Total Film have a huge interview with the big man himself. Here are some juicy morsels...
There is still no Bilbo casting news..but we do find out some things about the structure of the movies, and some very interesting tidbits on the various creatures inhabiting the world of The Hobbit..yes, that includes Smaug!
"We are respecting the structure established by Professor Tolkien because the order of the adventures in The Hobbit is well known to generations and generations of kids. You don't want to be moving stuff like that.
But we will be integrating Gandalf's comings and goings because he does disappear in the book quite often. So, as opposed to the book, we see where he goes and what happens to him."
Remember the Wargs from LOTR?..the big wolf like beasties that the Orcs rode on in The Two Towers. Well, they are in The Hobbit too..but they will look a tad bit different..
"I also wanted some of the monsters in The Hobbit to be majestic. I wanted the Wargs to have a certain beauty so that you don't have a massively clear definition: what is beautiful is good and what is ugly is not. Some of the monsters are absolutely gorgeous. The way I phrased it to Weta, I said we would keep the DNA in the same gene pool as the Rings trilogy, but that we would generate a different type of character. For example, in the trilogy most of the creatures are brutish or inarticulate. In The Hobbit, the creatures speak: Smaug has beautiful lines of dialogue; the Great Goblin has beautiful lines of dialogue; many creatures do. So we had to design them with a different approach because you are not just designing things that are scary."
And what about those creepy Mirkwood spiders?..
"They are visually quite striking and in a different way to Shelob," he explains. "They are more creatures of the shadow, more creatures of the deep forest… Our spiders have to feel massive but be very nimble."
And of course, the character(human or otherwise) that everyone is most exited about, Smaug...
"I think one of the designs I'm the proudest of is Smaug. Obviously he took the longest. Early in production I came up with a very strong idea that would separate Smaug from every other dragon ever made. The problem was implementing that idea. But I think we've nailed it. I cannot tell you what it was because it would be a massive spoiler! But I’m 100 per cent happy with Smaug. If there is such as thing as 110 per cent, then I’m there!"
Asked how it would compare to the overall feel of the LOTR movies DEl Toro said...
"All I can say is that we have an incredibly good team of people who know we are not making another Rings. We are not trying to make a quadrilogy, or a pentilogy. We’re tying to make two films that flow with those but that stand on their own completely. We want to avoid stuff that is not part of the DNA, that is not part of the lexicon, but we also don’t want people to feel “We’ve seen this. Except where that familiarity is comforting, like Hobbiton or Rivendell – then you want to feel like you’re coming back home to a movie that you love and cherish."
Ok, I'm officially exited..still! As long as they don't cast that gimp from Wanted as Bilbo:)
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