Warner Bros. unveils new The Hobbit footage at CinemaCon

Yesterday was a big day for Warner Bros. at CinemaCon as they unveiled a lot of new footage for their upcoming films. The most anticipated footage was held until the end and it happened to belong to Peter Jackson's The Hobbit. Jackson had decided to preview 10 minutes of footage to showcase the film's 48 fps (frames per second) frame rate. Unfortunately, the footage shown was only for the eyes of those at CinemaCon but you can be sure that fans will be on the lookout for it. We do however have a write up of what was shown by ComingSoon.net's Edward Douglas.

"It opened with lots of sweeping shots of the mountains and landscapes of Middle Earth set to Howard Shore's distinctive score leading into an introduction by the older Bilbo, played by Ian Holm, telling the story of his journey to Frodo, and we see a brief glimpse of Elijah Wood as his "Lord of the Rings" character. This then leads into the opening from the trailer of Gandalf approaching Bilbo to go on a journey with the dwarves. We watched a good section of when Bilbo encounters trolls around the campfire early in his journey and they're trying to decide how to eat him, and as one of the trolls lift Bilbo up, Thorin leaps forward and the rest of the dwarves come forward to save him.

There's also a significant scene where Gandalf is presenting "the Immortal Blade" to a council made up of Christopher Lee's Saruman, Cate Blanchett's Galadriel, and Hugo Weaving's Elrond as they discuss the sword's origins and how Gandalf was able to get it from the crypt of the Witch King where he was buried in a tomb covered with spells preventing it from being opened.

We then see Gandalf going through that same tomb, peering around a corner when a bird flies out and startles him, and standing behind him is a dwarf - one we couldn't identify or remember, thought it was a kindly older dwarf rather than a warrior like Thorin. The birds flying around land on his head as if his hair was a nest and he puts his cap over them. With his staff, Gandalf lights up the way ahead which is a steep stairwell leading straight down.

The scenes of the group walking across the green fields and icy mountains of Middle Earth (i.e. New Zealand) were definitely reminiscent of "Fellowship of the Rings" and we even saw a little bit of Gandalf on his steed and a scene where the dwarves first encounter Orlando Bloom's Legolas.

The highlight though was an extended conversation between Bilbo and Smeagol/Gollum where Bilbo is trying to get directions from the strange creature who seems to be more interested in playing a game of riddles. Andy Serkis' ability to switch Smeagol's schizophrenic personalities still seems to be intact, and from what we saw, Martin Freeman seems absolutely perfect as Bilbo and we think audiences will like him as much as they did the Hobbits in the "Lord of the Rings" movies."

Jackson unveiled some great footage at CinemaCon and even showed off some of the film's story that was not present in the novel. In The Hobbit there are long periods of time where Gandalf is not with the caravan of dwarves and Bilbo because he is on business of his own. It seems that Jackson plans on showing the audience what some of that business was and I for one am excited.

Source: Coming Soon