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Hobbit 2014 [Spoilers]
klatu003
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Comments
At risk of sounding like a 'scratched record' (I know), but how a LotR license can possibly be allowed to expire without completing the journey would be close to (if not actually) an insult. The range should at the very least finish the story. And with that in mind, we absolutely must have:
Witchking on a Nazgul vs Eowyn,
'Fires of Mount Doom' Frazzled/Corrupted Frodo vs Gollum (happy face),
- Cheap set. A few BURPS overlooking a 'lava' stream. Play feature: The Lava 'door' slides back and forth to swallow up Gollum & destroy ring.
Of course, the personal wish list includes
Gothmog's Siege of Minas Tirith/Capture of Osgiliath & Gondor Knights,
Gondor Rangers Ambush of Southron Mumak (Armoured elephant), Constraction Balrog vs Gandalf on (collapsible) Bridge of Khazad Dum,
Properly armoured/topknotted Lurtz' Hunters Ambush vs Boromir (with corrupted face, and alternative goggle-eyed, tongue out, humourous 'dead/dying' face).
I could go on...
(I hope The Hobbit gets a decent Smaug).
If doing a LotR Galadriel, I'd try and 'kill all birds with one stone', by doing a combined scenes set, 'the welcoming/gift giving/mirror of/rowboats set'.
But I can live without that, if it'd mean getting a Balrog instead.
After reading the book and seeing how often Bilbo used the ring in key situations it is a wonder one has not been included in one of the sets already.
Is there any other figure that can be used in its stead?
Thanks
SapmiSatan: what Emperor new Minifigure? Thanks
I have to admit - a translucent Bilbo would be very cool.
You guys have cheered me up with thinking these sets could be LoTR and the Hobbit sets for Dec will be revealed later. Maybe the fact that there are only three listed leans in that direction - few, but substantial.
@LegoMatt @LegoMatt - You excellent 'Fires of Mount Doom' idea has $12.99 all over it. Agree, we must get Witchking(Nazgul) on a Fell Beast vs Eowyn, but don't forget Merry in Rohan gear to slash him in the back of the knee.
For the win - Minas Tirith. Please, TLG, please.
"I had a look at the trade catalogue, unfortunately, 79015 to 79018 is for The Hobbit: There And Back Again (there is no pictures as to how they look like) and there is no mention of LOTR anywhere. So I must say the situation looks pretty grim for LOTR... "
It's not looking good for LotR, folks...
Still doesn't provide a picture or some "proof" that those sets are indeed The Hobbit. I'm not sure it makes much sense that they would release TABA sets before the movie came out. I know they did with the second movie with Mirkwood and Barrel Escape but this was because LEGO didn't have time to adjust after the change from 2 to 3 movies. It would make more sense to me if these sets were from the second movie and they split up the second wave.
It also would be weird for LEGO to just end such a large license without any Gondor sets. There is basically next to nothing for Return of the King which is the climax to the whole story!!
One theory I have read is LEGO is releasing more Hobbit sets in October, then focusing on The LEGO Movie sets and the final wave of Hobbit and LOTR will come out in 2015.
I am still holding out hope until I see actual proof that it is dead!!!
@klatu003 Whoops! Yes Witchking on Fell Beast is what I meant. (That must be a hangover from childhood i think, calling fell beast's nazgul. I don't know why I do it). Also yes, ideally the set would have Merry in rohan garb, possibly a dead-face battered theoden too, but i was just describing the minimum required content for that set, rather than any nice extras.
brickset.com/detail/?Set=70403-1
(but it is of course not the same thing)
And yes an infinite amount of new epic LOTR/Hobbit sets are always welcome! So TLG (if someone, anyone, anybody with ties to TLG reads this) we demand more LOTR/Hobbit sets! So keep that stuff rolling out of your factories! ;-)
Something like this
We have a 70403 set, I'd like one we can build.
I'm hoping that we haven't seen one because of the split from 2 to 3 movies.
I'm going to hope #79015, at $15 and 101 pieces is the throne of Erebor with Dain, similar to that of Orthanc.
#79016 at $30 and 313 pieces could be an army of dwarves or men, similar to those we have seen previously. Otherwise, another Dol Guldur scene where Gandalf is freed.
#79017 at $60 for only 471 pieces seems very expensive compared to the rest, and I'm hoping is just an entirely brick built Smaug, but I'm guessing Smaug attacking Lake Town.
#79018 at $130 for an unknown number of pieces I hope is a nice, large Battle of Five Armies scene, with lots of army builders, and not too many characters we already have.
Any one else have different ideas/desires for these sets?
*** The Hobbit MOVIE/BOOK SPOILERS ***
I would hazard that one set could be:
Bard atop a small (Lake-town) tower, firing the 'black-arrow' catapult.
