Desolation of Smaug sneak peek (spoilers of course)

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Anyone watching it? TORN purportedly is going to have a report complete with screen caps later today, and I'm sure some of the multitudes there will be sharing there impressions.

[Elentári]

Was out myself and didn't get back in time, but first reports in on TORn are seeing fans seemingly disappointed:

Watched for an hour, and there was no trailer, only a scene that they had already finished before the split to three movies and that has been basically 100% spoiled already. You don't jazz people up ans then not deliver.

The last minute was a bunch of new never-before-scenes that we haven't seen before, including Thorin announcing himself to the people of Laketown.

[sauronsfinger]

Put in my code. Got the right screen. Sat in front of a countdown screen for ten minutes until it hit zero

then the screen went white and nothing

nothing

nothing

nothing

then it came on for the FINAL 2 minutes. I tried to get a replay and was able to get the first minute of it then it froze and stopped. Who do I throw a brick at?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

The last minute was a bunch of new never-before-scenes that we haven't seen before, including Thorin announcing himself to the people of Laketown.

That part sounds pretty cool.

[Elentári]

Here's a recap of the content, courtesy of Beeromir on TORn

It was about 2 minutes of interesting reveals, and about 54 minutes of filler.

I am not kidding about the filler. For example, he spent a few minutes talking about the mug he got when he was on the Colbert Report.

There were celebrity questions from:

Dom Monaghan
Billy Boyd
Evangeline Lilly
Orlando Bloom
Stephen Fry (no, not a question, just a really cheesy running joke where they would cut back to him every 10 minutes or so and he was still talking)
Lee Pace
Luke Evans
Stephen Colbert

And then a few questions from fans. Most of the questions had little to do with plot points, and where they did, Peter was very stingy with info.

I guess we found out that Peter acknowledges that woodland elves are a lesser brand of elves than the Sindaran. And he showed some concept art that has Thranduil's halls as a subterranean cavern with lighting breaking in through cracks in the ceiling and bridges fashioned from giant tree roots.

We saw a lot of green screen action. Tauriel will fight orcs at some point. One will get captured, and she'll threaten to kill it before being admonished to stop.

You see Thorin and co. arrive at Laketown and announce their entrance (again, on a green-screen set).

Looks like Legolas' physics-stretching fight scene in this one involves each leg balancing on moving beams as he fights, but they were green screened so who knows what those items are supposed to be (horses? giant spider legs? both sides of a convulsing ground as a crack opens up? some sort of industrial device? can't say).

The scene shown was Gandalf entering the High Fells tombs of the Nazgûl. It's a spiral staircase around the edges of a deep hole, with each level housing a tomb of the nine. They're all busted out -- out being a key phrase, as he says they've been broken from the inside. As has been noted elsewhere, Radagast shows up and it really feels like this was the original introduction to that character that is now being repurposed without any attempt to address the awkwardness of it all.

Nothing on Beorn or Smaug. They showed some dragon stuff early, but it's clear it wasn't Smaug.

We saw the dragon hoard, and Bilbo apparently fell into it above his head like a little kid in a ball pit. We see him climbing out of it and shaking himself off. So much for sneaking around, I guess.

There was a greenscreen scene where Thranduil is talking with Legolas, but I couldn't make out any dialogue.

That's about it.

It seems Lee Pace is playing a blinder with Thranduil...making him really smug and dislikeable...

Biggest disappointment for me is that the High Fells scene is apparently going to be in DoS and not the AUJ EE. Just feels wrong to me - the White Council storyline in AUJ needs more development...besides, it makes no geographical/logistical sense for Gandy to travel back over the MMs!

[kzer_za]

I wasn't really expecting too much from this - they wouldn't show any big goodies like Beorn or Smaug this early.

We actually already knew that PJ views the wood-elves differently from the Sindarin, by the way.

[Elentári]

13 screen shots posted by Jeremy on TORn...

http://imgur.com/a/oz9cI

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Biggest disappointment for me is that the High Fells scene is apparently going to be in DoS and not the AUJ EE. Just feels wrong to me - the White Council storyline in AUJ needs more development...besides, it makes no geographical/logistical sense for Gandy to travel back over the MMs!

I disagree with this, I think. I think it makes sense for Gandalf to leave the company after meeting Beorn to go investigate the Morgul blade. More so than trying to shoehorn that in sometime during the time period of AUJ. When would he be able to do so, in between when the Dwarves leave Rivendell and he shows up in the Goblin-cave with a big flash? That doesn't make sense to me. I'm happy to leave further development of the WC storyline to the further films, and let Bilbo and Elrond get to know each other better in the AUJ EE.

