The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Did you watch the Dol Guldur clip?

Yeah...loved Christopher Lee's line. Need to see the clip in the context of the whole sequence to make a proper judgment.

Me too, to both things. I wasn't going to watch the clip based on Dcole's comment that it was "almost all of Dol Guldur" but when I realized it was only a little longer than a minute, I realized that wasn't true. Unlike Dave, I wasn't thrilled with Elrond's line, but it probably won't bother me much in the grand scheme of things.

[Dave_LF]

Whoa whoa; I wasn't "thrilled" either --I just think Weaving managed to take something that sounds horribly cheesy on paper and make it at least passable.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Yeah, I knew as soon as I posted that and saw that you were browsing this forum that you would correct that. I'll accept "at least passable".

[Passdagas the Brown]

If I understand it correctly, Dave thinks that line is the best in the trilogy?

[Dave_LF]

Second best, after "It's the dwarves who go swimming! With little hairy women!" Still keeping my fingers crossed that we finally get the backstory for that one in B5A.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

To be fair, he did say "the trilogy" which would not include LOTR. Honestly, I can think of a lot more horrible lines in LOTR than I can in the Hobbit films.

[Elentári]

The images just appear as little boxes with x's that say "image". At least for me.

Yeah, bizarre...they were showing up in the preview okay but I got the boxes too, when I posted. I opened HoF on another tab and they showed up in the post, so I thought maybe the images were just slow loading. Obviously not....so I've removed the individual links. You can see all the old and new images in the Collider article, anyway - hopefully that link does still work!

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I had already seen the images myself; I was just pointing it out for the benefit of others.

Times Square:

[Elentári]

I had already seen the images myself; I was just pointing it out for the benefit of others.

Well, I was hoping you or others might be able to shed some light on why the images showed up in the preview initially - they don't now - and not when actually posted. But never mind!

[Voronwë the Faithful]

No clue.

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[Elentári]

All eyes turn to Paris now for the French premiere tonight....

Avant-première du nouvel Hobbit au Grand Rex à Paris

A rough translation (probably from Google) was posted by Bombadil elsewhere....I've tidied it up a bit, but perhaps Jude or someone else fluent can tell us if it is accurate!

"...Precisely, the statement from Warner on Thursday at the Grand Rex will be the presentation of the "Arkenstone" to the great French fans of "The Hobbit". Specially designed for the occasion by a large English jeweller, the Arkenstone is a precious jewel is made of 2750 carats of selenite crystal hand cut and finely polished to give it a shiny appearance. The base is crafted by craftsmen from solid silver and then covered with pure 18 carat gold. 17 customized zirconia stones adorn this base. The whole weighs over a kilo. There will also be the draw of the biggest fans who entered the online game "The Battle of Five Armies" which ended on November 27 via Twitter. Five fans armies clashed by posting almost 90,000 tweets in seven days. The Thorin army was victorious from this contest and will be present at the Rex..."

[Elentári]

New interview with PJ by The Daily Beast


'No Regrets’: Peter Jackson Says Goodbye to Middle-Earth

The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings director talks about leaving the world of J.R.R. Tolkien behind, negative reactions to a female Hobbit character, and his next journey.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I'm sure that some will violently disagree, but I think this is really well done (note: it includes some BotFA material that I haven't seen before):

[Elentári]

Lovely!

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I'm glad (and a tad bit surprised) that you like that!

[Elentári]

Why? None of the clips particularly featured any of PJ's "excesses..."

Just one question raised from the commentary, though: Did Sauron actually want the Lonely Mountain for its strategic position, even without Smaug at the time of TH? I thought it was mainly the potential weapon of the dragon he wanted. Obviously the War in the North is a different matter later on.

[Telemachos]

Why? None of the clips particularly featured any of PJ's "excesses..."

Just one question raised from the commentary, though: Did Sauron actually want the Lonely Mountain for its strategic position, even without Smaug at the time of TH? I thought it was mainly the potential weapon of the dragon he wanted. Obviously the War in the North is a different matter later on.

I'm not sure this is worthy of a spoiler or so, but I'll be safe just in case (spoiler for minor aspects of BOTFA):

Hidden text.

It's mentioned that Sauron wants to unite his Dol Guldor army with the Gundabad orcs from the North... which would mean either allying with Smaug or getting rid of him (or whoever controls the mountain), taking the resources, and using control of that area of Middle Earth to dramatically increase the forces available to him.

[Elentári]

Ah, thanks, Tele....but I didn't mean in the Boyens-Jackson-verse, what about actually in canon?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Well, needless to say, at the time that TH was written, it wasn't an issue at all, and never became an issue in the text itself at any time (though perhaps it would have JRRT had followed through with the 1960 revision to the end). As for whether in the broader scheme of things, taking the LOTR appendix A into account (and the Quest for Erebor, though of course technically that is out of bounds), I think it is not an unreasonable inference to make that Sauron would have wanted Erebor for its strategic location and not just the powerful weapon that Smaug could have been, although I don't believe that Gandalf ever specifically said. There was plenty of talk about the importance of forcing Sauron's hand to move on Gondor, rather than taking a more strategic geographic approach in defeating his enemies and I think this could fall in that general thought process (though of course much earlier).

[Passdagas the Brown]

That featurette was rather nice. Quick question for Tel. Were the clips in the video all in the final film? These promotional materials so often feature footage that is ultimately cut, and I just wanted to get a sense of how much of it makes it in.