For it to make sense/have a play feature, it should be at Smaug. So I hope it is part of a broader 'Smaug attacks Lake Town' battle set, but could easily be a simple/cheaper 'Smaug vs Bard-atop-tower' set (Lego might consider Lake Town 'done' already).
The Battle of Five Armies seems a must.
I'll be somewhat amazed if this doesn't feature somehow in the sets (it's bound to be an epic fx sequence for the movie). But i don't hold the same hope for it being as good an epic lego set without a solid battlepack (all-soldiery) to back it up.
(If LotR was anything to go by, 5-armies will have too many named characters at the expense of never-released general combatants, but i hope they correct that imbalance).
Ruling out for argument's sake any battlepacks, we'd probably (depending on Peter Jackson's I-Heart-Elves slant) see a foot of the mountain/mountain watch-tower/mountain doorway located battle set, featuring Thorin, an Eagle perhaps, a handful of named characters (Bard/Legolas*cough*/Fili/Bolg perhaps) and some orcs.
It may get the Helm's Deep treatment, so a smaller:
5-armies reinforcements set
Featuring (annoyingly for army building) named characters (Dain?), Beorn, a dwarf soldier, couple more orcs.
Which leaves room for something unseen... something secret, something safe lol.
:oP
I'm in full agreement, I think bard shooting Smaug and 5 Armies have to be included, and I would assume they are the two larger sets, leaving the two smaller ones a mystery. I really can't think of another good scene for the smallest besides the throne room with the arkenstone...Hope we find out soon.
*** The Hobbit MOVIE/BOOK SPOILERS ***
Going off-topic. Went to the movies to see "Desolation" in IMAX 3D. Sigh. I was bored. I was prepared to see something changed from the book, but I didn't expect to be bored. One of the charms of the book was the dialogue. Peter Jackson's invented dialogue is giving Lucas a run for wooden. Although Howard Shore once again composed the music, it just didn't stir me. Almost upchucked my popcorn when Kate-from-Lost did the big healing scene. I don't understand why professional movie reviewers *mostly* gave it good reviews. "But be forewarned: Whether through ego, avarice, or unchecked enthusiasm, Jackson has entered deep into the realm of fan fiction. Indeed, having granted himself boundless license to reimagine, he seems to have begun reimagining even his own reimaginings. " Christopher Orr The Atlantic
On topic: I have low expectations for the final four Hobbit sets. @legomatt, I think your guesses are good. The $129.99 set the Battle of the Five Armies. The $59.99 Smaug vs Bard and the tower with the *f-cough* Arrow of Jackson-made-up-Doom. Crossing my fingers for a brick-built Smaug. The $29.99 sounds like it could be an add-on to the mountain battle scene with some army builder orcs.
I very much hope we are done with Dol Guldor.
@TheMurmur the small set does lend itself to the something hidden theme we had from #79000 and #79005 at the same price point. An throne room and an Arkenstone sounds likely with Thorin & Bilbo again.
TLG please, please surprise me with one last UCS Lord of the Rings set worthy of the license.
@klatu003 It has been a few years since I read the book, and of course Peter Jackson may not follow the story at all, but in my recollection Thorin never sees Erebor restored. I didn't think much time passed between Smaug attacking Lake Town and the 5 Armies battle, and the dwarves really didn't get a chance to put things right until after the fight. Based on that, if I remember correctly, maybe we will see Dain instead of Thorin, and at least get a new mini figure.
@klatu003
Haha :oD Your '...Arrow-of-Jackson' bit made me laugh. I saw the Desolation of Smaug film in December and didn't enjoy it all that much either. I will thank it for one thing - it made me want to read the book again. Which i immediately did.
My first feeling was that the film felt 'backwards' - starting at a roaring pace, escaping to (an under-used) Beorn's (under-featured) house, into the spiders, etc, but got gradually slower and slower until (reaching Lake town) it completely stalled and never got going again.
I suspect the two-films-as-planned but suddenly made into three, caused my pacing issues, because it would mean the start of Desolation probably contains the original climax of Hobbit 1, whilst the end of this would have been the start of original 2. So this possibly starts with a climax and ends with an intro. But given that they've expanded to make 3 films, i was hoping the Dwarfs would get more screen time to develop as characters, (it is their and Bilbo's story after all) but no. We're forced to suffer 30+ minutes of Jackson's Elves in God Mode, slicing up as many parachuted-in CGI orcs as necessary until PJ exhausted all the kill moves he could think of. (Which also renders the 'much-feared' enemy impotent as figures of threat).
I honestly felt nothing in those orc attack sequences, the ease of their insta-death. It was just repetitive filler, and went on and on and on.
The bit that reeeeeeaaally got on my nerves was the horrendous handling of the Dwarfs in the mountain, giving a dimwit smaug the comedy runaround.
