The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey
Dec. 14th, 2012 09:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
switch842I got to go to a special advance screening of The Hobbit last night thanks to my mother-in-law. It was some sort of official thing put on by this company they contract with, so there was some pretty sweet swag we got.
Overall, LOVED IT. I haven't actually read the book (I know, I know), so I can't really compare it to that. But I thought it was great.
Some general things:
1) I don't know if you heard, but after the New Zealand premiere, some people were complaining about the 48 fps causing migraines and physical illness. I didn't notice any of that, but there were a couple scenes where the camera was moving very quickly and cutting sharply at time. That did cause me to have to glance away a couple times.
2) The running time is about 2:45, so make sure you pee before the movie starts. ;-)
And now, a couple movie specific things
1) It really does seem like they filmed THE ENTIRE BOOK. There were definitely a few parts I think they could have skipped. Like the encounter with the Rock Giants. It really didn't add anything to the story and was pretty much "Look at the nifty CGI stuff we can do!". Which, yeah, cool, but could have cut half an hour out of it easily.
2) The goblins and orcs are rather remarkably well spoken. I realize this is probably how they spoke in the book, but it was a little distracting. The goblin king, especially. Not that they need to speak in, like, broken language or grunts and groans, but it was weird. Though, after thinking about it overnight, I think my issue with the goblin king was mostly just how his actual voice sounded. Like, it was pretty much straight up formal British accent. It didn't sound like it had been modified or anything and it just didn't fit with the huge blobby body he had. I kept thinking back to LoTR and that argument the 2 orcs had over how to cook Merry & Pippin and how their voices sounded. Still "human", but still just off enough that it matched their physical appearance better. I don't know if I'm explaining myself well, but, yeah. It was a little off-putting.
Overall, LOVED IT. I haven't actually read the book (I know, I know), so I can't really compare it to that. But I thought it was great.
Some general things:
1) I don't know if you heard, but after the New Zealand premiere, some people were complaining about the 48 fps causing migraines and physical illness. I didn't notice any of that, but there were a couple scenes where the camera was moving very quickly and cutting sharply at time. That did cause me to have to glance away a couple times.
2) The running time is about 2:45, so make sure you pee before the movie starts. ;-)
And now, a couple movie specific things
1) It really does seem like they filmed THE ENTIRE BOOK. There were definitely a few parts I think they could have skipped. Like the encounter with the Rock Giants. It really didn't add anything to the story and was pretty much "Look at the nifty CGI stuff we can do!". Which, yeah, cool, but could have cut half an hour out of it easily.
2) The goblins and orcs are rather remarkably well spoken. I realize this is probably how they spoke in the book, but it was a little distracting. The goblin king, especially. Not that they need to speak in, like, broken language or grunts and groans, but it was weird. Though, after thinking about it overnight, I think my issue with the goblin king was mostly just how his actual voice sounded. Like, it was pretty much straight up formal British accent. It didn't sound like it had been modified or anything and it just didn't fit with the huge blobby body he had. I kept thinking back to LoTR and that argument the 2 orcs had over how to cook Merry & Pippin and how their voices sounded. Still "human", but still just off enough that it matched their physical appearance better. I don't know if I'm explaining myself well, but, yeah. It was a little off-putting.
