the road goes ever on and on
Dec. 14th, 2012 08:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
antimonySo I saw the Hobbit, as our winter celebration with the group at work (along with lunch out). And now I am home and kind of cranky from the 3D headache (which I have gotten with 2/2 3D movies that I've seen, so I don't think it was Hobbit or high-frame rate specific).
Comments on the HFR 3D, my general feelings, and a little about the adaptation from books to movie, but no major spoilers (including for the book) inside:
So, it was fun, if not nearly as good as the LotR movies. I liked it, and I think I'll like it more when I see it again in 2D and standard frame rate.
Eventually, I'm sure, we'll all be used to the effect high frame rate has, but it felt somewhat like watching old BBC period dramas, and definitely seemed to up the childish feel the movie had in places. Everything seemed too bright, and it wasn't helped by the fact that this is the fourth in a series of films, so there's a direct comparison to be made, visually. Jackson's cinematography seemed to be repeating itself too much, too -- yes, it's the same world, and there's only so much you can do with a group of people running along a trail, visually, but some of the shots just felt gratuitous rather than interesting.
As for the story, the Hobbit, when read with LotR, always has this sort of jarring tonal inconsistency. It's a children's story, and much less sweeping, and then gets retconned into this giant epic. That carries through to the movie, pretty precisely, which does make it accurate but isn't always a good thing. And, as previous, really wasn't helped by a jarring new technology in play, visually.
As for the changes from the book to the movie: Sylvester McCoy got to play Radagast, so I am all for his addition. Some moments seemed to be changed for greater cheesy character moments, but those do reflect character development that happened, it just tended not to happen in the middle of the action scenes, so it wasn't too bad. (And I should reread the Hobbit, which I haven't in a while, since I wasn't 100% sure about which things were altered.)
All in all: it's good, and will sit well as part of the overarching story (without spoiling things to come in LotR-- I think the movies in chronological order once all out will work well), but it's not perfect. And dragging it out into 3 movies seems to be stretching it a bit -- unlike LotR, they can include more of the book, but I'd rather have LotR be longer and include some of the cut book plotlines if we're going to have 6 movies, rather than every detail of the Hobbit.
Comments on the HFR 3D, my general feelings, and a little about the adaptation from books to movie, but no major spoilers (including for the book) inside:
So, it was fun, if not nearly as good as the LotR movies. I liked it, and I think I'll like it more when I see it again in 2D and standard frame rate.
Eventually, I'm sure, we'll all be used to the effect high frame rate has, but it felt somewhat like watching old BBC period dramas, and definitely seemed to up the childish feel the movie had in places. Everything seemed too bright, and it wasn't helped by the fact that this is the fourth in a series of films, so there's a direct comparison to be made, visually. Jackson's cinematography seemed to be repeating itself too much, too -- yes, it's the same world, and there's only so much you can do with a group of people running along a trail, visually, but some of the shots just felt gratuitous rather than interesting.
As for the story, the Hobbit, when read with LotR, always has this sort of jarring tonal inconsistency. It's a children's story, and much less sweeping, and then gets retconned into this giant epic. That carries through to the movie, pretty precisely, which does make it accurate but isn't always a good thing. And, as previous, really wasn't helped by a jarring new technology in play, visually.
As for the changes from the book to the movie: Sylvester McCoy got to play Radagast, so I am all for his addition. Some moments seemed to be changed for greater cheesy character moments, but those do reflect character development that happened, it just tended not to happen in the middle of the action scenes, so it wasn't too bad. (And I should reread the Hobbit, which I haven't in a while, since I wasn't 100% sure about which things were altered.)
All in all: it's good, and will sit well as part of the overarching story (without spoiling things to come in LotR-- I think the movies in chronological order once all out will work well), but it's not perfect. And dragging it out into 3 movies seems to be stretching it a bit -- unlike LotR, they can include more of the book, but I'd rather have LotR be longer and include some of the cut book plotlines if we're going to have 6 movies, rather than every detail of the Hobbit.