One minute they're terrified of the possibility a fiendishly cunning and utterly deadly dragon still lives, the next it's a Benny Hill sequence too stupid for words, with dwarfs popping up anywhere the camera points, and a dragon so incompetent you wonder how the hell it managed to take the place over at all.
Utterly utterly stupid all for the sake of a 3D-driven sequence.
Smaug and the dwarfs on the mountain should have been a terrifying, slow tension building, stalking in the dark, hide and seek type sequence, interspersing this nightly mountainside threat with Bilbo's cat and mouse encounters, until its ultimate frustration end with a roaring, flaming fury, smashing the mountainside in, before heading off to lake town, based on Bilbo's let-slip info. PJ's version of this sequence is a mess by comparison.
Lastly, the Music - I agree, it was an issue I had with the first one too. Apart from the very early dwarf song (which Shore didn't compose), there's been no music of note in either film. Nothing to denote specific cultures or regions. In the LotR Trilogy, you can pick out Isengard, Rohan, Ents, Gondor, Shire, etc. Everything and every character has it's own particular sound, instrumentation, and mood. These Hobbit films have suffered badly from being rushed. I've found the music to be bland, instantly forgotten (if noticed at all), barely even functional. Which is a shame, as I was hoping for some Dwarf-culture inspired tunes akin to LotR.
@legomatt - agree with ALL your comments. I liked the dwarf song in the first one, but Mr. Klatu's first remark when I talked about going to the second movie was "it better not have a bunch of singing dwarves!"
The orcs generated a feeling of endless, mindless, menace in the LoTR movies- in The Hobbit - *meh* CGI bad guys just don't feel real.
Well I (officially) still haven't seen the film, since I agreed to go see it with a friend in an IMAX theatre with whom I had also been to the first Hobbit film last year. But since we, to this day, have not got around to go see it. Not being able to bear having to wait any longer, I thought, the hell with it, and so I saw it last night (not in IMAX), and I was kind of disappointed. I really want to like this film, but there are a lot of strands which do not add up.
The second instalment lacked substance. Parts of the book, such as the Beorn scenes, were rushed. Whereas An unexpected Journey took the time to slowly unfold the beginning of a story, set at a similar pace to the LTR trilogy, The Desolation of Smaug, was an over the top action packed roller-coaster ride which failed to give me the thrills and chills I was hoping for. The pace of the film was uneven. Maybe as a fan of PJ LOTR trilogy, my hopes were soaring, set too high, what can I say; the plane has most definitely crushed into the mountain. The second Hobbit instalment did not deliver what I had wished/hoped for.
The fight scenes in LOTR were epic, and felt realistic, and were poignant. However, many of the action scenes from TDOS/H2 were lackluster to ludicrous, they did not add anything, but rather subtracted from the 'suspense of disbelieve'. Something from which AUJ also suffered somewhat with the cavernous fight flight scenes with the Goblin King and his minions, but not to the extend that my enjoyment of AUJ was severely diminished. I guess, I did not have too many problems at that stage of the film to adjust my 'suspense of disbelief' to the all reality defying fantastic cartoonesque dimensions, to which Peter Jackson's depiction had stretched. With TDOS, the endless stream of rampaging CGI orcs, chasing barrelled dwarves along the wild gushing river, getting butchered with swift strokes by mostly invincible elves, was really sub-par and unconvincing. The CGI Legolas wasn't just nimble, he was just poorly rendered in certain action scenes. He was not bound to the law of gravity, not even in an Elvish manner. Hopping around, jumping from one soaked dwarf head to the next was an utter facepalm.
In LOTR, you could easy and wholeheartedly identify with Frodo, and all the other characters, and I was completely sucked into the fictional world of Middle Earth. The movies worked wondrously well because, I (as a viewer) felt the burden which the various protagonists had to cary, on their quest to overcome evil and themselves. Where the LOTR trilogy is laced with character development, The Desolation of Smaug despite its 3D depiction felt so two-dimensional, which is such a pity since AUJ felt promising of what was still to come. Peter Jackson's Hobbit tail has deviated extensively from Tolkien's book The Hobbit, but not for the better. Smaug the main antagonist is portrayed by PJ undeserving as anything but the fearsome, ferocious, cunning dragon from the book. Instead of Bildo tiptoeing around in the dark with danger lurking around every corner, adding to the suspense and the gradual rise to the climax in the story, Smaug is tricked and disposed of in a somewhat Looney Tunes like fashion.
I figured that thirteen dwarves, Bilbo, Smaug, Beorn, Bard etcetera offers ample possibilities for insights into their personal lives, history, and specific character traits. But the dwarfs and all the others remain mostly extras instead of round characters with a soul and a heartbeat. I liked the idea of the creation/inclusion of the new film character Tauriel into the story, but so far she is barely more then just a Juliet (of Romeo) or Pocahontas like archetype, without (again) much character development and depth added.
