After the worldwide Fan Event the other day, Evangeline Lilly stuck around to chat with Entertainment Weekly moderator Anthony Breznican and answer a few more questions from fans at The Grove in Los Angeles. Even if you watched the live event online, you won’t have caught this before.
Lilly had a few interesting things to say, and went into a little more depth about the background of her character Tauriel, and what motivates her. I guess that some of this might be considered background/character movie spoilers so highlight the space below to read a couple of excerpts. Continue reading “Evangeline Lilly reveals the background of Tauriel”
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If you’ve seen much of the various bits of footage of Smaug’s hoard, you’ll have gotten the feeling that Smaug’s hoard is pretty large. Over on Wired, Rhett Allain has attempted to use algebra to calculate the size (and modern worth) of Smaug’s hoard.
It’s a valiant attempt, but having seen more of the hoard shown on screen at the Fan Event, I think he underestimates the vastness of Smaug’s hoard. I have to emphasise that it is simply immense, spanning the breadth and length of the entire throne room in several mountainous mounds.
Factoid: the amount of mined gold estimated to exist in the world today in total is put at a cube roughly 25 metres (about 82 feet) on each size. Smaug’s hoard, as Wired estimates it, is far larger — 158 cubic metres!
Now I know this is just a fantasy worlds, but that must mean that the total amount of gold in Middle-earth must be simply enormous. Consider the even-vaster wealth of Moria, long since looted by Orcs. Yes, the “wealth of Mora was not in gold or jewels”, yet they must have had a great store of it even if obtained through trade. The Dwarven mines of the Grey Mountains were also fruitful, until the dragons came, and the wealth of Gondor even in its waning must have been substantial. Where is all this wealth? Was much of it lost to the peoples of Middle-earth through wars, buried deep (such as Moria’s lower treasuries) or simply hoarded by Sauron?
If it wasn’t, such an immense amount of gold would surely dilute its real value. After all, the value of these things is in proportion to their scarcity. The more common gold is, the less its value (this is why de Beers used to hoard its diamonds). Certainly the Lake-folk in The Hobbit speak of rivers of gold once flowing from the Mountain but that’s metaphor … and possibly a bit of handed-down exaggeration.
How much gold is in Smaug’s hoard?
I guess dragons love gold. In the recent trailers for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (YouTube clip) you can get a glimpse of all the gold Smaug has. Why does a dragon need this much gold? I don’t get it. Maybe Smaug doesn’t actually like gold but he just wants to keep it away from other people.
Whatever his motivation for hoarding, I am going to try to get an estimate for just how much gold is in the Lonely Mountain.
Scale
This is the hardest part. How big is the dragon? How big is a hobbit? We need some value here. My original plan was to look at a section of the trailer that shows gold pieces flying through the air. If I measure the acceleration of one piece of gold as it falls, I can assume that it has Earth-like acceleration of 9.8 m/s2. From this, I could find the scale of something in the scene.
Well, that didn’t work out too well. Instead, I am just going with plain estimations. Here is a shot of Bilbo sliding down a pile of gold.
I previously estimated that a hobbit was about 1.3 meters tall. That would put this gold hill with a slope side at least 5 meters long inclined at 20 degrees above the horizontal. I think that actually, this gold pile might even be much larger than this estimate.
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Physical (i.e.: Blu-ray 3D and DVD) copies of the Extended Edition of the Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey were supposed to go on sale in stores in the USA on November 5, with the UK follow on November 11.
But the journey from screen to store to the hands of fans has proved to be as challenging as Bilbo’s own adventure. Over the past couple of days, TORn has received numerous reports from perturbed fans via e-mail, Facebook and Twitter.
Fans report that the Extended Edition is unavailable at Target in all forms, difficult to find at Best Buy and Barnes & Noble (where you might grab a Blu-ray copy, but are unlikely to find the DVD), and that Amazon is temporarily out of stock of the DVD and shipments are being delayed by one to three days.
What’s going on? Well, we have reached out to Warner Bros. to find out what’s happening, and provide some firm answers. In the meantime, read our complete report on the issues that fans have been experiencing trying to get their hands on a copy of the EE — and a couple of things you need to be wary of lest you end up with a version that contains less than you expected! Continue reading “Trouble getting a physical copy of The Hobbit Extended Edition? You’re not alone.”
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It seems even Hollywood elves get worried about packing on the weight over the years!
When Orlando Bloom was asked how it felt to portray Legolas in The Hobbit trilogy after a decade, knowing he’s 60 years younger than he was in Lord of the Rings, he was justifiably anxious.
“The first thing I did when I got to New Zealand was try on my old Legolas costume, because I wanted to see if it would still fit,” the 36-year-old joked at yesterday’s live Hobbit global fan event. Continue reading “Orlando Bloom worried he wouldn’t fit into old Lord of the Rings elf costume after 10 years”
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Someone at Warner Bros, may have been taking their inspiration from history in naming their latest marketing effort for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. It’s called The Tapestry. Possibly a bit of a nod toward the famous Bayeux Tapestry, possibly not.
Regardless, what’s indisputable is that it’s big and bold. Continue reading “Check out The Tapestry, a new scenic overview of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug!”
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As we march closer to the Holiday shopping season, we need ideas as to what we may want to buy our loved ones. Well, our friends at Weta Workshop in their most recent newsletter have given us several ideas on what from Middle-earth we can get.
Two new items were unvelied in this group with a huge yet cool looking Gollum 1:1 statue and some beautiful Elven Earrings for only $75.
If you’ve been waiting on some good deals on previously released items you can get Balin’s Mace for $150 (only 10 available for this price), Dwalin’s Axes $199.50 (Only 5 available at this price), free shipping on The Hobbit/The Lord of the Rings Art Prints, and The One Ring for $85. These deals are good while these limited supplies last or until November 17th whichever comes first.
You can get the full run down of all the fantastic items Weta has on special right now on their Christmas Specials Page.
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