New Tech opportunity missed

Rating: 7/10 (14 December 2012)

Had high expectations but was disappointed. I would say there were moments of engagement with the audience at a very high level. The troll/orc camp-fire scene was superb. The new frame rate was fantastic. As for acting well the white bearded dwarf and Gandalf shined. The leader of the group acted well. But when animated characters outshine the lead role of real human actors you've gotta question casting choices. The White troll showed more emotion than many of the human actors.
Damn-it missed opportunity with this fantastic technology. Lighting crap, music crap (we don't need music) music seemed clearly to be a crutch used to give emotional content to uninspired acting and perhaps scripting. Depth of field the real loser. Maybe it's a new field for film makers but they are using that old school blurred background and sharp foreground technique from 2d films and photography with 3d film making. When you look at anything in the world around you there is a certain natural level of blur to the background. This should be the bare minimum to aim for I would think. But they never hit that sweet point that we are all familiar with given that we live in a 3d world. It was either too much (perhaps didn't have an epic background) or too little (very little blur to the background). It was like every shot was like "What are you trying to do here?"
So many action scenes with great opportunities to involve the viewer but no we are sweep through these scenes on a smooth a glass pan shot never giving you the real feel of the scene.
The insistence on so many fake sets, fake lighting, it just reeked of comic book hero type garbage. They could or perhaps should of gone for a more real look.
Seriously Peter. You were a pioneer once. Let's see it again. If you want idea's for sound, lighting, field of depth take a good hard look at Judge Dredd 2012
One more thing. The Golumn. Holy s..t that actor is a genius and stole the show for me. The skitzo acting with two different characters was so amazing physically and emotionally engaging. The audience were laughing out loud at how the emotion could be portrayed so vividly and believably by this creature. A real show winning performance for Gollum.
Maybe my expectations were too high but other films this year have blown me away such as Judge Dredd. I expect far more.