Perhaps the negative reactions are simply because most people aren't accustomed to seeing insanely high resolutions and frame rates in the cinema.
When I first got a high-definition plasma TV (which replaced my 20+ year old CRT), I felt the exact same way: as if all my movies were ruined, because they looked like documentaries. Now it feels like a degraded experience to watch poorer quality films. Perhaps the audiences of 2032 will feel the same about 48 fps/5k resolution.
I think this isn't a resolution issue at all. The issue largely has to do with motion blur. Here's how I understand it (and poorly):
When capturing video at X FPS you thus must hold open the shutter of the camera for some fraction of the time each frame in order to capture the scene. You can hold it open anywhere from 0 to 1/X seconds. If you hold the shutter open too long as a fraction of the frame time, you get too much motion blur and moving objects look blurry. If you open it for too short of a time, you have the opposite effect: things look jumpy. Your objective is to find just enough motion blur to trick the eye into seeing things as smoothly moving from frame to frame. As a rule of thumb, IIRC that amount is usually half the frame time, that is, 1/2X seconds.
If you are shooting at, say, 48fps rather than 24fps, and you're using 1/2X shutter speed to get the right motion blur, the total amount of time your shutter is staying open (during a length of film) is exactly the same, but for each frame you're staying open only half as long. Thus each frame is only getting half as much motion blur in 48fps as in 24fps, and this has an effect on the psychological "look" of the medium. The "feel" of film is largely due to its low frame rate, resulting in shutter speeds of 1/48 seconds and corresponding large motion blurs in each frame. Video has a shutter speed of 1/60 and thus smaller motion blurs in each frame, making it feel more "live" or "realistic". Move to 1/48 FPS or 1/60 FPS and you're talking very small motion blurs per frame (shutter speeds of 1/96 or 1/120), resulting in an exaggerated "live" look. It doesn't feel archival any more, it feels like you're watching through a window at something going on now. And this can really break the fourth wall.
BTW, the faster shutter speeds have another effect: they make it much harder to shoot dark scenes. You don't have many good options: your aperture is already dictated by the look you want to achieve, and all you have left is upping your ISO, and no one wants a grainy video. Given all the other problems that the RED cameras have given Jackson's team, forcing them to exaggerate set colors and makeup etc., I'm surprised they'd add this problem to the pot.
"Given all the other problems that the RED cameras have given Jackson's team, forcing them to exaggerate set colors and makeup etc."
This was actually a really strange thing - it comes from a comment in one of the making of clips but (as a RED owner) it really doesn't make any sense to me...
The uncorrected preview output from a RED cameras can look quite dull on a monitor, but after grading the RAW footage we've only found it to have better latitude and colour rendition than most other cameras. I don't know if it's a problem with their post workflow or what, but it doesn't sit right...
When I first got a high-definition plasma TV (which replaced my 20+ year old CRT), I felt the exact same way: as if all my movies were ruined, because they looked like documentaries. Now it feels like a degraded experience to watch poorer quality films. Perhaps the audiences of 2032 will feel the same about 48 fps/5k resolution.