The reviews look mainly positive, but the 48 FPS reviews are looking quite bad. The effects look worse, the lighting looks worse, and the props/sets look faker.
I’m seeing it in 2D 24FPS. I’ve read a few reviews that say the movie is a lot better that way and at that frame rate.
I’m seeing it in 24, because I’m more interested in the film than in the technology.
I would LIKE to see it in 48, but I can’t do 3D, so I don’t know if that will end up working out. I’d hate to pay those kinds of prices for the ~ 30 minutes that I can handle 3D without my eyeballs falling out of my head.
What I’ll be interested to see is if this new framerate catches on, if it will lead to improvements in set building and light matching to make those “substitutions” less obvious, or if movies will move more towards being entirely shot in “real” locations to avoid the issue entirely.
It’s an interesting puzzle for the props and set making people, and I am really interested in how it’s all going to work out!
I haven’t seen a 48FPS review where I’ve been able to really understand the objection, except that it violates the reviewer’s expectation about what movies are supposed to look like (as compared to, in some cases, TV or “video”). Some of them really seem to boil down to “It looks so real! It’s awful!”
However, it hasn’t been clear that any of the reviews have been for 2D 48FPS, which is what I’d be interested in.
I think not, alas. There has been plenty of talk about all the possible combinations of technologies. This, which I just found, says,
So that would be, not–but the last bit there isn’t right, because there will be 3D 24FPS.
So… while the version I’m seeing Sunday is 2D 24FPS, I hold out hope that I can check out the 48 at some point–which maybe no reviewers have even seen, as yet.
I just want to update that 48fps list I posted earlier…that was apparently an IMAX-only 48fps list. There are additional standard screen 48fps showings at other theaters.
And the site does confirm that the 2D 48FPS is not screening. I’d love to see an extended trailer that way, but I really do prefer both 2D and 24FPS seems like the way to go.
Wow, it opens tomorrow and it’s currently at 49% (top critics) on the Tomato Meter based on 37 reviews. On the one hand: JP, you better not have Kong’d these films! On the other: Skyfall, a thoroughly bad movie with maybe a few cool things in it, is clocking at 91% (top critics) on that same meter, so there is a bit of a tomato credibility-gap to think about.
The major criticisms seem to be about pacing, so maybe I’ll go to a matinee next week and nip out to Starbucks and read the paper during any slow spots.
Since this is the “anticipation” thread, and we’re no long anticipating, I’d like to suggest that this thread ((11 pages long) be closed and we start a new thread commenting on the actual movie rather than on the trailers, sneak peaks, speculation, and so forth.
I’m hoping the soundtracks for the next two are… a little more varied than the first was?
Course, it didn’t help much that one of the limited new motifs was the Radagast theme music, which makes me think of demented 1940s typewriting clerks more than anything remotely Middle Earthian.