Long-awaited footage from The Hobbit screened at Comic Con over the weekend, and reports tell us it went over very well.
It’s not all that difficult to imagine Peter Jackson picking up where he left off the last time, and delivering two more great installments in the LOTR saga.
Interestingly enough, as we’ve reported previously, there’s been controversy over the movies running at 48 frames a second, and it was shown at 24 frames a second at Comic Con, because as Jackson explained, it’s better to take in 48 frames a second as an entire immersive experience instead of trying to get into it in little bits and pieces.
Jackson of course addressed this at Comic Con, and as the filmmaker told Deadline’s Mike Fleming: “The 48 looks completely fantastic. What my experience has been with 48 is you get used to it. You sit there and think, wow, this doesn’t look like any film I’ve seen before. And then, within 10 minutes, you just forget about it and at the end you think, wow, that was actually really nice. It’s smooth and easy on the eyes, especially in 3D.”
Jackson also recalled he went on the ‘Net to see what the fan reaction would be, “And nobody was commenting on the footage, good or bad. Everyone had opinions about the 48 frames. You had the film purists saying, this doesn’t look like cinema, it doesn’t look like film. Well, no, it doesn’t, it’s completely different.”
As the New York Times reported, the 48 frames “can startle – colors appear brighter, images sharper and motion smoother – and Mr. Jackson thinks the technique can transform moviegoing.” Sounding a lot like Jeffrey Katzenberg when talking about the 3D revolution, Jackson said, “We have to provide a cinematic experience that brings people back to theaters.”
Still, the Times claims: “Jackson [likely] made the unexpectedly timid decision to present The Hobbit in a standard format here because he feared an online outcry could hurt box-office results.”
