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“It’s Extraordinary,” says Andy Serkis

Andy Serkis talks about the Hobbit Films to BBC Radio 5 Live. The Hobbit Films production he says has “been a long time coming and it’s finally happening”.

 

He further adds, “I have just literally got back a couple of days ago from shooting our first block. And it’s in huge kind of blocks really with little kind of hiatus periods in between.”

 

On being asked about the shooting in New Zealand, he responds to Phil Williams by saying that “It’s absolutely amazing – it’s very similar [to the Lord of the Rings shooting over a decade ago].” He even went so far as to say that “99% of the crew have come back from the Lord of the Rings and it’s a wonderful – wonderful atmosphere! There is a whole new raft of new characters/actors [and] it’s joyous – it’s extraordinary!”

 

Naturally, even he has to curb his enthusiasm and rounds it off with: “I have to hold back on talking about it too much. It’s been a long time coming and we are so, so thrilled that its finally happening!”

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Andy Serkis Serves As Second Unit Director on The Hobbit Films

Andy Serkis, who reprises his role as Gollum, in The Hobbit Films, is now about to serve as a second unit director on the films as well.

“I think I understand Peter’s sensibility and we have a common history of understanding Middle Earth,” Serkis told The Hollywood Reporter. “A lot of the crew from The Lord of the Rings was returning to work on The Hobbit. There is really  a sense of Peter wanting people around him who totally understand the material and the work ethic.”

He said further, “When Peter asked me. There was this email out of the blue. It was a fantastic surprise…It is wide ranging and encompasses a lot of directing aspects of film-making and story. Yes, there is some performance capture, but I will be very much on the live action sets and locations helping Peter to tell the story…The learning curve is The Hobbit is being shot in 3D” and  he notes that this effect will be used “dramatically, to give a point of view.”

As to the move from book to film, he says, “In the same way Lord of the Rings was an interpretation of the book, The Hobbit is being treated the same way. It will be faithfully represented with a fresh interpretation.”

The report is that the busy actor just completed shooting his performance in the film. As to the character of Gollum, Serkis confidently proclaims: “He is very much a Gollum that people will recognize,” and that he has depicted Gollum in his “truest form.” He further added that it was “thrilling” to reprise the role of Gollum. “I was looking forward to doing it. He never really left me. When we created Gollum the first time, performance capture was in its infancy,” he said, noting that today, “within the industry, there is more appreciation for it as an acting art form. It’s all about character, learning what the character thinks, feels, how he carries pain.”

The actor also has performances in two additional anticipated movies are on the way, both of which are performance capture. He will play Caesar in the Planet of the Apes prequel Rise of the Apes, slated for an Aug. 4 debut; and Captain Haddock in the December release The Adventures of TinTin: The Secret of the Unicorn.

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Gollum/Sméagol

Gollum is a fictional character from J. R. R. Tolkien’s legendarium. He was introduced in the author’s fantasy novel The Hobbit, and became an important supporting character in its sequel, The Lord of the Rings.

Gollum was a Stoor Hobbit of the River-folk, who lived near the Gladden Fields. Originally known as “Sméagol”, he was later named “Gollum” after his habit of making “a horrible swallowing noise in his throat”. His life was extended far beyond its natural limits by the effects of possessing the One Ring, which enslaved him to the point that he pursued it for the rest of his life after losing it to Bilbo Baggins.

During his centuries under the Ring’s influence, he developed dissociative identity disorder: “Sméagol” still vaguely remembered things like friendship and love, while “Gollum” was a slave to the Ring who knew only treachery and violence. In The Two Towers, Samwise Gamgee named the good personality “Slinker”, and the bad personality “Stinker”. The two personalities had a love/hate relationship, and often quarrelled when Gollum talked to himself (as Tolkien puts it in The Hobbit, “through never having anyone else to speak to”).

Gollum first appears in The Hobbit, where the protagonist Bilbo Baggins stumbled upon Gollum’s lair and found the Ring which Gollum had lost in the network of caves leading to the lake.

Gollum had dwelt under the Misty Mountains for five centuries, living on a small island in the centre of a lake at the roots of a mountain. He survived on cave fish, which he caught from his small boat, and small goblins who strayed too far from the stronghold of the Great Goblin. Over the years, his eyes adapted to the dark and became ‘lamp-like’, shining with a sickly pale light in the dark.

After the famous Riddle Game, he pretended to want to show Bilbo the way out as promised, but actually desired to kill and eat the Hobbit. When he went to get his “birthday present”, he found it was gone. He suddenly realized the answer to Bilbo’s last riddle — “What have I got in my pocket?” — and flew into a rage. Bilbo inadvertently discovered the Ring’s power of invisibility as he fled, allowing him to follow Gollum undetected to a back entrance of the cave system. Bilbo at first thought to kill Gollum, but was overcome with pity, and so merely leapt over him. As Bilbo escaped, Gollum cried out, “Thief! Thief, Baggins! We hates it, we hates it, we hates it forever!!”

In the first edition of The Hobbit, Gollum did not appear quite as wretched or murderous, and indeed showed Bilbo the way out after losing the riddle-game. Tolkien changed his characterization in the second edition, to fit the concept of the ruling Ring which he had developed during the writing of The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien then explained that the version given in the first edition was a lie that Bilbo made up to justify to the Dwarves and Gandalf his possession of the Ring.