Richard Armitage: Five Armies “The Biggest Battle”

Richard Armitage, who plays Thorin Oakenshield in The Hobbit,  says the Battle of Five Armies in The Hobbit: There and Back Again will be ‘ …possibly …bigger than you may have seen in Lord of the Rings…’

Speaking to Popcorn Taxi Richard says,

“We’ve got the whole of the Battle of the Five Armies to shoot.

It’s bloody terrifying. I started training again at the beginning of this year because the biggest battle of the entire trilogy, and possibly something bigger than you may have seen in Lord of the Rings, the Battle of the Five Armies, is coming and we haven’t shot a single move of it yet. So that’s something to look forward to, and to be terrified of.”

Talking about Thorin’s sword Orcrist Richard says,

“Tolkien makes his weapons characters. Orcrist had a character. The first time I saw the shape of the sword I was really happy with it because it had a curved blade, which meant it was going to move in a certain way. It wasn’t going to be a regular type thing. And it wasn’t going to be a broad sword. It was a kind of Samurai-type weapon so I knew it was going to flow in a certain way. So I worked with Mana [Davis] on a way of making that sword flourish. It’s a two-handed sword but at times could be a one-handed sword, so we devised a selection of moves that would really suit that blade and then he worked on exercises so I could strengthen my wrists and arms to make it look as good as what he’s doing. So that was thrilling.

The interesting side of it is that I felt an affinity with that weapon, even though it was an elf blade, and that’s sort of the paradox of Thorin, his distaste for the elves hasn’t stopped him from picking up that sword that was elf-made and using it to his advantage. So he’s a complicated character.’

And all those moves that I was talking about, that was over a year ago. So I’ve got to remind myself what we were doing. And lazy old me thinks, ‘Oh, it’s fine. I can do it’. But I know that I’ve got to get back into that stunt hanger with the guys, swing that sword around again and get back up to speed. That’s my work for the next two to three months.”

Filming for The Hobbit is due to resume in New Zealand later this month.