TBH I thought The Phantom Menace CGI wasn't as bad as ROTS. That felt like a Battlefront II game at times.

It was pretty good! It was a lot of fun and the 3 hours seemed to fly by. Definitely not as good as LOTR but that was fully expected going in. Gollum's scene was by far the standout to me. I loved every second of that and it makes me PRETTY SAD that that's the last time we'll ever see him in Jackson's films. I also really liked everything in Bag End at the beginning of the movie.

Pa Hupu @ 20/12/2012 8:33

They manage to be thrilling despite the fact that you know every character is going to survive.

Disagreed. Particularly during the rock giants scene, I just felt like I was blankly staring at the screen waiting for it to inevitably end with all of the characters intact. There was very little suspense in the action scenes for me, unlike LOTR. Probably partially due to more reliance on CGI.

SPEAKING OF CGI... the one place where I DID notice a marked improvement was with Gollum. As great as he looked in LOTR, he was WAY better here. Other than that... meh. The goblins looked too cartoony, the orcs looked FINE (other than the leader who looked p. dumb) but as I said before, DID NOT need to be CGI and were worse for it. The wargs actually didn't look any better than in LOTR.

With that said, I'm pretty excited for the next one! Very intrigued to see how they pull Smaug off.

For those that have seen this, is it worth the cost for XD, real D 3D?

The 3D definitely isn't that "showy" but it is pretty damn cool in places, especially the establishing shots. And the 48 fps is really jarring in the beginning but you get used to it.

Neither really adds that much to the movie but if you've liked 3D movies in the past, then this is definitely worth it

Yeah, AZOG looked really silly. But like I said, I was cool with the cartoony look/CGI-overuse generally because of the more lighthearted tone. Comparisons to SW were unwarranted imo

Boc @ 22/12/2012 21:24

The 3D definitely isn't that "showy" but it is pretty damn cool in places, especially the establishing shots. And the 48 fps is really jarring in the beginning but you get used to it. Neither really adds that much to the movie but if you've liked 3D movies in the past, then this is definitely worth it

I just saw this in 24 fps in IMAX and it definitely felt more blurry when things sped up. After watching both I can say I enjoyed 48 more so.

One thing I enjoyed was that Figwit showed up again... played again my Bret McKenzie from Flight of the Concords, but now he had a real name (Lindir) and he was like the only other elf in rivendell, so it kind of gave it a "look who's back fans who are obsessed with this guy that only said 2 lines over the course of the first 3 films"

Saw it opening night. Loved it. Longer review later!

ive seen it twice.

3D + 48 frames on opening day and iver the weekend in 2D and 24 scenes.
While it made little difference, I preferred the later. Also the 48 was hard to get used to at the start, really quite weird. But it passes.

Anyway I really liked it.
@rob a lot of your critiscm is pretty true to the book tbh. But some of it is just nitpicking, pretty hard to find any movie without some degree of logic flaws (i.e. why were the elves there etc).

I thought the movie flowed nicely, except that rivendale was a bit much. I had no problem with the bag end scenes, in fact I liked them (apart from the dishes scene... face in palms).. but after that, when the movie started to gain momentum (trolls, wargs chase) the rivendale scenes i felt were overdone. But tbf it was following the book order I guess.

overall i liked it a lot tho, and cant wait for next installment.

Dutchiee @ 7/1/2013 4:05

@rob a lot of your critiscm is pretty true to the book tbh. But some of it is just nitpicking, pretty hard to find any movie without some degree of logic flaws (i.e. why were the elves there etc).

Eh, as far as I'm concerned, a character's idiotic behaviour is idiotic whether it's true to the book or not. I could care less whether Jackson or Tolkien is to blame for that idiocy, it's still quite annoying.

And, yes, I'm aware that almost every movie contains logical flaws to some degree. In a certain sense, you need implausible events to drive stories along. I've written a lot of fiction, and I'm well aware of that. But it's a bit like heat: perfectly fine on most occasions, and probably nothing could function properly in its total absence, but when you dump too much of it on me I get pissed off and leave the room.

I personally enjoyed the dishes scene because it surprised me jackson included any of the many songs from the book.

Spoiler	+
Cant stand people complaining about the eagles not taking them the whole way. Like some huge eagle cares about some dwarfs going home. It aint going to fly miles away from its home for that shit. The Eagle king (i think) owed Gandalf some favours so he does some shit Gandalf asks him from time to time. The eagles arnt Gandalf´s personal pets like some think

Ari @ 7/1/2013 13:35

Spoiler + Cant stand people complaining about the eagles not taking them the whole way. Like some huge eagle cares about some dwarfs going home. It aint going to fly miles away from its home for that shit. The Eagle king (i think) owed Gandalf some favours so he does some shit Gandalf asks him from time to time. The eagles arnt Gandalf´s personal pets like some think

Spoiler	+
Obviously the eagles care slightly, or they wouldn't show up at all. And if the Eagle king owes Gandalf some favours, I daresay "give us a lift to place X" is a hell of a lot more reasonable and straightforward of a request than "show up while we're in the middle of a massive combat and put all of your eagles at risk of arrowdeath to save us at the last minute."

Rob @ 7/1/2013 14:55

Ari @ 7/1/2013 13:35 Spoiler + Cant stand people complaining about the eagles not taking them the whole way. Like some huge eagle cares about some dwarfs going home. It aint going to fly miles away from its home for that shit. The Eagle king (i think) owed Gandalf some favours so he does some shit Gandalf asks him from time to time. The eagles arnt Gandalf´s personal pets like some think Spoiler + Obviously the eagles care slightly, or they wouldn't show up at all. And if the Eagle king owes Gandalf some favours, I daresay "give us a lift to place X" is a hell of a lot more reasonable and straightforward of a request than "show up while we're in the middle of a massive combat and put all of your eagles at risk of arrowdeath to save us at the last minute."

Spoiler	+
I'm pretty sure they wouldn't want to attract unwanted attention by flying to Erebor. I can't imagine how many creatures/unwanted guests would follow in their suit once they arrived their by air. It'd be easy to track where the eagles were going and then they'd have a lot more trouble on their hands than a dragon.