Desolation of Smaug predictions

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I'm always up this early. Queen Olabisi (the feline monarch) insists upon it.

[Passdagas the Brown]

Ha! My cats and dog are, thankfully, late sleepers!

Though Xerxes (the younger cat) does occasionally sit on my head at around 7am.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I am, also, pretty charged up, mostly in anticipation, but certainly with an edge of "what if I really don't like it?" I'm really as confident that I will like it as you are that you will not, but neither of us knows for sure until we see it.

[Passdagas the Brown]

Imagine the feeling of actually not liking any of the four films...and expecting to be severely disappointed again...

But you never know...miracles do happen from time to time...

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I think certified fresh at RT is 65%. AUJ holds a certified fresh rating.

According to Arinnir, fresh and certified fresh are not the same thing.

I think below 60 is rotten, 60+ is fresh and 75+ is certified fresh.

Don't know if that is right or not.

Edit:

Here is what RT actually says:

What is Certified Fresh?

Rotten Tomatoes awards the Certified Fresh accolade to theatrical releases reviewed by 40 or more critics (including 5 Top Critics) with a steady score of 75% or higher on the Tomatometer. A film remains Certified Fresh unless its Tomatometer falls below 70%. Reserved for the best-reviewed films, the Certified Fresh accolade constitutes a seal of approval, synonymous with quality.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Back down to 74 with two new rotten reviews, and 3 of 4. They seem to go in waves, back and forth.

[yovargas]

North American Opening Weekend: $76 mil

It did $74 mil - pretty close!

I was really curious to compare the HFR BO from AUJ to this year's. See if people stuck with it or not. Anyone know if those numbers are out there?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I don't know the answer to that, but I do know that it is being shown in HFR in more theaters this time.

[yovargas]

Oh yeah? Interesting. That must mean the numbers were good enough last time to support more HFR showings.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Assuming the decision was based on some kind of logic.

Meanwhile, a number of positive reviews were added to RT, raising the Tomatometer score back to 75%. Assuming that it ends up with roughly the same number of reviews as AUJ, there are actually quite a few more that should eventually be added.

[Smaug's voice]

I will probably bore you, but a side-story on HFR:

I've watched DOS this Saturday and when I bought the tickets it said just 3D, and I didn't doubt anything about it since like last year's AUJ, there was no mention of HFR this year. Well, I saw it and at the start did feel a bit odd at how fast it was going on (it went on till the Spider attack in Mirkwood) but I didn't doubt since I was damn sure there is no HFR in my town.
Today I read the review of DOS in our local newspaper and there it was, the title:

New technology in town! HFR leaves Hobbit-fans breathless and even more excited for the third installment.

Something like that. Well, I was shocked at first. And it was very funny, after all I'd heard about HFR making the film look "fake" and missed any of it completely in the film!
I did find the film visually stunning. Far more stunning than AUJ, which I thought was purely to the credit of WETA and co. But apparently wrong.

Oh, and the review also mentions that the HFR has become highly popular after the release and that even non-fans are rushing in to see it.
So I am guessing HFR was succesful at least here!
And I had my first HFR experience in theatre without realising it! Silly, me.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

That's probably the best way to have an HFR experience, since you are not looking to see how it is affecting you.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Looks like the Tomatometer score as of 12/16 will be 75%. PtB was the closest, with his guess of 76.

[Passdagas the Brown]

w00t!

And for the very first time, I think the RT rating is too low...

[Alatar]

Interesting results from Twitter:

http://lotrproject.com/analysis/dos/

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Interesting, although I'm quite sure what it all means, other than that there are more positive tweets than negative ones.

What does your engineer's mind take away from it?

[Alatar]

If you look at the bottom chart, the higher bars show which characters have been tweeted about most. The portion of Green vs Red shows which are more positively received.

Tauriel gets very positive reception, while Kili's is quite negative. Smaug of course gets major positive response. Azog gets the most negatives. Bard is very positive.

[Beutlin]

The first results for our predictions have been released.

“The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” made $73,645,197 on its opening weekend in North America. Yovargas predicted $76,000,000 and therefore won this round.

On www.rottentomatoes.com “The Desolation of Smaug” scored a Tomatometer of 75 per cent as of Monday, December 16th (169 reviews; 126 positive – 43 negative). Tomatometers rarely change dramatically three days after release, so the film could end up somewhere between 73 to 77 per cent in the future. Passdagas the Brown predicted 76% and therefore won this round.

Congratulations! You both win a nice cup of coffee if you ever travel to my hometown, Vienna.

Tomatometer (as of December 16th): 75%

1. Passdagas the Brown: 76%
2. Beutlin: 77%
3. Yovargas: 81%
4. Smaug’s voice: 83%
5. Sauronsfinger: 85%
6. Voronwë the Faithful: (81)/87%

North American Opening Weekend: $73,645,197

1. Yovargas: $76,000,000
2. Beutlin: $70,000,000
3. Sauronsfinger; $80,000,000
4. Voronwë the Faithful: $86,000,000

[yovargas]

But I don't like coffee.

[Passdagas the Brown]

But I don't like coffee.

But surely you like Vienna?

Don't worry, Beutlin. I like coffee, Vienna and you, so I'll try to stop by!

I am likely to be in Bratislava in June, so we'll see...