Hit play and have us regale you of the perils of editing this show, Michael’s stoned cats, How I Met Your Mother’s awesome ending, Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Guardian’s of the Galaxy (yes we know that movie came out months ago), Game of Thrones, and Lord of the Rings.

This obscure little Nintendo game came out recently where you fight each other. It might get really popular someday. Aaaany who it’s got some great remixes. Like this one!

God I love Mega Man.

Lord Dickbag
Heeeyyyyy, it’s THIS GUY.… You know the one. The one from the book! Fine, I admit it, I know something in the region of Eff and All about Middle Earth and it’s inhabitants. I’ve never read any of the books! This guy looks pretty evil though! Look at him, with his eyebrows… Insidious. Lord Elrond was a pretty cool guy in the last one so I have to assume that this guy will be an immense dickbag.

My Old Balls
Damn, Thorin is looking old as balls. He’s all greying and shit, I’m guessing this is going for more of a realistic timeframe for the quest than the week it seemed to take in LoTR. Some of the other dwarves look noticeably older too or at least more haggard.

“With special guest appearance!”
Legolas? Was Legolas in The Hobbit? I don’t think he was, I remember someone telling me Legolas and Gimli were going to make appearances in the movies, despite not being in the book. He seems a little more blood-thirsty in this one and less the jokester we know. He’s got weird eyes too, yo!

Dem ears, gurl!
Legolas’s partner in archery, Tauriel seems to kick all kinds of ass. That’s pretty much all I have to say about her. Apart from she’s really pretty~

A Barrel of Laughs
That is the best joke I could make for this article.

Duck Tales
Woo-Hoo! (Okay, that was kinda funny)

Smauglock
Benedict Cumberbatch finally makes a full appearance as Smaug and damn, he’s a big’un! I honestly didn’t expect the dragon to be THAT big. It’ll be fun to see more of him in action when the movie hits.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is due in theatres 13th December 2013. I cannot wait!

Lord of the Rings is one of the biggest franchises based on a series of books and much like Harry Potter, now the fantastical world of Middle Earth is venturing into a whole new arena: LEGO.
By time of reading, I’m sure you’ve already seen the LEGO Lord of the Rings sets hitting stores but I thought I’d weigh in with my thoughts on some of the initial sets (because I’m sure there will be more to follow) of the line. Something to note about this line is that there are very few “small” sets, all re-enacting major scenes from the movies in tiny plastic form so I’ll take a look at some of the bigger sets to see how much bang you can get for your buck!

The first, and smallest, of our three sets is 9470 Shelob Attacks. Depicting the scene in Return of The King where Gollum leads the two Hobbits into a trap. Featuring minifigures for Frodo, Samwise and Gollum and the main build being the giant spider Shelob, the latter three characters being exclusive to this set. Shelob is constructed very well, looking very organic for something made out of bricks. The string hook “web” can be retracted using a cleverly hidden spool in her thorax. The Frodo minifigure features a double-sided face, one standard and one horrified. Gollum has an action feature in the shape of a little set of ruins that has a catapult to launch him. It’s a solid little set with a fun creature build as the main attraction plus three characters unavailable in any other set. Shelob Attacks retails for £19.99 RRP.

Next up is 9473 The Mines of Moria, one of the highlights of the first movie for me. This is the biggest set for The Fellowship of The Ring and the second largest of the entire theme. Despite being the big fight for the Fellowship, only four of them are included in this set (Boromir, Legolas, Gimli and Pippin) along with two Orcs, two skeletons and a Cave troll in a pear tree. It’s an impressive set, with tombs, gates and all sorts of weapons (Dwarven weapons represented by weapons from the Heroica game sets). The set is a mostly grey and brown affair, mostly because of the stone gates and wooden furniture but it represents the scene fairly faithfully (Apart from the comically large Dwarf skeletons which are just the standard skeleton minifigures)
Two interesting notes for this set are that the runes on the tombs are accurate to the Fellowship book and the runes over the door read “Djordje was here”, one of the lead designers of the LOTR theme. The Mines of Moria set retails for £69.99 RRP

And finally we come to the largest set of the entire theme, 9474 The Battle of Helmsdeep. It’s the largest in terms of scale and the amount of pieces but it can also be expanded upon by combining with the 9471 Uruk-hai Army set. For your money, you get 8 minifigures, a fortress made up of outer ring, tower with horn, opening main gate, exploding wall, side door attack function, and catapult. Not to mention some of the other accessories like siege ladder, bomb, horse and an armoury of weapons. You get plenty of heroes and Uruak-Hai to play with but just like the Mines of Moria set, you won’t get all of the characters who were present for the scene. This is the big ticket item for the entire range, retailing at £99.99 which could put some people off but I’m sure that die-hard fans (of both LEGO and LOTR) will be willing to throw down the cash for this set for its sheer size and playability.

