avoided in order to get the English version here in Germany.

 

There's another problem that comes with the 48fps thing - it automatically compromises the 24fps version as everything has to be filmed at higher shutter speed in order to produce 48fps. Like, normally, you're used to a film having some motion blur. It looks more organic as it's how we see the real world, like in the left picture (ignore the values, just look at the images) but when shooting for 48fps, the filmmakers can't go below that shutter speed, logically, because they need at least 48 individual frames to be captured per second, the result looking more like the right picture.

 

 

The 24fps version of the film is produced by removing half the frames, but obviously the source frames were still filmed with the same settings, so the motion blur remains absent. That results what people call the "sitcom-look" as sitcoms were filmed in a similar fashion back in the 90s. And that sitcom look is also present in the 24fps version.

 

Oh well, but that's got barely anything to do with why I didn't like The Hobbit. I could ignore that. Still silly, trying to push that "new" technology.

[awepittance]

i didn't get the sitcom look in 24fps at all, i was actually surprised that whatever method they used to put back in motion blur looked pretty effective and hard to differentiate from a normal 24fps movie. Of course that doesn't help the fact that everything is done on a green screen and highly color corrected

[Joyrex]

Benedict Crumberbatch is lending his unique voice as Smaug, so it's got me intrigued to see it - I haven't seen the Hobbit yet, so I will probably wait until Smaug is on Amazon Prime for free like the Hobbit was (and hopefully will again).

[Joyrex]

 

Everyone I know who saw it show in 48fps hated the first hobbit movie.

I saw it in good-old 24fps and thought it was pretty good.

 

I'm definitely sticking to 24fps. I'm really curious to see what the numbers show, as far as how many people view H2 in 48 vs 24, compared to those who saw H1 in 48 vs 24.

 

Edit

 

I'm frankly surprised they are still planning to show this in 48fps. Seems as if Jackson is alone in the 48-frame filmmakers camp.

 

I saw the 24fps version and still disliked most of it.

Ideally, I'd have watched the 24fps version in 2D, but 3D couldn't be avoided in order to get the English version here in Germany.

 

There's another problem that comes with the 48fps thing - it automatically compromises the 24fps version as everything has to be filmed at higher shutter speed in order to produce 48fps. Like, normally, you're used to a film having some motion blur. It looks more organic as it's how we see the real world, like in the left picture (ignore the values, just look at the images) but when shooting for 48fps, the filmmakers can't go below that shutter speed, logically, because they need at least 48 individual frames to be captured per second, the result looking more like the right picture.

 

 

The 24fps version of the film is produced by removing half the frames, but obviously the source frames were still filmed with the same settings, so the motion blur remains absent. That results what people call the "sitcom-look" as sitcoms were filmed in a similar fashion back in the 90s. And that sitcom look is also present in the 24fps version.

 

Oh well, but that's got barely anything to do with why I didn't like The Hobbit. I could ignore that. Still silly, trying to push that "new" technology.

 

I wonder once they finalize the 4K TV spec, if they are going to make it 29fps like NTSC, or are they going to push 60fps or go 48fps - the Hobbit is the only 48fps movie out there, right?

[awepittance]

at the moment it is yeah, I'm still curious about those experimental high speed 30mm films at 48fps or over. A lot of people who've seen it say it looks amazing and not like the TV show look we got with PJ using digital red cameras at 48fps.

It's really a shame PJ chose to deliver it in 48fps 3d instead of 4k 3d. Apparently the only commercial release that was actually projected in 4k were very limited screenings of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Samsara (which was trying to get closer to the digital equivalent of 70mm film, which is what Baraka was filmed with). The projectors in movie houses as they currently stand are all capable of playing back 3d films at 4k resolution, but most hollywood studios finalize a film at a 2k master. These same projectors cannot do 48fps, 3d and 4k at the same time, apparently it doesn't have enough bandwidth to handle it

it just seems weird to me to risk your movie looking like a live BBC play, VS just something at an incredibly high resolution. It seems like almost any average movie goer would instantly recognize that 4k vs 2k looks fundamentally 'better' whereas 48fps does not have the same clear mark of higher quality

the only parts that seemed to benefit from 48fps were a few shots of cgi creatures closeup, it gave them a level of hyperreality i've never seen before, watching gollum emote at that frame rate was actually pretty unsettling. I don't know if its uncanny valley, it's more just hard for your brain to process seeing a very photo realistic fake emotional creature moving so fluidly

[delet...]

 

 

 

If you just follow the action as though the four above images represent four frames in an action sequence, it looks like the boy drops the balls then uses his magics to lift it back up again. Who needs film and the battle of the frames per second eh, just play the audience a sequence of still images read left to right, maybe put them in a handy a4 size container for ease of viewing, say from the couch.

 

;-p :: E|-;

[soundwave]

I'll see it with my mum for Xmas after a pub lunch and not look too deeply into things.

 

Some bit on the first one got very tedious and padded out although the LotR connections and bits that were missing from the films were a nice touch but I think everyone in the cinema last year felt good to see Gollum again which was the highlight of the movie.

 

I hope some of the criticisms of the first Hobbit have been addressed as the original Fellowship film was good but clunky compared to Two Towers which was by far the best one.

 

(I've never read any of the books by the way.)

[awepittance]

so far only one 'twitter review' (*rolls eyes*) has mentioned that they disliked the first Hobbit movie, but found DOS to rank #2 in the entire LOTR film canon including the original trilogy. It's a small glimmer of hope that maybe they fucked up the 2nd one even less. My un-scientific guess is that because of the last minute decision to go from 2 movies to 3, the first one suffered the most because of it and required more padding than the others, and not to mention maybe (hopefully) taking to heart some of the extreme criticism it got.

[may be rude]

this sneak peek trailer looks good

 

[MadameChaos]

interesting article about the difference between 24 and 48 fps in the hobbit (the last one)

 

http://www.hypable.com/2012/12/11/hobbit-24-fps-vs-48-fps/

 

http://youtu.be/yfjaObWrgHg

[patternoverlap]

LOL at putting a comparison of the two frame rates on youtube.

[MadameChaos]

hahaha, hmm yeah actually especially as youtube only goes up to 30fps. i'm an idiot.