Richard Armitage reveals the dark journey awaiting Thorin Oakenshield onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Richard Armitage reveals the dark journey awaiting Thorin Oakenshield

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Poor Thorin Oakenshield — the would-be King under the mountain just can't get a break. In The Hobbit, Azog the Defiler kills his dad, then he steals the dwarf's favorite shield... and he's not done yet. In our interview with Richard Armitage, the man behind the warrior's hair and nose, we find out just how much further Thorin has to fall. Small spoilers ahead.

Thorin Oakenshield is a bit of a fallen Shakespearean King or a Greek Tragedy figure. Did you draw on any famous past characters for inspiration?

Richard Armitage: It's so nice to hear you say that because a fellow came in the other day and said, "Thorin's a bit of a jerk, isn't he?" I see him as more of a fallen character. And yes, I drew on a number of Shakespearean characters simply because they sprang to mind. MacBeth was one of them, also Henry V and Richard III. They were three characters where I thought, "I'll just steal a bit of them." I used some speeches from Shakespeare to do some voice work. Some of the battle-rousing speeches and some of the introspective speeches from MacBeth I started to use. It was a nice place to look.

Now that you mention the battle speeches, and talking to you now on the phone, I can see that Thorin has a much lower cadence than you have (as a human). Is it hard to go that low? Do you lose your voice or find yourself falling out of it on set?

I had to really just do vocal work all the time. You're just taking your voice down maybe a semitone or a tone, [and] it will find its way back into my normal speaking pitch. If I had any time away, it would take me a while to re-find the voice. I wanted him to sound like someone who could have a very quiet conversation in a corridor with Balin and you can hear the sensitivity in his voice. But also stand on a battlement and command an army to fight. An army of 13,000 dwarves, for example. It was that type of work.

You do get to yell the best lines. You're kind of the rabble-rouser in a lot of situations. Is there a particular line you've gotten to shout that you're fond of?

There's one line in this movie that really rocked my world and it found its way into the lyrics of Ed Sheeran's song in the end. And the line is, "If this is to end in fire, then we will all burn together." When you read that in a script you just think, "I can't wait to speak those lines."

Not looking for brownie points, but I listened to "I See Fire" right after the screening and that line totally struck me as well. I remembered that was your line, it was really powerful.

Isn't it brilliant? It's such a cool song. I just met him in the last couple of days. He's such an interesting guy, a true artist who took the movie... He told me that he imagined that he was Thorin and was watching The Desolation of Smaug. And he wrote the poem that then becomes the song with that in mind.

Did he give you any tips on singing? You got to sing in the last movie, will you sing again?

You know what, I wouldn't even dare to sing like Ed Sheeran. It's such a great piece of music. I really love it.

We touched on this a little earlier but lets come back. A lot of these characters from classic epic fantasy narratives are hard to root for. How you make Thorin Oakandshield someone you want the audience to root for?

Partly when you form the character, you have to form him as someone of nobility and with a certain amount of humility as well. And then take him down a path which is going to cause him to face his flaws, and maybe be corrupted. So as an audience we are hopefully trying to call him back from that destination that he's heading towards. But also I also think, no matter what happens to him or who he's becoming on the outside, when the audience knows who he truly is on the inside, they will possibly give him the benefit of the doubt. Although he's really going to go to a dark and unreasonable place in movie three. So I think it will be hard for the audience to root for him, I think.

So he still has further to fall?

Before he falls, he rises to quite a great height. He achieves everything that he could possibly wish for. And then he falls from that great height. That's going to be his journey in movie three.

Your character has also had a lot of stand offs with all sorts of beasts and bad guys. You've fought Azog the Defiler, this new huge Orc, a bunch of cave creatures, elves and now you've had a stand-off with a dragon. Which experience has been the most intense?

The first glimpse of the standoff with Azog in movie one, wasn't really a battle. He managed to get about two blows in and Azog just completely annihilated him. That storyline is going to continue in movie three. That fight will end at some point. And that fight has been going on for a long time. In this movie, when Thorin faces the dragon, there's no sense that he can engage in combat with the dragon, he has to outwit him. That's another side to Thorin's warrior skills that was really interesting to explore. When the beast in front of you is too big to comprehend, how do you solve that problem? And that's something that they deal with in the end of the second film.

