Well firstly let me first say that most of the 3D in Hugo is beautiful and looks stunning at times...the opening scene, Sacha Baron Cohen running along the platform, the dog, the Paris streets, looking down the clock tower, the tunnels to Hugo's home etc. Just like in Avatar though, there were some inconsistencies and I noticed a few scenes that looked a bit flat or flatter...e.g. when Hugo is peering through the vent at Ben Kingsley in his toy shop etc. There was also quite a bit of crosstalk at times but it was quite faint and didn't distract too much.
As far as the actual film went, on first viewing, I was a little underwhelmed and didn't really feel an emotional connection with the story. I guess Hugo's reputation preceded it and because of that, it didn't quite live up to my initial expectations. Visually its stunning, both in the production design and most of the 3D, but the story didn't quite engage me totally. Perhaps the movie deserves a few more viewings?
I am confused about the 3D presentation though. As well as some great 3D shots where the positive parallax (background) is seen to have a wide separation, most of Hugo seemed to have a narrow or no separation in the background but most was in the foreground. Does this mean that most of the 3D in Hugo is presented as negative parallax but contained within the frame? It seemed to me that the following is true....foreground characters have negative parallax (but not enough for pop-out)....distant objects are set well back on the stereo window while a lot of the positive parallax is only seen through the windows in the extreme distance or behind opening doors. Therefore the depth utilized in most scenes seems limited to that which is between the stereo window and the foregound objects. I'm pointing this out in an attempt to understand why a lot of the background objects in Hugo look almost in alignment while the foreground objects are blurred. In most other 3D movies, I've always noticed the opposite to be true.
Buy at Amazon.co.uk
