5. Thorin Oakenshield – Richard Armitage


Thorin is the most important dwarf character in Middle Earth. Gimli may have been a key member of the fellowship but it is Thorin who leads the quest to reclaim Erebor, a quest that enlists Bilbo Baggins, who in turn discovers the one ring. The rest is history. The film adaptations needed an actor who capture his nobility, commanding presence and arrogance and Richard Armitage certainly met those requirements.
Thorin’s ability to lead the Fellowship, to stand head to head with Elrond and demand the respect of Gandalf is unquestionable. In the films he comes across as a dwarf with the weight of the world on his shoulders; in fact the guilt and despair over the destruction of Erebor is perhaps more keenly felt in Armitage’s Thorin than it is in the books. There is also a dangerous and selfish edge to him too; he carries the arrogance of his forefathers and his obsession to find the Arkenstone and restore his kingdom should make for an interesting final act in next month’s film.
While some of the dwarves remain somewhat forgettable in the large mix of characters, Thorin stands out as the key that holds everything together.

Danke euch für's Posten . Cover 2 wäre auch mein Favorit.

PJ hat in seiner Empire Edition Richard als kleine Nervensäge geoutet :
http://despedida92.tumblr.com/post/1034 ... a-geek-and

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[...]
Richard Armitage – Thorin


Richard Armitage as Thorin is arguably The Hobbit trilogy’s most impressive performance – he brought depth and honor to a character who, in the book, is stubborn, vain, and pretty much just driven by a desire for gold and treasure. Thorin in the movies is rather inspirational, but we’d expect nothing less from Armitage, whose reputation on stage and screen in the UK precedes him.

If you’re keen to follow his career, Armitage is currently filming Sleepwalker, a psychological thriller in which he plays a sleep researcher, and has completed a role as an ex-social worker in Urban and the Shed Crew, an adaptation of a non-fiction book about runaway children, gangs and inner city wastelands in Northern England. You’ll also be able to see his acclaimed 2014 stage performance in The Crucible at selected cinemas from February. If you’re harbouring a desire to watch Armitage being noble and waving a sword around some more, you can’t go wrong with the 2006 Robin Hood TV series in which he played antagonist/antihero Guy of Gisborne.

[...]

The Hobbit: The Battle of The Five Armies (2014)
Reviewed by Chris Nashawaty on Dec 18, 2014 @ChrisNashawaty




EW's GRADE
B
DETAILS
Release Date: Dec 17, 2014; Length: 144 Minutes; Genre: Action/Adventure; With: Richard Armitage, Cate Blanchett, Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen and Hugo Weaving...; Distributor: Warner Bros.
Considering how slim the actual book was, Peter Jackson sure has taken his sweet-ass time getting to the end of The Hobbit. It's starting to feel like we're witnessing the events of Middle-earth unfold in real time. Still, it's a testament to his skill as a big-canvas storyteller that we keep coming back, hungry for more. He's managed to orchestrate the three-part saga like the world's canniest D&D-dungeon master. When we last left off, our pint-size heroes had just unleashed the Cumberbatchian wrath of the dragon Smaug. Seventy-seven-year-old spoiler alert: The fire-breathing beastie is offed by Bard (Luke Evans), which allows the dwarves to return to the mountain keep of Erebor. There, untold piles of gold and priceless baubles are tucked away, the promise of which soon turns the dwarf ringleader Thorin (Richard Armitage) into a blindly greedy monster not unlike Humphrey Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Everybody wants a cut of the spoils—the elves, the orcs, a pig-riding Billy Connolly. And they all descend on Erebor armed to the teeth and itching for a battle royal.
Like everything else in Jackson's Tolkienland, the buildup to the climactic melee stretches on too long. But when it comes, it's a doozy. Maybe not on the same epic scale as The Two Towers' Battle of Helm's Deep, but a doozy nonetheless. It packs a giddy blast of childlike wonder and chin-in-your-lap awe. While more than enough praise has been poured on Jackson and his singular gift for CG spectacle, Martin Freeman deserves some credit for lending humor and humanity to what could have been a numbing orgy of pixelated mayhem. His furry-footed Bilbo has been the trilogy's secret weapon, the beating heart behind the blockbuster. And as Bilbo finally settles in at the Shire with a good book and a whopper of a tale to tell, he can rest easy knowing that he will be missed. B

Richard Armitage hammers Hobbit critics
By AUSTRALIAN ASSOCIATED PRESS
PUBLISHED: 21:29 GMT, 21 December 2014 | UPDATED: 21:29 GMT, 21 December 2014