As a dwarf, you're already smaller than most of the characters in the second film. So who are you fighting in these stand off scenes? Two people standing on each other's shoulders? A giant stick?

They found a stunt guy who was exceptionally tall. He was a basketball player we called him "Big Mike" actually because he was so tall. He was maybe 7-foot something and then they put a little extension on his head (for an eye line). But really when you're fighting at that different of a height level it's all about your reach and which parts of the body you try to attack. There's no point in trying to attack the head so you tend to go for the guts and the legs and chest. I fought him most of the time.

How much does the whole costume (with the makeup and the wig and the weapons) weigh?

There were two versions of the costume. One was called the hero costume, which was all of the materials made out of really authentic things, the chainmail was real metal. Everything was incredibly heavy. That weighed 40 to 50 kilos. They also do a light-weight version which is identical (you cannot tell the difference) that was still around 20 to 25 kilos. It's like wearing a backpack with about 6 bricks in it.

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What kind of hell was filming that barrel scene? I know you still get to work with Peter Jackson, and he's amazing but...

The barrel sequence, I have to tell you, there was no hell involved. It was complete joy. We were on the Pelorus River shooting in barrels. And then we were on a water course that they created in a soundstage that was powered by V8 engines so they could speed up and slow down. It was so much fun. It was like being in a theme park for a week. It was an awful lot of fun. I don't think there was a single moment of it that I didn't enjoy.

Do you miss your long hair? Do you find yourself absentmindedly pulling at your missing braids?

I don't miss the long hair when I'm eating lunch. I quite liked Thorin when he was dirty and grungy. When he was cleaner I never really felt like that's who he was. I think he's a hardened traveler and warrior. When he has blood and dirt on his hands, that's when I enjoyed playing him.

Is it hard being in a company of fun-loving, seemingly good natured dwarves and constantly disappointing them?

That was the hardest part of playing it. But I think it's who Thorin is. He really wants to do the right thing, he wants to be a hero, he wants to be a great leader. But because of his stubbornness and his sort of, single-mindedness, his inability to change, he fails. He screws up. It's only because of the Hobbit that he's able to get out of those sticky situations. In the second film you see him changing, he begins to trust him. He wouldn't have entered the door without him, it's a team effort.

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Do you ever feel like you're the dramatic relief among the dwarves since so many of them are played for laughs?

Yeah, I was always looking for a moment where I could make Thorin laugh or smile but they were so few. The moment when they open the door, I think, is Thorin at his best. But I was always a little bit envious of those who can play those comedy moments.

We've seen Thorin learn how to trust, we've watched him give up some of his past (be it a tiny bit). What's next for Thorin?

The biggest challenge facing him now is tackling the effect that the gold has on him. He's really going to change so dramatically. I'm kind of looking forward to seeing how that manifests itself.

The Desolation of Smaug will hit theaters on December 13th.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Richard Armitage reveals the dark journey awaiting Thorin Oakenshield

The 10 Rules of Surveillance Dystopia onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The 10 Rules of Surveillance Dystopia

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With Person of Interest burning up our televisions, and authoritarian future tales like Hunger Games dominating the box office, it's clear that the surveillance dystopia is the breakout subgenre of the 'teens. But WTF is a surveillance dystopia, anyway? Here are the 10 rules* that define them.

* Any resemblance to actual rules of everyday life is purely coincidental.

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1. You wear location trackers that relay your every movement to corporate headquarters.

Everyone wears collars, bracelets, implants, or brain caps to track you and keep you calm. You have surgery that turns you into a citizen "on the grid" so that They (always the Big They) know where you are. Or maybe the surveillance device is hidden inside a game, or another device that everyone depends on. You think you're carrying around a communicator or racing game, but it's really telling Them where to find you when they decide to bring you in.

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2. Your television is watching you.

Again with the fun thing that's actually keeping tabs on how often you open the refrigerator and when you come home. Maybe the CitizenScreen is really obvious and barks at you when you don't do your exercises in the morning. Or maybe it just silently monitors every show you watch and when you blip out the commercials, relaying that information back to Them. How convenient, though, that it has a facial recognition system built in, so that it knows when you've come home and can turn on your favorite episode of Murder Teens. As a side benefit, it can always recognize when you've brought home a new person and can check their faces against a database of Known Offenders.

