From everything I've read, the best version is IMAX 3D 48fps.
Actually since these were NOT filmed with IMAX cameras the ONLY benefit an IMAX theater will have is it's stadium seating. And also perhaps it's sound system.
Just wanted to say that the media have blown the entire 48fps thing way out of proportion.
It looked stunning.
Forget Avatar 3D as the future of cinema, 48fps is the future of cinema.
I feel like the reviewers who complained about it are the same ilk who opposed the transition from DVD to Blu-Ray, or Black/White to Colour.
Just a bunch of old fuddy-duddies who like to whinge about change.
The nonsense about the sets, costumes, etc., looking fake are complete tosh.
It takes you roughly five minutes to adjust to the extra frames (as we are unaccustomed to it) but then it's fine. Everything looks smooth and sharp. It isn't distracting at all and looks perfectly natural. I absolutely loved it.
The film itself way exceeded my expectations too, can't wait for the Extended version.
Do yourself a favour and see the film in the way it was conceived and intended to be seen in.
I've just got back from seeing it and I want to stress how much of a lord of the rings fan I am, both films and books and I can't believe how much I hated it. I really am that disappointed I want to cry when I think about it. I did like Thorin and Balin and the Riddles in the dark scene with Gollum. One of my favourite things about the rings trilogy is the score so I was excited to hear this one but it really is a mess and it comes across as laziness. What was with all the stupid goofy jokes? I know they wanted it to be lighter in tone but being ridiculous isn't the way to achieve it. Really, really disappointed. Nine years I've waited kind of patiently for what? This drivel? I would say this is worse than phantom menace. I now know how those Star Wars fans felt after seeing that when it came out. I came on here to see what everyone else thought of it and I'm completely shocked how much love it's getting. Totally baffled. The 48fps made it look really cheap and low budget. I was also annoyed how it made the cgi stand out. The only really good cgi was Gollum and possibly the three trolls. All this is just my opinion of course and I wish I could be like the majority and really like it but that's soul crushingly not the case. well at least I've still got my rings trilogy. They can't take those away from me. And I'm really sorry to rant.
After the Hobbit series is done will they be making J. R. R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion series into movies as well?
They do not have the rights to film that right now. ONLY the Hobbit and LotR material. And if they do not film any of that in a ten year period they will then lose the rights to those too.
Sooo...
Ten years from now we get to go through this all over again.
I've just got back from seeing it and I want to stress how much of a lord of the rings fan I am, both films and books and I can't believe how much I hated it. I really am that disappointed I want to cry when I think about it. I did like Thorin and Balin and the Riddles in the dark scene with Gollum. One of my favourite things about the rings trilogy is the score so I was excited to hear this one but it really is a mess and it comes across as laziness.
[Show spoiler]
Quote:
The music: Message for Peter Jackson
I have seen An Unexpected Journey today, and to make it short, the way Howard Shore's beautiful music was presented and used and edited was absolutely abysmal.
I don't know if Mr. Jackson or any of the editors realise it, but the music means a great deal to many of the viewers, and not just to Lord of the Rings or Tolkien fans, but average film fans as well.
This movie lacks trust in the composer's work, and severely so. Otherwise it would be inexplicable why so many cues were edited the way they were.
The inclusions of direct quotes and tracking from all over the Lord of the Rings trilogy, when similarily great music was written by Howard Shore, took me out of the film several times. That usage of themes throws thematic continuity right out the window, something that was always one of Howard Shore's strongest abilities in this Tolkien film series.
Some of the strongest moments on album - not there at all. "The Adventure Begins", first half gone. "The World Is Ahead", mostly gone. "A Good Omen", almost entirely gone. "Riddles In The Dark", mostly gone. The choir in "Radagst The Brown", gone. The dramatic bits of "The Hill of Sorcery", gone. The first minutes of "The White Council", gone. Some of "Brass Button", gone. The middle part of "Over Hill", gone.
And in their place isn't even new music most of the time. How the Riddles in the Dark sequence began, with direct lifting of the Ring theme from Fellowship (yes, those Ring variations on album are all gone!), and Gollum's menace and pity themes tracked in, like, six times in a row, that drove me mad right in my seat. Really, they must have used every cimbalon statement of his theme there is in Lord of the Rings.
Not even the haunting chorus from the end of "Brass Buttons" is there. Then, in all honesty, The Breaking Of The Fellowship is used in the scene when Gandalf talks about Bilbo giving him courage. That didn't match the pacing at all.
Then, my god, the worst musical moment as far as continuity is concerned is when Thorin attacks Azog with the Nazgul music behind him. That was so unbelievably awkward for someone knowing the music a bit.
Then there was the direct reusing of "Master Peregrin's Plan" from Two Towers, followed by an absolutely out of place statement of Gondor Reborn. Jesus. I think it is even a re-recording because the french horn counterpoint is not there.
What is this new devilry?
Out of all the things I was worried about going into this film, frame rate, pacing, the music was the least of my worries.
Bilbo's theme is cut almost entirely from the film!
The Nature variations at the end are really breathtaking, but at that point, the music took me out of the film a dozen times already.
The coup de grace at the end is that the music is removed completely from the final shots of zooming in on the Lonely Mountain and Smaug opening his eye.
I have no idea what was going on behind the scenes, if the amount of rearranging affected the score so much that there wasn't enough time to properly rescore it, but that seems unlikely because you could have simply left the pieces as they are and not lose anything.
Whether Mr. Jackson realises it or not, music is a major part of these films, and for the way it is treated in An Unexpected Journey by editors and the director, the term "careless" is the mildest one.
I expect a better treatment in The Desolation Of Smaug, and many others as well.