From looking at these sets, I can see this theme expanding far past its tie-in nature, in much the same way as the Star Wars theme has, and include lesser known scenes in the future and I look forward to seeing it. Just a little side note: In doing research for this article, I also found out that The Sun newspaper will be doing another of it’s LEGO giveaways soon and the first set is 30211 Uruk-hai with Ballista on October 6th.

The LEGO Lord of The Rings theme is available in all good retailers now, with more sets to follow after the release of LEGO The Lord of the Rings: The Video Game on October 30th. More information can be found at www.thelordoftherings.lego.com

Oh god, where to start? Everything about this trailer is completely kick-ass. It’s as if Peter Jackson and company secretly filmed The Hobbit among the Lord of the Rings footage, and are just now releasing it. Now, I’m at the vantage point of not having read the book for 12 years, so I can’t remember details. But I loved The Hobbit, and this is just spot on.

First, we’re treated to some familiar faces from the LOTR Trilogy. Elijah Wood as Frodo, and Ian Holme as old Bilbo Baggins.

We get an intro, then Martin Freeman emerges as a much younger Bilbo.

From his opening lines, it was crystal clear that Freeman is just the right man for the job. He has the sort of mild-mannered, yet gruff disposition that’s just right. Then we’re introduced to the thirteen Dwarves, each very unique. I made a handy gif for reference to watch over and over again in case you get lost:

I briefly wondered how Jackson would be able to keep so many Characters balanced, but then realized he already did it with more characters in Lord of the Rings, so thirteen Dwarves shouldn’t be a problem. The Hobbit is a light-hearted romp compared to Lord of the Rings; LOTR is a dark epic tale, and Hobbit is merely a bedtime story, albeit a wonderfully grand and adventurous bedtime story. I’m happy to see Jackson seems to know the difference in tone between the two books.

Continuing, there are a few familiar faces and locals. The Shire looks just as it did when we left it.

As does Rivendell:

Of course New Zealand looks just as much like Middle Earth as it ever did.

I’m not entirely sure what Galadriel is doing in this movie, as I don’t think she was in the book, but Cate Blanchett returns to her role.

"I was in the neighborhood."

Among other familiar delights we are treated to is Bilbo’s sword Sting in its heyday.

Some locales fans of the book will surely recognize: Mirkwood…

…and of course GOLLUM’S CAVE.

After introducing us to some new characters and showing us some beautiful panoramic shots, we are treated to Gollum’s reprisal; something that shoots chills up my spine.

"Precioussssssssssss"

Obviously since this is a teaser trailer, we aren’t getting everything. I can’t wait until Jackson gives us a full trailer! This is also only the first half of the story; we have to wait another two years for any inkling of Smaug the Dragon (played by Sherlock’s Benedict Cumberbatch).

Things to look forward to in the future: Stephen Fry as the Master of Laketown, Seventh Doctor Silvester McCoy as Radagast, the return of Christopher Lee as Saruman, Orlando Bloom as Legolas, Hugo Weaving as Elrond, and of course more Andy Serkis as Gollum.

It is worth noting that Saruman and Legolas appear nowhere in the book version of The Hobbit, so it’ll be interesting to see what Jackson does with them. Same with Frodo, I’m sure Legolas is only in the wraparound. I have a theory that he will help fill in some of the story concerning Galadriel and the elves.

Worth noting are the end credits. Not only is the writing team of Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens back, but it appears Guillermo Del Toro also helped pen it during his involvment, so looking for his marks on the film should be interesting.

Lastly, the final credit page:

Two things here:

1. We have to wait until next December to get the film.
2. It’s in motherfucking 3D!!

And not the post-converted crap, either. Every single picture you see in that teaser will be rendered in two-camera, Peter Jackson-shot, made-for-3D imagery. Sink your brain into that!