3. All of your purchases are tracked using small plastic cards you carry everywhere you go.

Sometimes you use paper money at the LOLMarts in Slagstown, or you might venture into the Outer Ring to get some Stim with unmarked Bytecash. But mostly you carry your plastic Credit Counter everywhere, zipping it through a machine reader every time you purchase gum, guns, or cheese. Oops! You aren't permitted to buy cheese this week. You need to maintain your BMI at the correct level or you won't be eligible for MedFriends. But They've noticed you have been buying a lot of books about history. Why is that?

4. You can't make a new friend without the government knowing about it.

If you aren't on the SocialNet, you don't exist — the government subsidizes it, so everybody gets an account when they turn 14. Before that, your parents control your KiddieTime account, and that's not as fun. If you want to see that guy you met at the mall again, just friend him on SocialNet! You can do it with one swipe on your FunBit. The best part is that SocialNet automatically friends you with classmates and colleagues, so that you know your networks. Don't forget to keep FunBit with you all the time, so you can always share with friends!

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5. "Sharing" takes on a new meaning.

It's called ShareEcon, or MegaShare or maybe InfoFun. Doesn't matter — it's just the latest new app you've added to your FunBit, and that you fill up with cool stuff about yourself so that all your friends know where you are, what kinds of things you like to do, and what your travel plans are for the next few weeks. Of course you want to share what you read on the Net, and who you're voting for. Once in a while, you'll share what you bought, and help your friends make a good decision about what robotic dog to buy, or which restaurant has the best panko. What you don't realize is that They are watching, too. They own the datastreams, the wires, or the satellites, and they see everything that passes between you and ShareEcon.

6. Hidden cameras record your every move on the streets and at work.

You are being watched. That shiny blue blob on the wall is actually a camera. They have cleverly covered the streets in eyes that feed back into thousands of Peace Bureaus, where facial recognition software and SocialNet information provide context. You'll try to find that special red door that marks the place where the Underground meets, down a dark alley where the cameras have been blasted out. But They may have gotten there ahead of you. The red door might always have been a lie.

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7. The most popular forms of entertainment involve putting people under surveillance and watching what they do.

Murder Teens is all about high school kids who can only win by using school equipment — there are always a lot of pens and FunBits being jammed into eye sockets. Then there's the show where a bunch of people who hate each other are forced to live in an apartment. Every day, they go to a video confessional and tell the audience why one of the other contestants should die. Vote for who dies next with the DieFuckerDie app for FunBit! The best shows, though, are the candid camera ones. Families in remote areas off the Social Net don't even know that the drones and teleflies are watching them do their sordid things. Jailbait Stream was the best one, with all those underage girls undressing at that Quaker school, until some do-gooder group shut it down.

8. Robots read all your mail, looking for key words.

How can They keep the peace if the government isn't monitoring what people say on the Net? It's always scanning your messages for secret key words that the Underground uses to get their messages out. Luckily there are companies whose mail systems are designed to scan your words to provide helpful information, like where to eat or what to buy. All that They have to do is insert a few extra commands, to watch for words the helper bots might miss . . . too bad if your friends happen to use one of those words accidentally. Once you're in Their interrogation chambers, it's almost impossible to get out.

9. Giving a song or movie to a friend is a crime.

All entertainment is owned by ZIM, which plucks talented kids out of obscurity and turns them into shiny evil disco performers who amp up the masses and focus their emotions on appropriate targets. ZIM wants you to consume more media. But ZIM embeds a special piece of software in every sound or media file that is tailored just for you. It makes you love ZIM more, and want to buy more. But if you give that media to a friend without paying ZIM, that software turns into something else. You've heard of those vacant-eyed people who live in the special ZIM retirement homes. They're well taken care of. They are happy. They consume more media.

10. Nobody is really sure what "privacy" is, and enormous debates and academic treatises are devoted to figuring it out.

A fusty old room full of professors is devoted to figuring out what books from history mean when they describe something called privacy. Angry Sousveillance activists gather at street corners, wearing funny masks, and the government keeps huffing about how they'll pass a law, or make a policy, but nobody knows what that means. Even Masterpedia.com says that privacy is a "retro" term, so you're not sure what all the fuss is about. I mean, Masterpedia is edited by citizens, and if they say it's retro, it must be true.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The 10 Rules of Surveillance Dystopia