What's up with all the tracked music in the Hobbit?
I saw the Hobbit today, and the score as heard in the film is a complete mess. There's tracked music from all three LOTR films all throughout the film in moments that are wildly inappropriate to the thematic continuity Shore created. Huge chunks of the Hobbit score as heard on album are missing.
With so much care given to the music in LOTR, what the heck happened here?!
I've just got back from seeing it and I want to stress how much of a lord of the rings fan I am, both films and books and I can't believe how much I hated it. I really am that disappointed I want to cry when I think about it. I did like Thorin and Balin and the Riddles in the dark scene with Gollum. One of my favourite things about the rings trilogy is the score so I was excited to hear this one but it really is a mess and it comes across as laziness. What was with all the stupid goofy jokes? I know they wanted it to be lighter in tone but being ridiculous isn't the way to achieve it. Really, really disappointed. Nine years I've waited kind of patiently for what? This drivel? I would say this is worse than phantom menace. I now know how those Star Wars fans felt after seeing that when it came out. I came on here to see what everyone else thought of it and I'm completely shocked how much love it's getting. Totally baffled. The 48fps made it look really cheap and low budget. I was also annoyed how it made the cgi stand out. The only really good cgi was Gollum and possibly the three trolls. All this is just my opinion of course and I wish I could be like the majority and really like it but that's soul crushingly not the case. well at least I've still got my rings trilogy. They can't take those away from me. And I'm really sorry to rant.
They do not have the rights to film that right now. ONLY the Hobbit and LotR material. And if they do not film any of that in a ten year period they will then lose the rights to those too.
Sooo...
Ten years from now we get to go through this all over again.
.
Ok Duffy one more question. Since The Hobbit is the start of the whole LOTR movies (I think) do I need to see The Hobbit series to understand what is happening in the other LOTR movies?
To this day I've only played a few LOTR games like War in the North (They should totally make a movie of that btw) and The Third Age and not seen any of the movies just like five mins of a battle scene in The Two Towers
It begs the question, wtf is going on with the critics? I've been seeing raves all over twitter the past couple days, high scores on imdb, and it seems like people on here are loving it too. So what gives?
Yes, but when did the film open? If you're seeing rave reviews on Twitter and other places, it's probably from people who are fans, but haven't actually yet seen the film.
I see this happen all the time. You see tons of reviews for products on Amazon that haven't been released yet.
Furthermore, people who tend to see a movie the first day of release also tend to be the biggest fans of the movie and who will tend to be the most positive about it.
Here's some quotes from A.O. Scott in the New York Times today:
Quote:
The comparative playfulness of the novel could have made this “Hobbit” movie a lot of fun, but over the years Mr. Jackson seems to have shed most of the exuberant, gleefully obnoxious whimsy that can be found in early films like “Meet the Feebles” and “Dead Alive.” A trace of his impish old spirit survives in some of the creature designs in “The Hobbit” — notably a gelatinous and gigantic Great Goblin and an encampment of cretinous, Three-Stooges-like trolls — but Tolkien’s inventive, episodic tale of a modest homebody on a dangerous journey has been turned into an overscale and plodding spectacle.
Also, not to be pedantic or anything, but “The Hobbit” is just one book, and its expansion into three movies feels arbitrary and mercenary.
Quote:
But I don’t mean to blame the cultural situation for the specific failings of the movie, which rises to weary, belated mediocrity entirely on its own steam. Mr. Jackson has embraced what might be called theme-park-ride cinema, the default style of commercially anxious, creatively impoverished 3-D moviemaking. The action sequences are exercises in empty, hectic kineticism, with very little sense of peril or surprise. Characters go hurtling down chutes and crumbling mountainsides or else exert themselves in chaotic battles with masses of roaring, rampaging pixels.
Quote:
When the initial rush of a chase or a skirmish dissipates, you are left with the slightly ripped-off feeling of having been here before, but with different costumes, in a “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie or “Clash of the Titans.”
Quote:
“The Hobbit” is being released in both standard 3-D and in a new, 48-frames-per-second format, which brings the images to an almost hallucinatory level of clarity. This is most impressive and also most jarring at the beginning, when a jolly dwarf invasion of Bilbo’s home turns into a riot of gluttonous garden gnomes.
Over all, though, the shiny hyper-reality robs Middle-earth of some of its misty, archaic atmosphere, turning it into a gaudy high-definition tourist attraction. But of course it will soon be overrun with eager travelers, many of whom are likely to find the journey less of an adventure than they had expected.
Ok Duffy one more question. Since The Hobbit is the start of the whole LOTR movies (I think) do I need to see The Hobbit series to understand what is happening in the other LOTR movies?
To this day I've only played a few LOTR games like War in the North (They should totally make a movie of that btw) and The Third Age and not seen any of the movies just like five mins of a battle scene in The Two Towers
Nope.
The first hour of LotR brings EVERYBODY up to date on what exactly is at stake in these films. It has one of the best prologues that I have ever seen.
Though somebody else here would be better at answering this as I have read the books many times.
Yes, but when did the film open? If you're seeing rave reviews on Twitter and other places, it's probably from people who are fans, but haven't actually yet seen the film.
I see this happen all the time. You see tons of reviews for products on Amazon that haven't been released yet.
Furthermore, people who tend to see a movie the first day of release also tend to be the biggest fans of the movie and who will tend to be the most positive about it.
It's been open overseas the past couple of days.
...and, hey, if other Tolkien fans are happy, I'm happy.
Last edited by Aragorn the Elfstone; 12-14-2012 at 12:12 AM.
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well at least I've still got my rings trilogy. They can't take those away from me. And I'm really sorry to rant.
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