The Hall of Fire

I imagine Gollum will grow more menacing as the riddle game goes on and he gets into riddles like "darkness" and "time."

yovargas wrote:Yeah....but none of that should come off as cute. A hungry, lonely, killer shouldn't make you kinda giggle.

I dunno...I always found Gollum a little funny because of the way he talkses.

He's more threatening at the end of the teaser, so we'll see how it turns out. Hopefully they're just highlighting his lighter moments for the trailer.

Yeah, I'm a little wary about Gollum, though the "fair enough" line was good. Hopefully he'll calm down once they actually start with the riddles.

Five alternate trailer endings on the website, complete with Shore music! I've only watched the Gandalf one so far, but it's way better than the official ending...
http://www.thehobbit.com/index.html#con ... our-moment

The Gandalf/Galadriel conversation is in the comic-con reports. Gandalf says that Saruman thinks the strong are the ones who rule the fates of many, but he small deeds of kindness by people like Bilbo matter more.

What I liked: - Almost all the bag end stuff is great - The visuals - Gandalf and Galadriel's conversation - The Necromancer stuff doesn't get much screen time and is clearly a B-plot. - Armitage! Freeman was great too but Thorin actually impressed me more. - Radagast. It looks like he'll just be ec...

Gandalf leaves both before the Trollshaws and after Rivendell, doesn't he? They can also work White Council material into the Rivendell visit.

Well, there is an element of nostalgia for the past and anti-modernism in LotR, or "wish fulfillment" as Shippey put it. However, there is also an element of accepting that some things pass and the world changes - much of the long ending of RotK (the booK) deals with this. Tolkien holds th...

Yes, I was very glad to see they didn't make it "The Battle of Five Armies"! I also expect Smaug to die in the second film. If they have the aftermath in Laketown where the Master is rallying people to take vengeance on the dwarves, it will lead into the third film well.

Well, it's confirmed. So we're going to get either an undead Azog or one that survivied Azanulbizar. I just don't get it. We already have two important orc villains, and if PJ wants to invent a couple more I don't mind. But why bring Azog back? My hope is that these Dol Guldur characters and connect...

I don't know the details very well (having only read small portions of HoME), but my understanding is that Tolkien was bothered by the fact that the orcs seemed absolutely and irredeemably evil and struggled to come up with solutions that didn't compromise their status as "bad guys." Like ...

It looks like PJ's imagination is running wild with Dol Guldur, and not in a good way. I could accept the new Nazgûl plotline even if it made me uneasy (the Necromancer needs something threatening to do), but this is just going too far. If it's true. I'm open to being surprised by it working out, bu...

In the Aragorn "I cannot believe it!" sense, or the more definite sense?

I certainly hope it's fake. An undead Azog sounds just awful.

Well, Games Workshop appears to have licenses for both the book and the movies. Plus they take a lot of liberties in designing their miniatures and inventing things (some of which are probably necessary for a good game). So while some of these things may point to stuff in the movies, I'm pretty sure...

Games Workshop relaesed figures for Tom Bombadil, Glorfindel, Imrahil, and various armies that weren't in the movies or even the books. I wouldn't read too much into this. I mean really, a dragon priest? PJ loves his monsters, but almost all of them came from the books in LotR. I can't see him break...

I am a little worried about Smaug actually - has there ever been a good movie dragon, at least non-animated? And since he's pretty much the definitive fantasy dragon, people are going to expect a lot from him. But Weta will probably rise to the challenge.

Well, we'll have Laketown and its characters introduced at the beginning of movie 2 (assuming the barrels ending for movie 1). Bard in particular is sure to get a lot more attention than in the book. Then the dwarves make their way to the mountain and spend some exploring it. If they're developing t...

I'm fine with the dwarves. If they're going to be more than an indistinguishable mass of "Bilbo's dwarf buddies" (besides Thorin, Balin, maybe one or two others) they have to look very different - no one wants 13 Gimlis in personality, do we really want that in appearance? Well okay, Kili ...

Come on, just think of all the great dwarf-tossing jokes they could work in with the trolls and stone giants and Beorn!