[kzer_za]

Gandalf is gone for long enough that going back over the Misty Mountains can work. The movies have always played loosely with distance and travel time anyway.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

That argument can work for either position.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Altaira at TORN now reports that WB won't allow them to post screeen caps after all.

[Elentári]

Biggest disappointment for me is that the High Fells scene is apparently going to be in DoS and not the AUJ EE. Just feels wrong to me - the White Council storyline in AUJ needs more development...besides, it makes no geographical/logistical sense for Gandy to travel back over the MMs!

I disagree with this, I think. I think it makes sense for Gandalf to leave the company after meeting Beorn to go investigate the Morgul blade. More so than trying to shoehorn that in sometime during the time period of AUJ. When would he be able to do so, in between when the Dwarves leave Rivendell and he shows up in the Goblin-cave with a big flash? That doesn't make sense to me. I'm happy to leave further development of the WC storyline to the further films, and let Bilbo and Elrond get to know each other better in the AUJ EE.

I feel it is too much to be squeezed into DoS along with the Thrain backstory - we still don't know if we will see how Gandalf got the key in a flashback plus a second encounter with Thrain in real-time at DG. The High Fells scene was clearly meant to be in AUJ - as per the published Weta Chronicles...so it must have been an extremely late decision to hold the scene over to DoS - if that is what is to happen: Garfeimo over on TORn suggested that PJ may possibly have been showing stuff for the EE as well as DoS yesterday!

[Elentári]

Apparently an edited version will be online from Wednesday until sometime in May, but you still need your code to view it...(and apparently you can only use the code 3 times?)

[Dave_LF]

Was there any way to tell whether the fells scene occurs after Gandalf leaves the party or if it's an intro/flashback that was actually supposed to have occurred while the dwarves were crossing the mountains?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Garfeimo over on TORn suggested that PJ may possibly have been showing stuff for the EE as well as DoS yesterday!

While it is possible that he might have shown some small things from the EE, I doubt very much that the one extended scene that he showed was from the EE, which at least according to TORN's report was introduced by Peter saying that though they did not have a trailer yet, they did have a scene to show. No way that is from the EE, regardless of what is said in the Chronicles. It certainly wouldn't be the first time Jackson and friends and plan to have a scene in one film and then moved it to a later film (although the example I thinking of, the Voice of Saruman, ended up being shunted all the way from TTT to the ROTK EE).

[Elentári]

Was there any way to tell whether the fells scene occurs after Gandalf leaves the party or if it's an intro/flashback that was actually supposed to have occurred while the dwarves were crossing the mountains?

Well, not having seen it myself...I did read it described on TORn by someone as feeling like an earlier version of how Radagast might have been introduced, but I don't suppose that is particularly accurate.

Here's the description from the TORn front pagecommentary:

Peter then says, to our great disappointment, that they do not have a trailer for us yet, that it will be coming this summer, but they do have a scene to show us. He intros it by saying that it's a scene based on information from the appendices of Lord of the Rings, building on the Necromancer/Dol Guldur story line and Gandalf's consultation with Galadriel regarding the Morgul blade that Radagast found. Gandalf goes to what Peter refers to as "the High Fells"

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Was others under the impression that the plan was going to be that they were going to make an edited version available publicly a few days after the live presentation? Apparently, the edited version will actually only be available to people with codes. That is annoying!

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Here's a gif that I found:

http://stealthylikeajackal.tumblr.com/p ... sneak-peak

[Elentári]

Was others under the impression that the plan was going to be that they were going to make an edited version available publicly a few days after the live presentation? Apparently, the edited version will actually only be available to people with codes. That is annoying!

Yeah, I had thought the idea was that the edited version would be available to all, like the V-logs. Fortunately I still have my code, even though I didn't get to use it yesterday.

Really don't understand WB's attitude over the marketing of the BR/DVDs - firstly biased towards the North American market, and now this as well. I wouldn't blame fans - in the Southern Hemisphere, in particular - if they said thanks but no thanks!

[Dave_LF]

I just have no desire to jump through all these ridiculous hoops in order to see a few seconds of footage from a movie that will be out in less than 9 months, and throughly advertised well before that.

Oh, and watch out for this guy:
https://twitter.com/StealthMountain