New interview is out. Lee talks Thranduil’s appearance, his audition, favourite scene of The Hobbit trilogy to film and more. Thanks to this great tumblr user for translating the first two questions. The rest was translated from French using google translate, so my apologizes for any mistakes. I tried to make it understandable.

Fantasy lovers remember your wonderful performance in the film THE FALL and the cult series PUSHING DAISIES… It like the most when you play in the fantastic city, as you again in THE HOBBIT?
I do not know if you know, but Tarsem had made some Fall postproduction in your country, in Paris… On the Fantasy, I’ve always loved this genre which gives “carte blanche” to the imagination. It has been three years since I participated in the filming and postproduction of the Hobbit, and I must say it was a unique, truly extraordinary experience. Peter Jackson is one of the most exciting directors I’ve met. It can give you inspiration and make you excel. This is a bold extremely talented artist, constantly progressing and taking risks. And he knows how it should tell a story to successfully captivate people of all ages and all cultures around the world. I think we do not always realize the extraordinary achievement that is… As for me, I took a lot of pleasure to embody Thranduil, as it is a being who has many facets, and high intelligence. This is an elf with a very complex personality… It has a dark, sad nature … and it is very very very old! (laughs) I learned a lot playing Thranduil, who is also the first character elf written by Tolkien.

Peter Jackson said that your performance in The Fall was engraved in his memory. He even said that with this film, you had always been his first choice and only choice to play Thranduil… Does that mean you did not have to audition for the role?
No, no. Although this is extremely flattering and very nice from Peter, I still had to audition in New York. We read some scenes and talked about the character, especially with Philippa Boyens who knows everything of Tolkien’s work. I explained to him what were the specific details that I knew about this character. But what I missed this time, it was an overview of Thranduil and his motives. And that Philippa could describe me. We know that in the original novel, he never leaves his kingdom of Middle Earth to go west, to the Elven land of Valinor. He prefers to stay where it is and continue to enjoy his immortality in his huge palace – fortress.

What did you suggest for makeup, costume and accessories of your character?
This whole process was very collaborative. I naturally wanted Thranduil to have the appearance of a king. I loved the first dress that we have came up with, and you’ll see in the first scene of the second film. This is a golden tunic embroidered with gold ornamentation on which is placed a voluminous cape, almost as wide as the portrait of King Louis XIV, in which his fur-lined cloak takes up so much space. I told Ann Maskrey, our costume designer, I wanted to give him a very impressive appearance. Meaning it was necessary that one feels immediately that when he says something, people listen and obey immediately. Thranduil did not need to argue. He does not seek anyone’s approval. And if we resist it, then it’s a problem that is quickly resolved in his favor!

What are your favourite moments of your character in the film?
One that immediately comes to mind is the scene where I welcome Thorin and the dwarves in my fortified palace after the capture. This is a very hard, very tense confrontation between two kings. There is one side a king who reigns, and the other a deposed king from his throne and the land of his ancestors, who seeks to reclaim it. I loved working with Richard Armitage. It turns out that this is the first scene in Hobbit when I show, and I remember that I thought “What a great start!” (Laughs)

What were the most challenging aspects of working on THE HOBBIT?
The hardest thing is to achieve assimilate all the abounding information and nuances of this rich universe and to think long to play his character more precisely, most sincerely… We know that these films will be seen by tens of millions of people around the world, and we want to present their flawless performance, solid, which we have seen absolutely every aspect. This is what we must do to treat the public with the respect it deserves. We can not just leave such a project by saying that no one has perhaps done his job 120%, and it does not matter if you forgot to deal with some this thing started. In any case, I do not work like that! I wanted to know everything about Thranduil, and being directed by Peter Jackson, I was in good hands. Same for Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh. I was surrounded by sympathetic allies who helped me to embody this character the best they knew everything. You know, I think if THE LORD OF THE RINGS and the first episode of HOBBIT have been so successful is because the public has seen that it was not the “Popcorn” films, as we say the United States. These are fantastic stories, certainly, but with a real human depth, and find resonance in each viewer.

Have you kept any accessories or prostheses from your character at the end of filming?
I kept my prosthetic elf ears and put them in a book, a bit like flowers are dried.

