So this is the answer to all the riddles...

The development of Azog's design has been quite the talking point on forums for the last year or so and there seems to have been a consensus that the design we now know as Yazneg was the original look for Azog and that Azog's new design (the bald pale orc) was CGI'd over the top of the Yazneg performance.

Whilst this is still true, a documentary on the Unexpected Journey DVD reveals that this isn't the complete story. In addition, this documentary throws a few curveballs at our thoughts about Bolg for the upcoming DOS.

So, straight from the crew's mouth, here's the truth...

The writers identified early on that they wanted Azog to be their primary antagonist. His history with Thorin's family (killing Thror) would give some history and passion to his feud with Thorin and so they made a very early and very easy decision to keep Azog alive.

They originally cast Conan Stevens in the role and planned to have Azog as a full prosthetics character and here's where it starts to get interesting. The documentary shows Conan trying on a range of Azog designs and makes it very clear that the character we now know as Bolg (Giant pick-axe, red beard, bones, metal plates etc.) was in fact the original design for Azog. He's huge, intimidating and looks totally awesome, there's also a lot of variations on this costume before the one we know as Bolg was approved as Azog's design. As Azog was meant to be the primary villain, this explains why we saw production photos of 'Bolg' and even a shot of him on an early AUJ poster, at that time, that design was Azog.

However, before filming began, PJ had a change of heart and decided that he wanted his Azog to be a totally evil, intelligent orc who looked like a 'wizened old man'. With that in mind they cast a new actor John Rawls as Azog and redesigned him to look like the character we now know as Yazneg (there is no mention of what happened to Conan Stevens from this point on). Rawls' Azog was used for production and shot all the scenes featuring Azog in the first movie like the attack at the pine trees and the battle at the gates of Moria.

Then, after filming had wrapped, PJ decided he'd made a mistake and that the new look Azog wasn't threatening enough. At that point he cast Manu Bennett as Azog (Bennett started his work as Azog in August 2012!!!) and made the decision to replace all of Rawls' Azog with the entirely CGI version seen in the final film. It really is quite amazing what the effects team achieved. I think it said they had 5 weeks to do all of Azog's digital work - unbelievable.

So, as I said, most people know that Bennett's CGI Azog replaced Rawls' version but the idea the Conan's 'Bolg' design was originally Azog is new information. I guess at some point the toy companies and GW were told that that original Azog design was now a character called Bolg who would appear later in the movies, hence all the figures etc. that came out last year.

Now, what's worrying for Bolg fans is that up to now there has been absolutely zero sign of Conan's 'Bolg' design (giant pick-axe, red beard, bones, metal plates etc.) in ANY of the promo material for the Desolation of Smaug, loads of posters, the annuals, calendars, 3 trailers and not a single shot of him. They're certainly not saving the surprise as the design is already out there in the public domain. This is all despite the fact that PJ has stated recently that Bolg IS in the DOS, all of which leaves me to believe that Bolg has also now been redesigned and will feature in DOS but not with the appearance we're expecting.

This is backed up by the fact that 13 seconds into the new production blog (#12) there's a shot of someone doing Motion Capture (possibly Lawrence Makoare who played Lurtz/Gothmog/Witch King and joined the production recently) for a character who in the pre-vis looks like a massive orc who's definitely not Azog but bears enough of a resemblance to him to pass for his son.

This could also be supported by that divisive shot in the prologue to AUJ where we supposedly see Conan's Bolg character get killed by Dwalin. This could well have been a get out of jail card for PJ and crew: 'yes we had that design but he was just a big orc that got killed at the gates of Moria'

So there we go, it seems, to me at least, that there's an awful lot of evidence that we will see Bolg in DOS but that he will be an entirely CGI creation like his dad. Unfortunately I fear that the original Bolg design is fated never to be seen on screen and will sadly only live on in the gorgeous model GW released last year. On that note, anyone who's thinking of buying that figure might want to snap it up now because, if I'm right about all this, I wouldn't be surprised if GW release a new sculpt to match the new design when DOS comes out and withdraw the old one.

I'm so excited for this movie, I think it's gonna be the best of the three and I genuinely think it'll be amazing but I must admit I'll be a tad disappointed if this is the case. It will be a great shame if, IMO, the best orc design they've ever done doesn't get to see the light of day.

Thoughts?

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Sounds like the extended edition is worth it for the behind the scenes footage. I suspected the extras would mainly be the production video blogs that are already around. I really enjoyed the LotR documentaries with discussions comparing the Ringwraiths to bureaucrats (which made me even more scared of them. Are there many more documentaries like that exploring how they went from book to film and exploring the characters?

It certainly does explain a lot about Bolg. I think I will try and pick up the model soon as I do really like it and it would be a shame to miss it if they replace it (which does sound quite likely). Maybe we’ll end up with toned down stats for him when the latest rules are released. The current Bolg may end up as an Orc Captain (a little like what happened to Golfimbul), although that probably isn’t likely but who knows.

Thanks for posting that, it has seemed like one of the really odd things that happened. I guess some of the late changes like that and moving to 3 films really messed up release schedules, hopefully everything will be more settled from now on.

I’d still like to know about Narzug, but maybe he would have been in the first film but to to the changes is now not around until the second. Without anything as controversial Bolg.

