The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

I'm purposely avoiding the 48fps version of this film. I've heard that Jackson has addressed a lot of the issues with it that made the first film such a jarring experience, but I'm not going to have a look and see if it worked. The hfr took me out of the film when I saw AUJ for the first time, if felt as if I was watching a made for TV program. Sure, some of the visuals looked quite astounding, but I'm so used to good old 24fps that I just can't buy it.

As for the DoS, I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed it and it's a far better movie than it's predecessor. It's still bogged down in scenes/characters that are not fleshed out properly, or scenes/characters that have too much screen-time, but rhythmically the film moves at a far better pace and it just felt way more engaging. The action in it is top-notch too, and the latter part of the movie where most of the beats of the film start to reach their apex is amongst some of the year's most thrilling cinema - I really felt like I was back in Middle Earth again, that the quality of the LOTR films was back. That being said, whilst there is some lovely stuff in there, I'm still not feeling Howard Shore's score. He did such magnificent work with LOTR but he hasn't produced anything memorable here. That can perhaps be put down to not having such rich source material to work with.

I was so happy with the film that I'm worried about the third now. Although they have used the appendices to guide them, we'll be veering more and more away from original source material and whilst I'm sure Jackson won't completely balls things up, I do hope that he won't come to regret not keeping it at two films.

about to embark on a PJ gasm in the form of HFR, 3d and Dolby Atmos. Literally only one theatre in a shit city 40 miles away from me is playing it with all of these in combination. I saw it in Imax hfr the first time and even though i like the size and scope of the screen, 3d always works better for me on a smaller scale.

i rank this in 3d hfr pretty far up there on the theater experience, though not as impressive as lawrence of arabia in 70 mm. that was truly stunning.

  On 12/18/2013 at 8:29 PM, John Ehrlichman said:

about to embark on a PJ gasm in the form of HFR, 3d and Dolby Atmos. Literally only one theatre in a shit city 40 miles away from me is playing it with all of these in combination. I saw it in Imax hfr the first time and even though i like the size and scope of the screen, 3d always works better for me on a smaller scale.

You need to get down to Mexico City where they have theatre that pumps smells and stuff into it as part of the experience. You could be smelling Smaug's firey breath!

saw smaug in 48fps last weekend. does jar, quite dramatically. the most successful elements are CGI. the more actors dominate the shot, the more artificial it seems. the middle ground is that sets look like theme parks. the success of it's use is so random and patchy that either it's always going to be flawed or it needs some time to get the wrinkles out of it's use. that said, the film is pretty stretched-out and not that exciting - my taste in films has changed since the original trilogy - but has it's moments of light drama or comedy managing to succeed. best comparison i can make is with expensive kids tv shows that use cgi - the elements don't blend; all that's happened here is that they've spent an awful lot more money and got a more detailed version of this clash in the look.

think classic british kids tv 'kinghtmare' for example.

I decided to venture out into the vast wilderness of society for the first time in some months to see this movie. It was a three hour drive to the closest theater that was screening 48fps 3D. I go to movies for one reason, escapism. And the day long trip was worth it. What a beautiful movie.

what's interesting to me is the 2nd time around I noticed a lot more of the 'obvious cg' look, and not necessarily in a bad way. Now if they didn't use miniatures on this movie at all, this means that quite possibly about 15% of this film maybe even more is 100% cg. Towards the very end in the forges, there are bits of actors in closeup against complete green screen but every single wide shot is pure cgi. It makes me wonder how much if it at all the actors even knew what they were shooting when PJ took footage of them for the finale. And up until the last 1/3rd of it the cgi looks more or less convincing then it gets to the gold statue and it looks super dodgy again

I also think part of why I didn't fall in love with Smaug was because I couldn't understand mentally was I was looking at. My brain kept telling me I was seeing some sort of flawless perfectly smooth stop motion animation of a dragon, it almost looked like a miniature. A lot of this is hard to explain because even on a 2nd viewing I felt like a lot of the imagery stays in my brain like a dream, I can recall bits and pieces of it but not very much.

still a very solid movie upon rewatch

didn't like it. preferred the first hobbit. it's an action thriller but the action largely isn't interesting as it's often guided by unlikely events fortuitously happening, the fight choreography is banal, and a lot of events and actions were hamfisted and stupid so that i couldn't buy them and kind of felt insulted. smaug acts cartoonishly stupid. the laketown shit was drawn out set-up that just bored. the pacing throughout the whole thing was minimal, it flowed like a series of sequences and segues. and the cgi wasn't even that good! fuck! this is the guy that did lotr? this shit looked like half-assed garbage.

i didn't want to shit all over this because i still have some love for peter jackson for the first two lotr movies, but i saw a bunch of positive reviews in here so i thought i should warn people.

the scene toward the end with gandalf was cool, people who've seen it know what i'm talking about. that's the one part i'd watch again.

i liked it. the dialogue scene between bilbo and smaug was my favorite bit, kind of like the dialogue between bilbo and gollum was my fave in part 1. i expected this film to be so retarded and fake-looking, that i was pleasantly surprised in the end.

some retarded things about the film though (off the top of my head):

- tauriel

- gandalf getting captured in a cage by sauron instead of getting killed

- beorn (serves no other purpose than fidelity to the novel)

- tauriel

- the erebor secret door scene (fucking lol basically)

- the barrels scene

- radagast randomly appearing in the middle of nowhere (unless i missed something)

- the golden statue melting off in a matter of seconds (seems physically very unlikely)

- kili's injury (who gives a damn? even him doesn't seem to care lol)

- probabaly dozens of other details i can't think of

Haven't seen this and I'm not planning to but two of my friends fell asleep at the theater and one is complaining it was really boring, so that may be some indication.. anyway, lol at falling asleep.