Hobbit actor Richard Armitage has hit back at critics for suggesting there's not enough of a plot line in the last film of the Middle-earth trilogy.
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies opens in Australian cinemas on Friday.
When it premiered in London in early December one prominent critic said Peter Jackson's final Tolkien movie "begs not to exist".
"Really, hindsight favours a two-part adaptation at most," Tim Robey wrote in British newspaper The Telegraph.
His two-star review labelled the film a "series of stomping footnotes in search of a climax" and accused Orlando Bloom of adding nothing beyond "some ridiculous mid-air running up collapsing masonry".
But Armitage, who plays dwarf lord Thorin Oakenshield, has dismissed such critiques.
"I can't believe someone has said not enough is happening," the English actor told AAP.
"There is so much happening. Peter is really obsessive about war and I know the research that he did for studying what happens on a battlefield and the maps he made."
Armitage said the story within a story in The Battle of the Five Armies was thrilling.
"I need to see the film for a third time because I couldn't quite take in everything that was happening," the 43-year-old said.
Bloom's character Legolas isn't in Tolkien's novel The Hobbit but was added to the films to provide some continuity running into The Lord of the Rings movies, which were made first.
Jackson believes when future generations see the six films in the correct order - starting with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - "they'll sense there was some vague design behind it all".
Bloom didn't expect to be in the Hobbit films and initially had reservations.
But the 37-year-old argues including Legolas does help tie the films together.
"I did initially have concerns that fans, and real fans of the books, would be disappointed that it wasn't completely true," Bloom told AAP.
"(But) credit to Peter (Jackson) for his thinking on it because he's really a bit like the authority on Middle-earth in a way that Tolkien was.
"Since Tolkien's no longer with us Pete's been in this world for so many years now and really thinking about it with a team of people who are experts on it.
"He kept, for the fans, the vision of the story and the (Hobbit) films are very much in line in a way that was entertaining for everyone."
* The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is released in Australian cinemas on December 26.


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Peter Jackson's long goodbye to Middle-earth
|
Last updated 05:00 01/01/2015

BRIAN TRUITT

Given how long he has been hanging around Middle-earth, it's easy to imagine that Peter Jackson finds it hard to say goodbye.

In the end credits of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, the Oscar-winning director includes the ballad The Last Goodbye - sung by his Lord of the Rings star Billy Boyd - as a way to honour the many fans of his six adaptations of JRR Tolkien's magical world over the past decade and a half.

A more subtle farewell, however, occurs just before that, when Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) returns home after his quest to help the dwarves retake their mountainous kingdom and rehangs the portraits of his parents above his fireplace.

It's a callback to the original from 2001, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, when those paintings - of a beardless Jackson and his partner, producer Fran Walsh, done in 1998 - first appeared.

"Everybody always asks me about what's my cameo," Jackson says. "And that painting is my final cameo in these films."

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The filmmaker was 37 when the cameras started rolling on Fellowship in 1999, and now, at 53, Jackson finds it hard to pinpoint how his life has changed in the lifespan of his Middle-earth movies.

"At the beginning, (he and Fran) had tiny little kids, and now they're 18, 19 years old," says Jackson, who received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on December 8. "That's true of anybody no matter what your job is or profession - your life is going to change."

He definitely sees a better and more confident filmmaker at work in Five Armies, which puts the finishing touches on Bilbo's story and leads into the Lord of the Rings trilogy. That series focuses on his nephew Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood) and the journey to destroy the all-powerful One Ring.

The Hobbit movies were filmed in sequence over 266 days, and during that time "I felt my mojo getting up", Jackson says.

"I was on a roll. Unfortunately, I finished it and now I'm going to lose all that and have to be back at square one," he adds, laughing.

During the shoot in New Zealand, Freeman found he and Jackson shared a mischievous sense of humour. Yet the actor was most impressed by his director's informality.

"He trusts me, I trust him, he lets me play, and I know that he'll choose what he chooses."

Ian McKellen, who played the wizard Gandalf in all six of Jackson's Middle-earth films, has always found Jackson shy and unassertive though capable of enormous imagination and absolute dedication to his filmmaking.

"At times I've feared for him - not that his behaviour has become obsessive but that he hasn't been able to find time for anything else in his life," McKellen says. "But he's kept sane by Fran, of course, and his family."

With Jackson, who has two children with Walsh - son Billy, 19, and daughter Katie, 18 - "you feel that sense of family is very strong", McKellen says. "It keeps them both going, personally and professionally. And it spreads out to the people they work with."

Screenwriter Philippa Boyens remarks that "a lot about Pete hasn't changed at all over that span, which is really rather nice".

She does state, for the record, that he still revels in his kid-friendly pursuits.

"My development stopped when I was about 8 or 9, much to Fran's frustration, I think," Jackson says. "I still make model planes - I actually don't have any adult sort of passions, which is great. It's the way I like to be, like a big kid."

Even though the last Hobbit is hitting cinemas, he's still not done tinkering with it. Jackson has another four or five months of work to do back in New Zealand on the extended edition of Five Armies.

Then he'll start wondering what fresh film projects to tackle, though he says "it's going to be very, very difficult to do anything for the rest of my filmmaking career, however long that is, that is going to overshadow what these have done".

The one thing Jackson most looks forward to is the day when he has grandchildren and "I can sit and watch their faces as they watch the films. That sort of thing is going to be the moment where I sit back and actually reflect backward, I think - seeing somebody actually experience these films rather than thinking about it."