I loved the Lord of the
Rings trilogy when they came out, but for some reason I was never
really looking forward to seeing this one. Maybe it was the more
children's book nature of the original novel and when I read that
they are milking every last drop of it with 3 movies from one book
which is shorter than any single one of the LOTR books. But I tried
to put aside my prejudices as there was still many things I wanted to
see in it.
First lets get the technical stuff out of the way. I saw the 48FPS 3D version of the movie and I must say the 3D was surprisingly good. I still think it's a useless gimmick, but this was one of the clearest 3D picture I've seen, so there's been some progress, unfortunately those damn glasses are still a nuisance. The 48FPS on the other hand I'm not exactly convinced on, it felt a bit TV-like, kind of lifting the veil from the movie magic a bit too much. I paid way too much attention to little details which was definitely not a good thing, makeup mistakes, set borders and bad paint jobs were a bit too visible. I kind of doubt that they would slack on those departments, I guess they aren't any different from the LOTR movies, but on those you don't pay any attention to them. So it comes down to the new technology, the old technology needs to evolve a bit more before it would be a viable option to use to capture a huge fantasy movie like this which relies so much on makeup and a mix of physical and virtual sets.
Enough of the tech talk and on with the movie itself. Unfortunately it's not great. It's way too uneven to be a solid entertaining experience following a formulaic nature of introduction-setup-action-introduction-setup-action, rinse and repeat. Way too often the characters get into trouble and just as things look grim out of nowhere comes the salvation, mostly by Gandalf. First time it was ok, but around the third time it became a total joke already. This in addition to the overly comical rollercoaster like action sequences then took out the element of danger from the movie. I know it's more of a children's movie than LOTR, but that's no excuse for doing it poorly. Another thing it was lacking was drama, whenever there's a chance for some deeper drama it seems to turn into almost camp-like nonsense. Why? Is it again because it's a children's movie? Yet there's quite a few heads chopped off on the action scenes, but can't go into dramatic character elements. I just don't understand the reasoning. But it wasn't a totally bad movie. I absolutely loved the Gollum scene, best part of the whole movie, though getting there was not easy. At times it did feel like the long lost brother of LOTR and it tried to take me on an adventure, but too often I just got slapped to the face. All in all I guess it was worth watching, even though it could have easily been an hour shorter. And even though there's quite a bit happening in this movie it still felt like an overly long prelude to something I'm not really sure I want to wait for anymore.
First lets get the technical stuff out of the way. I saw the 48FPS 3D version of the movie and I must say the 3D was surprisingly good. I still think it's a useless gimmick, but this was one of the clearest 3D picture I've seen, so there's been some progress, unfortunately those damn glasses are still a nuisance. The 48FPS on the other hand I'm not exactly convinced on, it felt a bit TV-like, kind of lifting the veil from the movie magic a bit too much. I paid way too much attention to little details which was definitely not a good thing, makeup mistakes, set borders and bad paint jobs were a bit too visible. I kind of doubt that they would slack on those departments, I guess they aren't any different from the LOTR movies, but on those you don't pay any attention to them. So it comes down to the new technology, the old technology needs to evolve a bit more before it would be a viable option to use to capture a huge fantasy movie like this which relies so much on makeup and a mix of physical and virtual sets.
Enough of the tech talk and on with the movie itself. Unfortunately it's not great. It's way too uneven to be a solid entertaining experience following a formulaic nature of introduction-setup-action-introduction-setup-action, rinse and repeat. Way too often the characters get into trouble and just as things look grim out of nowhere comes the salvation, mostly by Gandalf. First time it was ok, but around the third time it became a total joke already. This in addition to the overly comical rollercoaster like action sequences then took out the element of danger from the movie. I know it's more of a children's movie than LOTR, but that's no excuse for doing it poorly. Another thing it was lacking was drama, whenever there's a chance for some deeper drama it seems to turn into almost camp-like nonsense. Why? Is it again because it's a children's movie? Yet there's quite a few heads chopped off on the action scenes, but can't go into dramatic character elements. I just don't understand the reasoning. But it wasn't a totally bad movie. I absolutely loved the Gollum scene, best part of the whole movie, though getting there was not easy. At times it did feel like the long lost brother of LOTR and it tried to take me on an adventure, but too often I just got slapped to the face. All in all I guess it was worth watching, even though it could have easily been an hour shorter. And even though there's quite a bit happening in this movie it still felt like an overly long prelude to something I'm not really sure I want to wait for anymore.
55%
No comments:
Post a Comment