  On 12/20/2013 at 1:21 AM, John Ehrlichman said:

I also think part of why I didn't fall in love with Smaug was because I couldn't understand mentally was I was looking at. My brain kept telling me I was seeing some sort of flawless perfectly smooth stop motion animation of a dragon, it almost looked like a miniature.

Interesting: Your brain is rejecting the projection.

Big steps, John. Big steps indeed.

just got back from seeing in HFR 3D - thought it looked amazing. yes, it appears almost as if you are watching a play - there is no "film look" embossing the er, film. it's kind of like looking through an open window and I felt worked really well and added to the film's effectiveness. i'm certainly a fan of the HFR look if it's done as well as this...

as for the film itself, it did feel slightly too long, and you could say dragged in places, but overall was highly enjoyable and I'm really glad I went to see this one at the cinema (didn't for the first one). recommended.

I'm a bit fed up with these new visually stunning but crap everything else movies coming out.

this isn't crap everything else imo

I liked it. It moves slowly, but it was a cool film and I always love anything LOTR-universe related.

Only thing that was a complete laugh for me was the scene where Legolas is chasing the orc across the bridge from Laketown. That was some of the worst CGI I have seen since Episode 1

As for Tauriel. What a fox. Totally got the arm slap from my girlfriend when I was gawking at the hawt elf killing things.

  On 12/22/2013 at 9:25 PM, 2WV said:

this isn't crap everything else imo

Sorry, I haven't even seen it. I was just thinking about the increase of films where the story is less important than the mental CGI effects.

The most recent one I watched was Pacific Rim. Just a robots in your face movie like Transformers. I guess they are kids films though heh.

The new Total Recall blew and let's see how much cgi guff happens in the new Bladerunner movie. Oh yeh, Prometheus was a movie like that too.

  On 12/22/2013 at 9:40 PM, Audioblysk said:

I liked it. It moves slowly, but it was a cool film and I always love anything LOTR-universe related.

 

Only thing that was a complete laugh for me was the scene where Legolas is chasing the orc across the bridge from Laketown. That was some of the worst CGI I have seen since Episode 1

yeah that part was strange, there were several really poor CGI moments which is in extreme contrast to the really beautiful moments where they used cgi. The barrel scene was probably the most solid and consistent looking cgi set piece in the whole film i thought. There were other bad moments too, like when it showed them from a top view riding to mirkwood on the ponies, it looked extremely fake and unnecessary. I think at this point Peter Jackson is confident enough to think he can pull off something like Avatar, where it switches back and forth to pure cgi several times in the film. I don't know if he's quite there yet in terms of consistency but I like the cgi look of this movie a lot more than Avatar.

but i will say that if you disliked Total Recall and PAcific Rim for it's vacuousness whilst having 'good looking' vast visual effects, the Hobbit is a different animal. I would argue that at least visually it's a lot more artful and stunning to look at. Smaug alone destroys any of the kaju designs in Pacific Rim and also feels quite real.

  On 12/20/2013 at 2:07 PM, very honest said:

the scene toward the end with gandalf was cool, people who've seen it know what i'm talking about. that's the one part i'd watch again.

yep - best part of the film was the solo gandalf stuff at the ruins

Nothing beats the feeling of waking up with the head in the walnuts !

  On 12/23/2013 at 3:18 AM, yshf said:

 

  On 12/20/2013 at 2:07 PM, very honest said:

the scene toward the end with gandalf was cool, people who've seen it know what i'm talking about. that's the one part i'd watch again.

yep - best part of the film was the solo gandalf stuff at the ruins

 

i heard a lot of people complaining about the Sauron reveal but that shit was awesome, almost needed an epilepsy disclaimer before the film started.

The part with the walnut pillow made my girlfriend turn to me and say "That must be the Middle Earth version of a Sobakawa pillow".

My main complaints would be Kate from Lost still being rubbish at acting and that really bad Ed Sheeran over the credits, otherwise this was as enjoyable as all the others in the series. It's worth it for Smaug alone, his reveal was amazing and the reaction from Bilbo when he thought he woke him was hilarious.

You know i never even reconised it was Kate from lost, Just thought shes pretty hot.

The effects on the gold looked awful to me, got to wait a year now for them to walk go "I have the egg!" and walk back home.

yeah, most of the shots of the gold in liquid form looked all kinds of wrong.