10 Terrible Movies That Were Actually Groundbreaking
3. Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk Was The First 120fps Feature Film
Ang Lee's 2016 drama Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk fell far short of its early awards buzz, receiving wildly mixed reviews for its unconvincing and mawkish drama, despite a solid central performance from Joe Alwyn.
The sticking point for many critics and viewers alike, however, also happened to be the film's big technological innovation - Lee's decision to shoot and exhibit it at 120 frames per second.
Rather than stick to the tried-and-true typical cinematic framerate of 24fps, Lee shot the movie with five times that many frames, making it the first feature film in history shot and screened at 120fps, far outpacing Peter Jackson's Hobbit films, which opted for a "mere" 48fps.
Oh, and because that wasn't enough, Lee also released it in 3D.
Yet ultimately the 120fps presentation was massively polarising, with many decrying that the overly smooth, digital look it created felt inappropriate for a drama film, in turn making it look paradoxically cheap.
All the same, it's impressive and ballsy that Lee dared to go there at all, and not one to be deterred, he also shot his next movie, sci-fi thriller Gemini Man, at 120fps. Again though, neither critics nor general audiences were particularly enamoured with this boundary-breaking tech leap.
Viewers en masse are so used to 24fps as "the cinematic frame-rate" that any deviation becomes tough for them to parse.
In pure filmmaking terms 120fps provides greater image data and clarity, even if that's evidently not what most audiences are actually craving.