General Magma

Uhm, what..? This license is based on the movies, not the books, so it perfectly makes sense to make the figures look like the movie characters... Anyways, those figures look fantastic, every single one of them. Can't wait to see the rest of the figures as well. I suppose that means that the reversible heads are confirmed now, as both Boromir and Aragorn use expressions different from those that we had seen before. ~ General Magma

What is odd about it? Do I have to think Middle-Earth isn't fictional and actually exists in order to be a fan? And for those who do want to continue the discussion over whether they'll separate orcs from goblins or not, this here is a goblin (aka Moria orc): They all look the same for most part.. Long, pointy ears and big yellow eyes, all with a green skin and a small nose close between their eyes. These are some of the many ways orcs (other than Moria orcs (goblins), so for example, the Mordor orcs) can look like: Moria goblins and "regular" types of orcs have a few similarities here and there, but can look a whole lot different when compared. Orcs can have tan, green, brown and even sand blue and other skin tones, while the Moria orcs (goblins) only are green with rather large eyes, unless I've missed something. ~ General Magma

This theme is not about the books, it's about the movies. In the movies they are slightly smaller and look different from orcs. Most orcs differ from each other in appearance and armory, while most goblins (Moria) look the same and only wear different armor in some cases. ~ General Magma

Facts? Middle-Earth is fictional. Great, but fictional. No need to create a large fuss over 'facts' and what's true and what's not. But aight.. I'm actually a big/great fan of LOTR, but I haven't read the books yet. You can't determine whether someone's a true fan or not by standards like that. The movies count heavily too, so don't act like they don't. Also, bear in mind that the movies are what made this theme possible - the books made the movies possible, but oh well... Let's get back on-topic before some Balrog jumps in and whips us off a bridge. (No reference to anyone but any Balrog... I suppose.) So, regarding the goblins in the Mines of Moria set; I don't think they're adding armored (or rather, heavily armored) goblins with helmets 'n all, we have seen both goblins that will be in the set, but they both had hair showing, and no helmet. And TLC is not going to make them look exactly like the orcs of Sauron's army - that would just count as laziness, and it would be inaccurate. ~ General Magma

I highly doubt they would do that. The only reason for the similarities might as well be the fact that they're both going to have pointy ears, connected to the heads in exactly the same way. ~ General Magma

Just wait for official pictures to judge the sets by, rather than judging them by a rather blurry close-up of a picture of the sets in bird's eye view. I hope they still decide to make Gollum's legs a bit more pose-able, as it sounds like they're just stuck together. You can also see him for a little bit on the picture. ~ General Magma

Aye, I had forgotten about that earlier executed idea of adding ears to hairpieces. However, my problem is that most orcs do not have hair, so if they go for regular heads, I certainly hope that they'll find a way to do that. I hope we'll be seeing new helmets though, and some very orcish armory. I'd be looking forward to add those to my already existing orc army.. While that is true, they also gave the goblins those pointy ears, so I doubt they're going to ignore those that the orcs have. ~ General Magma

As a response to the discussion about orcs (and their heads): I'm quite sure that those are going to be molds as well, to be able to represent pointy ears. I just wonder how they'll make the helmets fit them then, though. But we'll see. Perhaps a bit similar to the 'friends' system, as I hope you can choose to make them bald (or give them some kind of hairpiece that fits with orcs) or to give them a helmet. ~ General Magma

That would be Grishnakh. Personally, I have nothing against the idea of having several small packs featuring battles between two main characters (although I would definitely prefer generics), it's just never going to happen. If you look at the first wave of LOTR sets, they're clearly trying to only have duplicates of generic figures. And if they need to add a non-generic character that's already in another set, they'd most likely attempt to add some variation with different expressions, etc. ~ General Magma

When I search for every Star Wars episode (Star Wars + episode + number + full name), all 6 of them combined are only a slight bit higher than when I search for all 3 Lord of the Rings movies (Lord of the Rings + movie name) and combine those counts (around 68.000.000 versus 63.000.000), but that's still 3 movies versus 6. Nope, I've never been to FACTS (nor any similar convention for that matter) but I can imagine that the majority of people opt for Star Wars costumes if any. But still, I'm sure the sales will go very well for this theme. We'll see what happens. ~ General Magma

By Clone Wars style, we mean the style they used on the Clone Wars figures. That does not have to mean it is necessarily restricted to TCW. The term Clone Wars style is used, simply because that's where it was introduced - the animated style on the figure's heads. They may not have appeared in sets outside of TCW sets, but that does not mean it will always stay this way. Quite obvious that there's a possibility, as the SWTOR game is very similar to the animated style of The Clone Wars. @metalface13: I was referring to the Old Republic sets, the only sets I am/was interested in in this wave for Star Wars. ~ General Magma

Alright, if it's true that they're in CW style, all my LEGO money for this year can safely go to LOTR. I still really hope that they're not doing it that way, as I would be disappointed nonetheless. Only a few more weeks til we can see some pictures of 'em. ~ General Magma

You forget that LOTR is part of a fictional world that also has several other stories. A search for LOTR shows me 159.000.000 pages, The Hobbit gets me another 144.000.000 pages and Middle-Earth gets us 346.000.000 additional pages. Together, those already count for 649.000.000 pages, which beats Star Wars there. Don't tell me that those 3 are different things, because they all belong together, while Star Wars is a designation for everything within the SW universe. With that said, there is no doubt about it that this will be a very successful theme. I'm sure that the theme will continue until some point even after 2013. ~ General Magma

