The final Lego sets for The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies have been out for a little while now, so I thought it might be a good time to put them all in one place for folks to look over. Plus I wanted to indulge in a little speculation.
Lego Battle of the Five Armies set
Pieces: 472 | Minifigs: 7 | Packaging: Box | Instructions: Yes
Included minifigs: Dain II Ironfoot, Azog the Defiler, Thorin Oakenshield, 2 x Gundabad Orcs, Bard the Bowman, Gwaihir the Windlord, Legolas Greenleaf.
Order on Amazon.com
Spoiler analysis (highlight below to read)
Two stand-outs in this set, I think. The first is, of course, the Dain mini-fig, which TORn staffer MrCere discussed just the other week. The second is the actual location: it’s the titular battle, yet it’s sited firmly within Dale in this playset.
Yet, Peter Jackson’s draft battlemap depicts a much more widespread conflict that encompasses not just Dale, but the entire mountain of Erebor and its surrounds, with forces approaching from all directions. I continue to wonder whether the ruins of Dale will form some early, yet significant, skirmish, with a larger, climactic battle involving Beorn and Bolg on the plains in front of the front gate of Erebor itself. Also, despite the inclusion of the ballista, it doesn’t contain any of the large troll-like monsters we’ve seen in recent artwork.
Lego The Lonely Mountain set
Pieces: 866 | Minifigs 5 | Packaging: Box | Instructions: Yes
Included minifigs: Smaug the Dragon, Dwalin, Balin, Bilbo Baggins, Kili, Fili.
Order on Amazon.com
Spoiler analysis (highlight below to read)
This is a strange one: it really feels like a leftover from The Desolation of Smaug. I mean, Smaug is there and it features the mine/rail car set that was a big set-piece toward the climax of the film. Yet Fili and Kili — who stayed in Lake-town — are there. Maybe the Fili and Kili plotline came after Lego locked in this set? I dunno, it seems to defy logic that Smaug would re-enter Erebor in the final film: he’s off to a hot date with Bard and the Black Arrow (ballista bolt?)
Lego Witch-king Battle set
Pieces: 101 | Minifigs: 3 | Packaging: Box | Instructions: Yes
Included minifigs: Elrond, Galadriel, The Witch-king of Angmar.
Order on Amazon.com
Spoiler analysis (highlight below to read)
Official artwork has thus far paired Galadriel and Gandalf, and Elrond and Saruman. This set suggests something different.
I wonder whether this playset is an indication that there’s going to be a confrontation between Galadriel, Elrond and the Witch-king as a prelude to freeing Gandalf. Will the two elves arrive first, and take care of the Witch-king and free Gandalf before running into trouble against Sauron? Will Saruman then catch up with the trio and save the day?
The other thing to note is Galadriel’s possession of the Phial — also absent from the official artwork. Its light (that of the Silmaril the Earendil carries) could be potent in repelling the Witch-king.
Lego Attack on Lake-town set
Pieces: 313 | Minifigs: 5 | Packaging: Box | Instructions: Yes
Included minifigs: Bard the Bowman, Bain son of Bard, Tauriel, 2 x Gundabad Orcs.
Order on Amazon.com
Spoiler analysis (highlight below to read)
Finally, there’s the Attack on Lake-town playset. This features a couple of Gundabad Orcs as the antagonists. In the film, Bolg lead the previous attack on Lake-town, searching specifically for Thorin Oakenshield. He called the infiltration off when the orcs discovered he had gone. So, why would they attack it again? What, or whom, do they seek?
Does it have some relevance to Thrain’s revelation in the DOS: EE that “They are in league — the dragon and the one!”? If so, will Bolg’s underlings act at Smaug’s behest to attack Lake-town in tandem with his own assault? That could be why we see the Windlance in this set. Definitely raises lots of questions.
End spoiler analysis!
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Welcome to our collection of TORn’s hottest topics for the past week. If you’ve fallen behind on what’s happening on the Message Boards, here’s a great way to catch the highlights. Or if you’re new to TORn and want to enjoy some great conversations, just follow the links to some of our most active discussions. Watch this space as we spotlight the most popular buzz on TORn’s Message Boards. Everyone is welcome, so come on in and join the fun!
Continue reading “TORn Message Boards Weekly Roundup – October 26, 2014”
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Eagle-eyed Ringers spotted Royd Tolkien in the Desolation of Smaug Extended Edition. You can see him here in this scene between Gandalf and Beorn discussing the tombs in Rhudaur.
And confirmed by Royd himself via his Twitter feed 🙂
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Catching up with some of our friends from New Zealand, we learned about a project that involves the efforts of a lot of Kiwis, including Sylvester McCoy of Hobbit fame and Lord of the Rings’ Alex Funke. For good measure New Zealand’s Grammy winner Kimbra (Somebody That I Used To Know) is supporting the project with her voice.
In the age of computer generated effects, the film “Birds” is a throwback. A friend to TORn, Horst Sarubin, who worked on visual effects for the three Hobbit films, is behind the project that uses puppets, shot one frame at a time with incremental movements between frames to create a motion picture. The film, about the struggles of George the bird in the primordial forests of Zealandia (pre-historic New Zealand) to carry on.
McCoy is well known for his bird whistles and humor, which Hobbit director Peter Jackson definitely brought through the former Dr. Who’s Radagast into cinematic Middle-earth. In the film’s kickstarter campaign McCoy presents those whistles and gets a little bird treat in return. In the same video Funke, who is best know for helping make the LOTR bigatures look amazing on screen, explains his role is to make the cinematography great.
