Over blown, over hyped and disappointing

Rating: 4/10 (18 December 2012)

I watched this movie in 3D HFR. If you find 3D movies dim of light and a headache, you will not find any improvement in this new tech. In fact, the movie felt like a BBC TV show, losing all cinematic effect and rendering a very disappointing and largely unpleasant experience. I did recognize the expertise with which the cgi was made, where everything looked to be as natural (or unnatural), with only your logic to tell you what is real and what is not. The problem was that the outcome is quite unpleasant to watch... Too... Clean, and un-movie like. The only exception was the exquisite rendering of Gollum, it was a really impressive work on its facial expressions and body textures. Another annoyance is the split of the short story into two movies... Especially since the first 85 minutes are such a waste of time with zero plot/character development value (and as i said, an unpleasant visual experience). The soundtrack was also very poor and un-epic-ish, at many times, it felt like a low budget TV production. There was very little in this movie to demonstrate the technology improvement... Sometimes, new techniques diminish from the state of art. To summarize, the story telling was C-, the soundtrack D-, the CGI B+, the new 3D tech - F. Verdict: watch if you have to, but don't bring a date. A personal request to Peter Jackson: please don't use this Cinematographic technique again... It is terrible. Really.