The Hobbit film production decisions

Critics are attacking the film on two fronts:

(1) The decision to make "The Hobbit" into a trilogy aka "The Lord of the Rings". I should identify myself as a fan of the books having read them more than once when I was younger. But I just thought the LOTR films were boring. As Tolkien took 20 years to write the LOTR books, and dashed off the Hobbit in one year, I have to believe that the director stretched the story beyond the breaking point.

(2) The decision to go to 48 frames per second, which is a first for a major theatrical release. Many reviewers have described the effect as "creepy" and advise viewers to find a theater showing it in regular 24 frames per second. Since frame rate is one of those technical areas that could potentially provide much more vivid movies, it is difficult to find that it is meeting such hatred.

Technical improvements in movie making often are difficult for the public. People feel an emotional attachment to old standards. Black and White is perhaps the most obvious. The limited mechanical shark in Jaws. The stop motion characters. Godzilla as a man in a rubber suit vs a CGI monster. The rapid cuts in movies that increase the tempo until it is annoying. But the IMAX film in the Batman Returns made those scenes thrilling.

Some of the reviews I've read suggest the 48frames works better in some scenes of the film than others.

There were reports of folks getting motion sickness. The entire process, 24 fps, 24 fps with a double shutter, or 48 fps, relies on fooling your brain into thinking that a series of projected images is actually seamless. Everyone's brains are wired a little differently, so your mileage may vary. Young children's brains can get warped from extensive 3-D videogame exposure.

I get ill playing video games that present images from a first person perspective, while many others love this. I personally hate the over use of hand held cameras in major films. If you are going to spend $100 million+ on a movie, buy a stinkin' tripod (are you listening Michael Bay?). Flashing strobe lights can cause seizures in a folks susceptible to them. So there maybe more than just the high frame rate at work here.

The dinosaur stampede scene in King Kong was a miracle of computer graphics animation, but it left many people cold. It feels too artificial that you can't really empathize. Alfred Hitchcock explained the incredibly long scenes of Cary Grant waiting in the cornfield for his meeting in the film North by Northwest, by saying that people only relate to the terror of being attacked by a plane in a cornfield if they went through the frustration of standing in the hot sun and getting angrier and angrier at the respondent who didn't show for the meeting.