I think perhaps Narzug is an orc captain involved in the attack on the barrels/Wood Elves in film 2. When it was two films that would have placed him in the first movie hence the early release. I think we may have seen him a couple of times, I think he's the orc in the trailer that jumps towards Thorin in the barrel and also the one who is being interrogated by the elves (he says 'the dwarf will never be King' in the new trailer). I could be wrong about that but the appearance fits.

As for the Extended Edition I'd say it's well worth it. I haven't actually watched the Extended cut yet (got that planned for Thursday evening!) but like you my main interest is all the behind the scenes stuff as I absolutely adored that on the LOTR DVDS which are still to my mind the greatest DVD extras ever produced.

As for the Production Blogs I'm happy to report that none of them are on there (they were all released on the theatrical cut DVD) and there is hardly any overlap between them and the new documentaries - it's basically all new stuff. It's hard to quantify exactly but I reckon there's about 8 hours of new behind the scenes documentaries on there - it's reeeeeally good stuff.

Most of it is about the production so every major scene (think Bag End, Rivendell, Radagast White Council, Trolls etc. gets its own 10-15 minute documentary covering the filming.

There's then another set that looks at the design, planning and casting of the movie, a 15 min feature on Bilbo, hour long feature on the dwarves, 15 mins each on the trolls, Azog, radgast and the goblins and another one about building the sets that I haven't got too yet. It's all absolutely awesome and very much in the style of the LOTR ones.

There's also one commentary that I haven't watched yet. That would be one small complaint I had - the LOTR movies had 4 commentaries compared to this one, it's a shame that the cast and the pre/post production teams don't get a chance to shine.

The other minor complaint is that the vast majority focuses on the 'production' process, some of my favourite docs on the LOTR DVDs were the 'Book to Film' 'Editing' 'Sound Design' and 'Visual Effects' docs. These don't have dedicated docs on AUJ but are interwoven at parts into the other docs.

However, overall they're excellent and I'm basically complaining that the second best DVD extras of all time aren't quite as good as the best DVD extras of all time! I would heartily recommend picking it up. It's only £14 on iTunes too! (although you don't get the commentary and you'll need about 23GB on your PC!

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That explains why the Azog character looks so out of place. He's the only CGI in the film which stands out like a 1998 sore thumb.

That said, understanding more about the story, I can forgive him a bit. Still not overly keen on the design but it's impressive what they managed in a short space of time.

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Very interesting. I do hope Bolg somehow makes it through. I really hope these behind the scenes ends up on youtube!

Wow, thanks for the info! I didn't really care about Bolg in the first place and think Azog looked very cool..

Thanks for posting, not just quite impressive how they were able to get all the redesigned Azog stuff ready, but even more incredible how it was decided, so late, to change it entirely.. a very risky decision, and I'm not sure if it paid off in the end.

Thanks for posting Dr, very interesting reading, shame they never kept Bolg as Azog, he does look far superior imo

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And I assume they had to go back and shoot Yaznegs death at weather top during post production....seeing as he dies.

Also, I'm hopeful that we will see the original bolg design in DOS. We can easily see his recognisable silhouette in one of the posters that was released and posted here recently.

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I think its a bit of a shame--in my opinion, Bolg/Azog 1.0 was one of the best designed villains in any Middle-earth screen adaptation.

Yeah it's a really incredible effort when you consider how many shots he's in and as they're working at 48FPS their workload's essentially doubled!





I agree, there's no doubt in my mind Bolg's a superior design, I feel even more strongly now having watched the documentary and seen him moving around.

That said, I'm also not one of the Azog haters, I know I'm in the minority here but I actually really like his design and think he looks pretty damn good. Having re-watched the film a bunch of times I think he looks pretty fantastic during the fight at the pine trees, the CGI certainly doesn't bother me AND we got another really cool mini! Ultimately I think Azog as we have him is a better Big Bad than the Yazneg design but a worse one than the Bolg design which, IMO, is probably the best prosthetic orc WETA have ever done.

My hope is that in DOS Azog's gonna look even better as they've had a hell of a lot longer to work on the character this year, fingers crossed!




THAT is a damn fine point sir, I'd forgotten about that poster, maybe there's hope yet!

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Highly doubtful at this point. As Dr Grant stated, at around 13 seconds in the new production blog I’m 90% certain that what we are looking at is the new Bolg.

The weapon is nearly identical and there’s an obvious plate on the side of his head. He’s got two arms as well although I’m not sure if pre rendered/incomplete CGI Azog (not sure what the exact term is) was depicted that way as well.

Overall, I’m still extremely disappointed with Azog in the film. It pains me even more now that there was a possibility that the baddassery that was Bolg could have been the main antagonist

It's a trend that is occurring far too often in Hollywood lately: The weird tentacle things in Man of Steel, the Silver Samurai in The Wolverine, Kronos in Wrath of the Titans...

Keep the baddies simple!

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I when out and purchased the extended film after reading this thread

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Hah! Glad to hear it, I should get some commission from PJ! Hope you like it, I finished watching the last of the docs tonight. There's an hour long one that looks at designing and building the sets and then a half hour one that looks at the songs and music - both really great!

Hope you like it!

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Could someone please post some pictures and/or links?

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How have people got the extended edition already? I thought it wasn't out until the 11th?

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The bought it at iTunes!

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I made the mistake of purchasing it at Walmart the Extra features were not included.

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"the same as a duck you must be made of wood"

I will pick up the extended edition some time in the next couple of weeks - I always enjoy picking my way through all of the extras, so one movie plus the extras keeps me entertained for days

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