The stop-motion technique is being employed to give the filmmakers a hands-on experience and a final project they claim will be alive and organic. Tying closely with the passions of Peter Jackson, these are the same techniques used by Ray Harryhausen and Willis H. O’Brien. The original King Kong movie was made in this fashion, inspiring a generation of filmmakers.
With a team of grass-roots talent with a Middle-earth cinematic legacy efforting the film and a universal appealing story, but set in the ancient human-free land that would eventually become New Zealand, TORn readers may want to know further information is available at georgethebird.com. The grass-roots effort is seeking fan support via the kickstarter campaign above.
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It’s been a while (or at least it feels like it) since we’ve all had a truly good spy story with some juicy details or photos that Warner Bros. hasn’t trickle-released to the public.
If you’ve been chafing at the bit for more, 中土红皮书 (The Red Book of Middle-earth, a Tolkien fan site from China) has just leaked 27 images from two forthcoming movie tie-in books: Jude Fisher’s The Battle of the Five Armies Visual Companion and Brian Sibley’s The Battle of the Five Armies Official Movie Guide. Be warned: there are movie spoilers as well as discussion/analysis below.
If you like what you see after the movie spoiler space, you can still pre-order your copy using the links below: neither book is due for release until November 20.
Continue reading “Check out 27 new images from The Battle of the Five Armies Visual Companion and Official Movie Guide!”
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Entertainment Weekly posted this fascinating article, giving some insight into Peter Jackson’s plans for what must surely be the epic battle to end all epic battles. Just how do you stage the fight which is the title of your final movie in Middle-earth?
“There’s a lot of logistics that have to be thought through,” says Jackson. “We have dwarves and men and elves and orcs, all with different cultures, with different weapons, and different shields and patterns and tactics.”
The EW article contains a particularly interesting ‘map’, showing the different groups and their positioning in the battle at the gate of Erebor. Exactly what/who those five armies will be in Jackson’s movie has been a subject of speculation – and if you’re avoiding spoilers, now would be a good time to stop reading!
Tolkien wrote, ‘Upon one side were the Goblins and the Wild Wolves, and upon the other were Elves and Men and Dwarves.’ Readers have often wondered, however, why the Eagles don’t count as an army; Douglas A Anderson notes, in The Annotated Hobbit, that ‘in the 1977 Rankin/Bass animated television program of The Hobbit, the Five Armies specifically include the Eagles instead of the Wolves.’
Some TORn staffers have suggested that, having experienced battle in the First World War, when flight was still in its infancy and the idea of an air force was new, Tolkien perhaps didn’t consider battles as taking place in the air. It could, however, be a simple question of semantics: the word ‘army’ actually means ‘the military land forces of a nation’ (according to Collins English Dictionary). The Professor, being a stickler for precise meaning, perhaps dismissed as too clumsy ‘The Battle of Five Armies and Two Air Forces’ (if we include the ‘bat-cloud’) – so his ‘five armies’ would only refer to the land forces involved.
None of this necessarily means anything when it comes to Peter Jackson’s movie! He’s already strayed from Tolkien’s outline of the battle participants; the official synopsis for The Battle of the Five Armies states, ‘Sauron, the Dark Lord, has sent forth legions of Orcs in a stealth attack upon the Lonely Mountain’. In the book it is the goblins from the Misty Mountains who instigate the war, gathering forces with their kin at Gundabad, and coming down from the North led by Bolg (Azog, his father, having been slain at the Battle of Azanulbizar) – Sauron isn’t involved at all.
The map in EW’s article shows six different colour-coded groups – goblins and wargs are one colour, with eagles, elves, men and dwarves each having a different colour. This would seem to confirm what we at TORn have speculated in our panel presentations at various conventions – that Jackson’s five armies will in fact be men, dwarves, elves, orcs and eagles, with the wolves/wargs being a part of the orc army. The sixth colour on the diagram is for Beorn and Thorin – perhaps to highlight the key players of the battle (although Bard, though having his own spot on the schematic, does not share this orange colour – and it’s interesting to note that Dain, surely a key player, is not mentioned by name on this map; nor is Azog).
There’s much food for thought in this simple diagram. It appears that Bard leads men attacking from the East (from Dale, whither Lake-town refugees have fled after Smaug’s attack?). Elves come in from the West – presumably direct from Mirkwood. Beorn is coming up from the South, and the Eagles down from the North. There are also numbers on the chart – and Jackson is quoted as saying, ‘We could then start drawing the arrows on the schematics’, suggesting this is just one of several. Perhaps these numbers indicate a sequence of events? Beorn is the highest number on this image – meaning he arrives late in the battle, as in the book?
Also in the article is a wonderful piece of artwork, showing a mighty battle outside Erebor – if you click on the image (at EW’s site), it links to a bigger version. This picture seems to include cave trolls and other strange, giant creatures – and siege towers? Is this just an artist’s vision of the battle, or does it offer more insight into what we will see on the big screen?
Questions still to be answered include: when/how does Dain arrive from the North? Will Tauriel fight with the dwarves or with her Mirkwood kin? We’ve seen, in the trailer, Legolas in Dale with Bard; will he fight alongside men? The newly released Desolation of Smaug Extended Edition contains dialogue between Thrain and Gandalf, emphasizing an alliance between Smaug and the Necromancer – is it even possible that Smaug’s death will be delayed until the start of the battle, so we see him helping the attacking orcs??
And a final question – is it December yet….?
[Read the Entertainment Weekly article here]
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Royd Tolkien
