SPOILERS! Just a week before the worldwide release ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,’ EW.com has acquired some amazing new images from both ‘The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug‘ (Dec 13 2013) and ‘The Hobbit: There and Back Again’ (July 18th 2014). The first pic showcases Luke Evans as Bard the Bowman and Orlando Bloom reprising his role as Legolas taken from what looks to be a battle prep scene in ‘There and Back Again.’ Check out the EW.com article for some insights into the photo from Peter Jackson himself. [here] The second image features Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins in ‘The Desolation of Smaug‘ climbing on a great pile of gold. If you look closely, it looks like he is wearing The One Ring – but it could also just be a gold piece covering his hand. Jump over to EW.com for more details about the pic and talk of how The Hobbit is not just about a quest to regain gold from Smaug. [EW.com]
Many fans are eagerly anticipating a return to the fictional world of Middle-earth with next week’s general release of the first movie in “The Hobbit” trilogy. Director Peter Jackson and the film’s stars speak to The Associated Press about making “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”.
Jackson on shooting at 48 frames per second instead of the standard 24: “We’ve seen the arrival of iPhones and iPads and now there’s a generation of kids – the worry that I have is that they seem to think it’s OK to wait for the film to come out on DVD or be available for download. And I don’t want kids to see `The Hobbit’ on their iPads, really. Not for the first time. So as a filmmaker, I feel the responsibility to say, `This is the technology we have now, and it’s different … How can we raise the bar? Why do we have to stick with 24 frames? …'”
“The world has to move on and change. And I want to get people back into the cinema. I want to play my little tiny role in encouraging that beautiful, magical, mysterious experience of going into a dark room full of strangers, and being transported into a piece of escapism.”
Martin Freeman (Bilbo Baggins) on shooting some scenes without other actors around: “I must admit I found the green screen and all that easier than I thought I would. … I found the technical aspect of it quite doable. Some of it’s difficult, but it’s quite enjoyable, actually. It taps into when I used to play `war’ as a 6-year-old. And the Germans were all imaginary. Because I was playing a British person. So yeah, I was on the right side. …”
On marrying his performance to that of Ian Holm, who played an older Bilbo Baggins in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy: “I knew I couldn’t be a slave to it. Because as truly fantastic as Ian Holm is in everything, and certainly as Bilbo, I can’t just go and do an impression of Ian Holm for a year and a half. Because it’s my turn. But it was very useful for me to watch and listen to stuff he did, vocal ticks or physical ticks, that I can use but not feel hamstrung by.”
How did Peter Jackson turn one small book into another massive film trilogy? Simple: all it took was some imagination and a bit of help from the author of The Hobbit himself.
The director has taken heat for turning what was intended to be a two-part prequel to his Lord of the Rings series into a three-part saga, especially given that the first Hobbit film clocks in at nearly three hours. Unlike the LOTR books, The Hobbit is a thin volume written for children, leading some to accuse him of stretching out narrative and milking the franchise. Instead, Jackson contends that the brevity of the book actually helped make it possible.
“The book is written in a very brisk pace, so pretty major events in the story are covered in only two or three pages,” Jackson told reporters on Wednesday. “So once you start to develop the scenes and plus you wanted to do a little bit more character development, plus the fact that we could also adapt the appendices of Return of the King, which is 100-odd pages of material that sort of takes place around the time of The Hobbit, so we wanted to expand the story of The Hobbit a little bit more, as did Tolkien himself. So all those factors combined gave us the material to do it.”
The appendices, which were tacked onto the final book of the Lord of the Rings series, fill in many blanks that were left in The Hobbit, which co-screenwriter Philippa Boyens pointed out.
“If we hadn’t done The Lord of the Rings, we wouldn’t have had done this. But we did,” she said. “We know where Gandalf was. So as soon as we knew we were going to that part of the tale, what happens in those years, because we knows what happens because Tolkien kept writing, you start to draw in and make a mythology.”
Series newcomer Richard Armitage, who plays the lead dwarf Thorin, chalked it up to the entire saga’s deep subtext.
For those of you who couldn’t catch The Colbert Report’s Hobbit Week, TheOneRing.net has assembled links to clips from the shows. Steven Colbert, a self-professed Tolkien uber-geek, dedicated this past week to interviewing cast members from the upcoming Hobbit movie. Interviews included Martin Freeman, Andy Serkis, Sir Ian McKellen, Elijah Wood, and director Peter Jackson himself. Follow the links below to see all five spots, but beware that it’s been reported there may be a spoiler or two!
Another TV spot for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey just became available on the Warner Bros. Hobbit facebook page. TV Spot #11, is 34 seconds long and includes even more new Riddles in the Dark footage at the beginning, plus Andy Serkis’ chilling delivery of the the line “Time’s up,” at the end. More dwarf vs. Goblin footage can also be seen in this action packed TV commercial. Enjoy!
Ever wondered exactly what they do at Weta Workshop and Weta Digital? Richard Taylor talks about their work in this neat little clip. Plus there’s some footage and red carpet interviews from the Wellington premiere of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey that you may not have sen previously. Continue reading “Richard Taylor talks about Weta’s work”
