I saw the hobbit four beers ago.
As you noted, the movie has a different feel, and I believe that reflects the difference in the books as well.
Now to the 24 vs 48 fps part.
I saw the movie in High Frame Rate, hereafter HFR, and 3D, it would be kind of silly for me to bring up the discussion otherwise.
HFR does give a non cinematic look, and yes, to some degree it has a TV production feel to it.
I still don't think that it, in the long run, is a bad thing, more of a thing that you need to get used to.
The amount of motion one can get away and still retain sharpness without juddering with in the scenes surprised me, and it felt like they took advantage of that. The amount of motion in some scenes was distracting, and I think that it partly is because I was seated close to the screen.
I was less and less distracted by HFR as the movie went along, but I'm the same way with 3D, I notice it when the movie starts but after a while I forget about it.
Another thing I noticed was that it sometimes felt like it was playing too fast.
All in all I still think that HFR is here to stay, all it needs is some getting used to, and once you've done that you don't want to look a 24 fps movies.
Oh, and yeah, I enjoyed the movie, it was a bit too silly in some places, but I'd give it a 7/10.
I just came out of the cinema about 10 minutes ago, and I agree pretty much about the HFR. First of all, I didn't expect our local cinema to feature it at all - I was sceptical of their 3D presentation alone. But the quick panning shots in all directions rubbed my face in it immediately. It is shocking how smooth that makes it - it feels almost exactly like going from a 30fps game to a 60fps game. So they did pans initially at a far higher speed than any other cinema does, simply because it could, and that is jarring after 100 years of cinematographists slowing down panning scenes on purpose to prevent you from getting a headache.
And like you say, what it does initially is enhance the uncanny valley a little - in combination with the 3D especially, suddenly the size of the characters make you feel like the dwarves are the giants and you, the viewer, are a midget (a toddler at that), and suddenly also screen resolution starts to become the bottleneck again, as with all the other big bottlenecks gone, you start seeing again that it isn't as sharp as real life. But the 3 hours of the movie (and we didn't get a break either) give you plenty of time to get used to that.
As for the movie itself, I enjoyed it. As I fully expected, the movie pacing did the original book much more justice than the Lord of the Rings movies did (however much I enjoyed them), and I also wish that I could have seen them in the other order, starting with these three movies, and then watching the Lord of the Rings movies afterwards. Incredibly, many scenes still felt as if they were going too fast. Just about the only scene that felt more or less at the pacing that I remember from the book, was the very beginning (and even there, if I remember correctly, the book gives more backstory).
In fact I was surprised how far the movie came in those three hours. The final scene was the scene I remember most prominently from the book. My father read the book to me each night when I would go to sleep, from when I was about six I think, and I've had some really bad nightmares about the Warrgs ... (they did a good job at making them pretty scary in the movie too).
All in all I'd rate it pretty highly. The only distraction was that I kept being reminded of Merrin/Pippin for the first hour or so, before the main character in fact settled on me as Bilbo, and some of the dwarves were almost a bit too recogniseable from their real life counterparts for comfort (but they did a pretty good job anyway).
I'd give it a solid 8.5/10, and I can see myself enjoying this more than the second and third LotR movies, as I think these can stay closer in tone to the first LotR movie, which I still like the most by far.
Really hope HFR is here to stay.
