3D Hobbit 2

[bunn]

So, having whinged and moaned about the possibility of not being allowed to watch 'The Hobbit' in 2D, I decided that actually I wanted to see it in 3D 48fps as well, just to see what the differences were, and find out if it made me sick. It didn't make me sick. Yay! There was much less of the 'Whoo, lookit my 3D bits!!' stuff than in Avatar, the only previous 3D film I've seen, and since I'd seen Hobbit in 2D already, I didn't feel cheated by briefly looking away during the Zooming Around Dale bit at the start. I was expecting the 48fps element to possibly make the nausea worse, but I didn't feel it did.

There were scenes when the very crisp picture broke my suspension of disbelief a little - particularly during the scenes with the dwarves and goblins inside the mountains, which somehow had a 'Blue Peter Special' feel about them for me. But those are my least favorite scenes anyway. There were also several points when I found myself noticing how brightly the characters shone out from the distance-blurred background - almost as if they had been shot using a rather old fashioned green screen. In real life, you just can't see individual hairs standing out against a background that is more or less the same tone. It felt odd to be able to pick them out.

That said, there were some scenes where I felt the 3D did enhance the experience - particularly during the scenes at Bag End, when I swear my brain told me that it could smell Gandalf's tobacco smoke drifting into the cinema, before I realised that it must be making that up, and the scene with the Eagles towards the end, where the texture of feathers and the movement of the birds against the sky felt very real.

I greatly enjoyed this variation/retelling, though I'm reserving judgement to some extent until I see the rest.

ETA: have put some spoilers in comments :-D

Comments

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

I felt that the 48fps added to the film rather more than the 3D did. All those panning shots that were annoyingly jerky and blurred (like the stuff in Erebor at the beginning) were smooth and sharp. For the first time in ages, I thought that the picture quality at the cinema was almost as good as on the telly at home.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

... whereas I'm pretty much 100% the other way. I thought it was maybe just a bit TOO sharp in place.