The Hall of Fire

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!

Your first paragraph is right on...I don't mind Faramir (besides his men beating Gollum) or even Frodo sending Sam away, but the removal of Denethor's palantír annoys me so much. Anyway, the whole Necromancer plotline makes me nervous and strikes me as something that could go really badly. The books...

Having thought about it a little more, there really is a whole lot going on in the second half of The Hobbit. It's a dense little book! And setting aside the Necromancer stuff, there are some minor expansions of the plot that are only natural to take, such as giving Bard a fuller introduction, devel...

Not very happy with this. Sure there's probably technically enough material in the appendices and Quest for Erebor (if they're allowed to use it) to fill three movies, but it means basically speculating a lot of fanfiction based on fleeting references to various events. Azanulbizar is really the onl...

Eh, I'm not too happy about it, though at least it's better than a forced romance. There is some precedence for female warriors beyond Éowyn, but only human ones unless you count Lúthien destroying Sauron's tower and her other magic feats (but that's a stretch). I'm fine with a couple of invented ch...

This wouldn't be getting all this coverage if Empire hadn't gone so far with their speculation. It seems kind of irresponsible of them.

My biggest worry about the Necromancer storyline of the things I think have a decent chance of happening is that they'll go from Gandalf's worries about Sauron maybe eventually allying with Smaug (in Quest for Erebor) to actually having Smaug answer to Sauron.

Well first of all, Cumberbatch's statement is very vague and he seems uncertain about it. I think it's a bit of a leap for Empire to go from "a character in the five legions war or something" to say the Necromancer will be physically present. It does sound like the Necromancer may be behin...

Frelga wrote:That's the opportunity to show something PJ mostly skipped in LOTR, IMO - the tragedy of a Fall. He did get it right with Boromir, so it's not like he doesn't get it, but Denethor

There's also Thorin, though to a more limited extent.