Saw it in 24p 2D. Will go back and see the 48p 3D soon.

I actually liked the slow startup in the Shire. Gandalf is as good as eleven years ago and Bilbo carries the main part nicely! Felt like being back in middle earth again.

Things started to get bad once the talking trolls showed up and the CGI-fest started. I prefer my monsters to be all roars and grunts ;)

Rivendell: Elrond works OK but Galadriel and Saruman felt very add-on and the story doesn't have the same weight to it as LOTR. It's a much simpler story spread over too much bread, so to speak.

Gollum is spectacular! Story-, acting- and tech-wise the Riddles in the dark-section is the strongest part of the movie. Scary as hell!

Goblin city on the other hand is very boring with no sense of danger at all. Just a CGI roller coaster with a very "meh" Goblin King. The show down with Gandalf is just ridiculous.

The main Orch villain is also not very convincing being too CGI. I prefer rubber suits with some character!

But I hope as Bilbo says in the end: "The worst is behind us".

I remember a similar event when Yamaha launched the DX synths .... similarities :)

3D depth perception can vary quite a bit from person to person, that's why some people don't see the benefit in 3D.
If you want 2D HFR, you could always make your own glasses so both eyes see the same image.

The story itself was just average for me, but I liked LOTR far more as a book more than the Hobbit.
The sound was excellent, I have never heard such clarity and imaging in a mix. The 3D I found fantastic, when Thoren stepped in from back of the screen I was about to ask what I thought was another patron in the cinema to sit down, because he was in the way of the screen. And the multitude of layering in the goblin city was very nice. I'm in two minds about HFR, it definitely give it a more lifelike presentation, as they say looking out through a window. I've never seen so much detail in a film before, what with deeper depth of field that comes with being a 3D filming, to the 4K presentation and the doubling in temporal resolution. I felt like I was watching a stage performance. It seems to remove the dreamy character of film. I really didn't like it for the first half of the movie. But by the second half of the film I had either adjusted or it might be because there were so many fast action sequences, you can actually see what is happening. The Transformer movies would really benefit from being 48fps. HFR may not be the best for everything, but it has it's uses. I wonder what it would be like to mix 24fps and 48fps in the same film.

Only because you mention it. Do you know how The lord of the ring should have ended? Have a

Sorry for the OT but I could not resist :-)

I just saw the 48fps, and it was 4K. No Dolby, though. The cold, lifeless nature of it is no fault of the 48fps, the 3D or the 4K! Set building materials, lighting and makeup have a VERY long way to go before they are realistic at these frame rates and resolutions. That is why the film seemed so fake, not because of the 48fps 3D tech. The outdoor helicopter shots looked immaculate . . . because they were filming real landscapes. The closeups looked fake because they were. You're seeing makeup, not peoples' faces, and it is obvious . . . just like the styrofoam rocks. 3D 4K has this strange way of revealing contrived lighting, too. It is so easy to see where a light source is coming from.

I had the opportunity for HFR, but got the 24fps version ticket. The film was mostly ok, but very strangely, in the panning shots in the beginning (daylight scene, grass and nature and people walking around) there was extreme stuttering. seems to me they shot those at 1/100th shutter or higher. really bad. almost impossible to see anything.

luckily there were not many of these shots.

@AKED
+1000, haa, haa DOL

It was awful. Not enough story for 1.5hrs let alone the ridiculous 3hrs I spent watching it. HFR made the whole thing look like a diorama. And indoor shots in small spaces made it look like a cheap tv show (lighting? Color?)

48fps did make the fast 3d scenes at least watchable.

@fatpig, those scenes were stuttering on 48fps too, strange it only occurred on a few of the opening scenes

I went to see this with someone that 1) was not a big Tolkien fan 2) apparently did not know that one book was being split into three movies and 3) did not have the strong feelings about the HFR aspect that I did. However, I did convince them to precede our 4K 48 FPS viewing by watching the first 10 minutes of a 4K 2D showing down the hall.

So first some common ground between the two of us on the topic. The acting was quite enjoyable and we both appreciated that a lot more than we thought we would. Freeman, Clanchet and McKellen were particularly enjoyable. We both agreed that the water looked quite nice in the elven council scene. And we enjoyed the eagles more than expected. That's pretty much the extent of the commonality of our observations, though. :)

First of all, I did not "get used to" HFR. Throughout the entire film (from start to finish) there were parts that worked better than others and I was every bit as distracted by some of the ones near the end as I was at the start. I think there's a fundamental disagreement about language when we talk about these things because the word "smooth" was not what came to my mind when I looked at the start in 4K 48 FPS 3D vs 4K 48 FPS 2D - it looked smoother to me at 24 FPS. At the start I thought I might not see any moments that worked in HFR - but I was surprised to find which shots did and which ones didn't.

First of all, the idea that HFR gives you license to ignore the rules of good cinematography regarding panning etc. are complete bunk. The scenes that were the most hectic were among the ones that drew me out of the film the most. No, HFR worked the best when motion was slower or more subtle - especially in slow-motion scenes.

Second, it is almost impossible to avoid the video game comparisons. I'll try and get into that more later but the short version is that there is well over a decade of 60 FPS console gaming content available and it might have been worth spending more time looking at what did and did not work in them before making this movie.

This is definitely a unique opportunity to see one film in multiple formats! Seems the 48 fps (HFR) issues are talked about more than 3D - the controversy is now about HFR and not 3D.

I saw a 2D 2k 24fps version and found it to be very soft in appearance - my wife is not a picky viewer but she noticed this softness too. A week later we saw the HFR 3D (Sony 4k projection, RealD 3D), and this was a much sharper image.

The only issue about HFR that I didn't like (my wife didn't care) was the video look of some of the initial scenes in Bilbo's house. Seems like a color grading issue rather than HFR or 3D specific issue. The theaters may need to re-calibrate their color schemes perhaps.

I quickly grew used to the color issue and found I liked the HFR 3D version much more than the 2K 24 fps 2D version.

One of the online 3D forums has comments that many noticed the 3D projection systems (where they watched) were not properly calibrated with the left and right images being separated between 1 to 15 pixels, which will cause ghosting and eye strain.

"Now the first movie has grossed more than $1 billion, Warner Brothers should repay the $67 million subsidy the movie moguls sucked from Kiwi [New Zealand] taxpayers"

..."There is no doubt now that the deal with the movie industry was more about lining pockets than creating jobs." NZ politician Winston Peters

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/8175895/Peters-Hobbit-subsidy-should-be-handed-back