My heart sank when I heard that Peter Jackson, having already made the greatest fantasy trilogy of all time in The Lord of the Rings, was going back to the well once more, this time taking the reins of The Hobbit from Guillermo del Toro.
And then that it was going to be two movies, actually. No, wait -- a full trilogy. In 3D.
Did I say my heart sank? Submerged is more like it. Where Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy seemed like a colossal hubristic gamble -- which wound up paying off magnificently -- his idea for The Hobbit sounded more like an exercise in vanity.
So, yes, I felt like a nay-sayer walking into the screening -- and emerged a believer after seeing The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, opening next week. Jackson convinced me once again that, despite an occasional overload of whimsy, he remains a director capable of transforming Tolkien's flat writing of a fanciful story into a sweeping adventure full of impossible sights and frequent excitement. I walked out wishing I could immediately start watching the next film, which is how I felt after each of the Lord of the Rings movies.
But not because of the 48p technology in which this film was shot and is being shown in some venues. Shooting at 48 frames per second instead of the standard 24 adds visual information to each image that renders it with startling clarity. The effect is not unlike the first time you saw a really revealing high-definition TV image.
That's good and bad. It's bad because, as much as this particular brand of digital imaging seems to put you right into the image (in, yes, 3D), it does have the TV look - what I've seen referred to as "the soap-opera effect" and have heard compared to the image quality of a reality TV show. Are we ready to watch movies that look like TV? Or does that subconscious TV association devalue it in our mind?
Well, let me just say this: I didn't care. Because The Hobbit entranced me in a way that made me forget about the technology and just plug into the movie itself. By the end, I wasn't even resenting the clunky 3D glasses.
This review continues on my website.