Orcs and Goblins in The Hobbit

[Mänwe]

I quite enjoyed the runt-ish look of the Goblins in so far it continues a distinction also made in the LoTR trilogy between Orc and Uruk-hai.

I too was surprised by the Orcs piping up in their own language..they even had an evil font (compared to the nice clean elvish subtitle font) for the subtitles too!

For me the Great Goblin was well done- oversized, grotesque and while i'm no CGI expert I thought pretty well animated; I'm glad they had him screeching out the origins of Glamdring and Orcrist too.

Sympathetic orcs..well, saved their leader from book death haven't they, shouldn't he have died somewhere in that scene- which could have nicely introduced/linked us to another important character Dáin, who they earlier mentioned in the "gathering" would not be coming to their aid- but instead is now just a name we hear. Why did they decide to have Azog live on and not introduce Bolg into their interpretation of the dwarf/orc vendetta? Bolg doesn't sound as cool or poster worthy as Azog I suppose..

[Thinlómien]

Originally Posted by Mänwe

I too was surprised by the Orcs piping up in their own language..they even had an evil font (compared to the nice clean elvish subtitle font) for the subtitles too!

Really? I need to pay attention to that if/when I go to see it again!

Originally Posted by Mänwe

I'm glad they had him screeching out the origins of Glamdring and Orcrist too.

Exactly: that was one of the things I was positively surprised about because I thought they'd skip it.

Originally Posted by Mänwe

Sympathetic orcs..well, saved their leader from book death haven't they, shouldn't he have died somewhere in that scene- which could have nicely introduced/linked us to another important character Dáin, who they earlier mentioned in the "gathering" would not be coming to their aid- but instead is now just a name we hear. Why did they decide to have Azog live on and not introduce Bolg into their interpretation of the dwarf/orc vendetta? Bolg doesn't sound as cool or poster worthy as Azog I suppose..

I was wondering about Bolg and Dáin too. I wonder if Bolg will appear at all, and if they will botch Dáin's coming (because in the book it's hard not to like him immediately, and despite all the sadness it's kind of happy that he becomes the king instead of Thorin)...

[Nogrod]

What striked me even more at the outset, was the clear change in the general outlook of the orcs... Like from the short, dark and hairy (with a hide of sorts) yellow-eyed skinny-kids to these muscular white-skinned guys with no hair at all. So they have a backwards evolution (a devolution?) from the mutated and over-grown sewer-rats into these naked skinheads?

Trying to remember the depictions from both books I'd say it should have been at least a little bit just the other way around... There were Goblins under the mountain in the book "The Hobbit" and they were relatively small (like the ones portrayed in the LotR-films in Moria or in Sauron's armies), then there were orcs under Sauron - and in Moria - in the books who should have been a bit more thrathening (like these neo-nazis in the film "The Hobbit") - and to this picture one could have fitted nicely the Uruk Hai as the bigger and meaner master orc-race (as both in the books and the films).

Or did I lose something obvious?

[Galin]

Originally Posted by Nogrod

Trying to remember the depictions from both books I'd say it should have been at least a little bit just the other way around... There were Goblins under the mountain in the book "The Hobbit" and they were relatively small (like the ones portrayed in the LotR-films in Moria or in Sauron's armies), then there were orcs under Sauron - and in Moria - in the books who should have been a bit more thrathening (like these neo-nazis in the film "The Hobbit") - and to this picture one could have fitted nicely the Uruk Hai as the bigger and meaner master orc-race (as both in the books and the films).

Or did I lose something obvious?

In The Hobbit I would say there were large goblins in or under the Misty Mountains, as well as the 'tremendous' Great Goblin...

'Out jumped the goblins, big goblins, great ugly-looking goblins, lots of goblins, before you can say rocks and blocks. There were six to each dwarf, at least, and two even for Bilbo;...'

With respect to that point, anyway.

[Thinlómien]

Originally Posted by Nogrod

What striked me even more at the outset, was the clear change in the general outlook of the orcs... Like from the short, dark and hairy (with a hide of sorts) yellow-eyed skinny-kids to these muscular white-skinned guys with no hair at all. So they have a backwards evolution (a devolution?) from the mutated and over-grown sewer-rats into these naked skinheads?

I'm really wondering if this has something to do with being (overtly) politically correct. Like, last time the baddies were black, now they are white.

[Zigûr]

Professor Tolkien does describe the Orcs as "sallow-skinned" (letter 210) so as much as I hate to do this maybe the film was being (arguably) accurate in a sense by portraying the Orcs with this sickly pale colour? That being said the large, imposing ones like Azog one would assume were Uruk-hai which I believe were generally black in colour so I suppose that could be considered an inaccuracy.
What disappointed me with the Orcs of Goblin-Town was their largely troglodyte appearance. Where are the Goblins who "make no beautiful things, but they make many clever ones" although they "had not advanced (as it is called) so far" - I like the little point Professor Tolkien makes by giving the Goblins the 'technology gone wrong' angle. The Orcs of the Mountains have always come across as sort of anti-Dwarves/anti-Noldor to me, perhaps like the difference between Melkor and Aulë, ie industry vs craft or something of that nature. I would have liked to have seen the Goblins as perhaps more of a foil to the Dwarves: smithing, forging, albeit perhaps with slaves rather than the love of using their own hands etc. We got some mention of elaborate torture devices from the Great Goblin which is consistent with the novel but I wouldn't have said no to that being echoed substantially more in their overall design and aesthetic. That being said PJ probably would have given us a "wacky" mad scientist Goblin with frizzy hair and comedy test tubes or something so maybe we're better off this way...

[Kuruharan]

Originally Posted by Thinlómien

I'm really wondering if this has something to do with being (overtly) politically correct. Like, last time the baddies were black, now they are white.

I partially agree that this might be a motivation of theirs, except that the lesser orcs (the non-uruks) by and large were pale skinned in the original LOTR film trilogy as well. See Gorbag, Gothmog and quite a lot of the Mordor orcs at Minas Tirith as well as the short orcs that were with Saruman in FOTR.