All in all, I believe this shows that a blazing visual spectacle, no matter how stunning it is executed for the most part, is no substitute for substance, not even when light is the medium for story telling. I hope that the final part of The Hobbit will make up for flaws of this second part.
ps.
Despite all this I will still buy the 3D blue Ray disc(s) title, when it gets released.
******
I like the Lego Hobbit theme, although it could have been better, and I hope more sets will come. When I learned in 2011 or the beginning of 2012 that Lego would develop and release LOTR Lego, I was thrilled, envisioning a huge mesmerising and elaborate brick build Middle Earth, but I now fear that the theme might be dispensed of in a haphazard way. Without many of the sets so many LOTR/Hobbit Lego fans desire ever being made, nor many of the characters ever being released as minifigure.
Think of sets: with Tom, Bert, and William the troll; a set with Faramir; Galadriel; Gothmog; Gondorian soldiers; Haradrim with an oliphant; fell-beast with the Witch King of Angmar; a set with a giant Sauron bigfig (or minifig), Isildur, and Elendil from the the opening of the fellowship etcetera.
TLG has proven that even though the majority of LOTR/Hobbit sets are fairly minifig driven, the design for the construction part of various of these sets can also be excellent, and interesting.
***HOBBIT FILM SPOILERS***
@TheBigLegoski
Yep. I agree with everything you just said. The biggest disappointment for the films is indeed the lack of viewer immersion into the world. LotR grabs you from the outset and treats the subject with total seriousness.
Any creature, even one lowly goblin, could kill any or all of the fellowship at any moment if they let slip their guard, and you believe it. Characters are genuinely fearful, seek to avoid enemy/conflict, desperate for aid, fighting retreats all the time.
The Hobbit films (Desolation guilty moreso) replete with PJ's ever-ridiculous super-elves and increasingly cartoonish getaway sequences completely rob the encounters of that same drama, threat, or excitement, and render the enemy impotent. Azog's orcs have spent two films chasing down the dwarfs, and when they catch up with them at a river, or at lake town, or at where next... cut to ribbons over and over by minimal (unprepared) resistance. Same with Smaug, a creature from times forgotten, that has destroyed an entire (fully guarded & armed) dwarf city, rampaged and desolated the lands around... is given the comedy runaround of all things by half a dozen.
The third installment has an impossible task of neutering the super elves before the big fight (cos' there'll be an army of them), buffing the orcs into a meaningful threat again, and giving us something to care about - cos' i almost forgot bilbo & the dwarfs were even there.
Yes. I too will be buying the blu-ray. :oP LOL
To an extent, I'd agree - although killing characters off isn't a substitute for dramatic tension.
It's not about who (if anyone) dies, it's about could they this time, what about this time... this time. That's what's missing in the Hobbit action sequences.
Of course, an early death scene in a film might shock first-time viewers out of any complacency they may have that 'heroes always live', and from that point on they may start to consider 'who next'. But on second and subsequent views, we're all in the same boat as readers of the book where shock has no value (if it ever did). Now it's entirely down to the story telling, suspension of disbelief, creation of dramatic tension.
True for any good movie or book. We may know *insert character* 'wins'. But a well made movie/written book will make us think there is always a genuine chance it could go wrong at any stage in the story, and not just the first time, but every time we watch/read.
That sense of peril/foreboding/etc is ever-present no matter how many times we watch (it's what makes a good film great) and regardless of who (if anyone) dies. A good suspense movie for example can have nothing at all happen in its entirety, and yet have us watch it again and again.
That's what I meant was lacking with the second Hobbit film. I can watch LotR (or any good film) any number of times, and feel the character's peril, foreboding, building threat, etc, even if I know there is none, or nobody dies, etc.
Like I said, it's about giving the sense that this time it might be different. This time... this time?
ep. I agree with everything you just said. The biggest disappointment for the films is indeed the lack of viewer immersion into the world. LotR grabs you from the outset and treats the subject with total seriousness.
I am completely opposite of the above. My biggest issue with LOTR is I was not immersed at all for any of them. The last movie especially, I just was cringing at the Mount Doom scene. I really was just reader to have Frodo fall in, since I was so tired of the scene.
This last movie was the first movie that I finally was immersed it.
If this is it for LOTR, then they majorly messed up an entire license. I do not see how they could not have done a Gandalf/Balrog scene, how they utterly missed Eowyn the first go around, how Frodo meeting Galadriel was not done, not to mention scenes from Return of the King.
I assume they have to have a set with Smaug. I can not imagine doing the Hobbit and not having him.