His coat is dark brown, however. So is Frodo's hair, his and Merry and Pippin's legs, and probably Gimli's legs as well, like I pointed out earlier. The lighting used on this picture just makes the colors alot lighter. This is main reason that the seemingly inaccurate dark blue color on Boromir stands out so much - in person, it will be less noticeable and a whole lot better. ~ General Magma

Yeah, I meant the coat-less variation of Sam. I'm not sure about Sam's hair - perhaps a shorter version (Anakin's hair from SW (as a child)) would work better with him. Not sure about the face either, but I'm sure it should work this way. I think they will most likely add reversible heads for different expressions. ~ General Magma

Yup, I'm not so keen on the dark blue arms either. He, Aragorn and Gimli should have gloves as well, though. But that's easily fixed. As for the olive green: indeed, it is olive green - and I mentioned it earlier as well after the pic was posted. I have to say it again! - I was right. This version of Sam seems to be a different outfit, though. But still, he needs differently colored legs. Merry and Pippin could use dark brown legs, but it's probably fine as it is this way already. I'm lucky to have 2 of the dark brown leg parts (from the S5 dwarf), but I'm not sure if it would go well with the torso, since that shows brown printing to match the legs. But we'll see, eventually. On a side note; they do seem to have differently colored cloaks. Sadly, the cloaks they're getting aren't completely accurate judging by the insides of the cloaks. I hope they'll still fix this, as well as the legs while they still can. It's a poster after all, and changes can be made - they could add dark red arms to Boromir, and maybe we'll even see Gandalf with hair beneath his hat, as well as some minifigs getting gloves and such changes. (I doubt the Gandalf change, though) I heard Aragorn's sword was changed on the poster as well. I'm not sure if this is true, but it could be, and thus they could also change these figures a bit. Although I do have the feeling that their legs are already dark brown - you'll notice this when you look at Frodo's torso, and then at the legs. Frodo seems to have dark brown legs, and so do Merry and Pippin. ~ General Magma

Woah! These look really amazing! And guess what, I was right about olive green being used on Legolas. Looks like I wasn't wrong about the ring either. New mold it is. I wasn't completely sure if I should get all the sets or just buy the figures, but hey, I'm just buying the sets as well. I can already say that LOTR will be the best theme in LEGO history. ~ General Magma

The new molds were probably to resemble prancing horses, as well as giving them the ability to seem like they're running when placed on their forelegs. Probably because it seems necessary with the LOTR theme, as many scenes from the movies involved horses in quick-speed, such as the Charge of the Rohirrim in Helm's Deep, or on the Pelennor Fields, to name some examples. It's actually a great idea, but I hope that they will fit in with the old horses regardless of their positions. ~ General Magma

Sand green..? It looks more like olive green than sand green, to me. I'm quite sure that the new olive green was actually going to be used for LOTR, but they normally don't introduce a new color for just one theme - which is why they used on a few things in this year's first wave already. I'm still placing my bets on olive green. ~ General Magma

I have the feeling that we're going to see Ahsoka being killed off at this point. There's enough reason for them to do it in 'Revenge', where Anakin draws closer to the dark side. Probably makes sense to do it there. ~ General Magma

That would be sand green - I kind of doubt it. Although it's possible, the color we've seen on the poster seems a bit too dark for that. It's most likely dark green or, hopefully, olive green. EDIT: 1000th post. ~ General Magma

I've been reading about people complaining about the color most likely being bright green today and the inaccuracies of it. However... I've noticed one thing. The color does not look like bright to me, and I don't think it has to do with the picture editing. For some reason, I do not think that TLC only made the new olive green color just for the Nute Gunray figure from the new Star Wars sets. If you take a close look at the figure's green parts, you can spot quite a bit of a difference from bright green, which is the reason that I think that they might be using olive green, or at least a different green color for Legolas. A second comparison shows that olive green actually differs quite a bit from it, but it's either olive green, or perhaps a darker green color if my eyes aren't fooling me. But at least it doesn't look like the normal, bright green color we've known for decades to me. I'd like to hear what others think about this matter. Not completely sure about what I just stated, but I could be right. But if it's still not olive green, then it might be another green color.. Probably not bright green. ~ General Magma

The head will be a newly molded head - I really can't see them just using a regular head for such an iconic character, which is even less likely if you consider the amounts of great details TLC puts into their figures nowadays. The body would be a smaller version of the NinjaGO skeleton body, only filled up, differently printed and in a different color, probably with new legs. That way, he's pose-able and probably also scaled well enough. The arms would be the NinjaGO skeleton/POTC Barbossa (cursed version)'s arms, in an appropiate color for Gollum. I absolutely hope they do something like this for him, I just can't accept the possibility of having a 'battle droid Gollum'. ~ General Magma

This figure looks great as well. I think the cheek lines are used here because he's an elf, and TLC did that earlier on their first elf minifig. It resembles him well enough in my opinion, and I hope he has a reversible head as well. Same hope goes for most (if not all) other figures. I just hope that it's not the last poster now that they have done 3 for each movie. Perhaps they'll start doing The Hobbit posters sometime later? Yup, it is. Looks like it has two colors. I believe that the point is that he either used two swords at once, or only one, which looked different from the other two. I'm just not sure why he's not using the armored outfit like on the real poster: ~ General Magma

Yes, but if they do use the round tile, I would expect them to have a hole in the middle of it. I just took a look at the piece on BL, and, unlike what I thought before, the piece is more rounded off at the edges. Could be a good way to use for the ring, but I hope they're just going to add a hole in it like I said before, or make the middle part transparent at the very least, somehow... The existing transparent versions of the round tile piece already show some kind of hole (or something a bit more like a pentagon with an extra corner), so maybe that hints at something.. ~ General Magma