What are the most unusual memories you have from the Hobbit ?
Oh, probably filming battle scenes, because if you knew how many times I fell off the artificial momentum that I had to pretend to ride, you’d call me unworthy to play King of the Elves! I am terrified of use will be made of these overwhelming images in the bonus film when it comes out on DVD and Blu Ray! I waved my sword over my head like a valiant warrior, and I lost balance and I fell. And straightening me through my crown was on my head… It was heartbreaking. (laughs)

The original version can be found in two parts – here and here.

Marvel has released the official synopsis for Guardians of the Galaxy, a few days after releasing the first screenshot. 

An action-packed, epic space adventure, Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” expands the Marvel Cinematic Universe into the cosmos, where brash adventurer Peter Quill finds himself the object of an unrelenting bounty hunt after stealing a mysterious orb coveted by Ronan, a powerful villain with ambitions that threaten the entire universe. To evade the ever-persistent Ronan, Quill is forced into an uneasy truce with a quartet of disparate misfits–Rocket, a gun-toting raccoon; Groot, a tree-like humanoid; the deadly and enigmatic Gamora; and the revenge-driven Drax the Destroyer. But when Quill discovers the true power of the orb and the menace it poses to the cosmos, he must do his best to rally his ragtag rivals for a last, desperate stand–with the galaxy’s fate in the balance.

Lee Pace stars as Ronan.

You might still remember that Lee Pace and the rest of Marvels’s Guardians of the Galaxy cast introduced themselves at 2013 San Diego Comic-Con. The audience was also lucky to get an exclusive look at the upcoming film. The short teaser trailer has never been released officially, but one of the fans recorded it.

Guardians of the Galaxy opens August 1, 2014.

The Sag Harbor Express has a new interview with Lee Pace, where he mainly discusses The Hobbit trilogy films.

Q: Here you are again playing Thranduil. Is there a process involved in playing a character over so many years?
Lee Pace: It’s been a totally artistic experience, and I’ve had a lot of fun. I’ve been working on this movie for about three years now, so the “process” means a lot of different things. There’s the incredible source material that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about, about what Tolkien thought about the elves, and what his inspirations were. And I think of the elves that Peter Jackson created the first time around for Lord of the Rings–where we can take them in these Hobbit movies? Thranduil’s the first elf that Tolkien wrote. He’s a very tricky elf, you know. He is the most powerful being in Middle Earth, a legendary warrior. He’s not a friend, as the dwarves know. The best way I can say it is that he’s more like a very old tree, or a tiger, or a lizard, than a human. It’s fun to play a badass.

Danny Peary: It’s interesting that Tolkien made the elves, including Thranduil, immortal. You’re a vampire in Twilight and vampires start out as human beings who become immortal and deal with the new dilemma of living forever. But in this your character is immortal from the beginning. So how did you approach that?
LP: That’s a very interesting question. I’ve thought very much about that, and I think there’s a place to start answering the question. Like their king Thranduil, I see the elves as a force of nature. That’s what I think they are about. They are old Old World elves and their immortality is about transitioning to another place..

DP: If Thranduil weren’t immortal, would you play him differently?
LP: Immortality is a huge part of the elves, and I talk a lot about it in the movie. It changes the rules totally if you know that you’ll never die of natural causes. The elves love combat though and they can die in battle. Thranduil’s survived great battles in which most of the other great elves died. That is a huge cornerstone to the character, too. The dilemma that my character faces–as you see in the prologue of the first film–is whether to help the dwarves battle the dragon. He chooses not to. I think about that choice in the context of your question about immortality. Why should he risk the elves’ precious immortal lives for a lost cause? There’s a different set of values that comes with that immortality. Life is precious in a different way, not because it’s a transient thing. You’re not going to just pass through time with people but will endure and be like the stones and mountains.

Q: What can you tell us about the second film? Is there more action? Is your character more at the center of the story, as it appears in the trailers?
LP: In the second movie, the stakes get ratcheted up an incredible amount, which accelerates the action. The group must get to the mountain and there’s a lot of things standing in the way, including the elves. Thranduil does play a very different part in the second movie. Some dwarves come through his woods, but he’s not going to let them go and wake up a dragon. You don’t wake up a dragon unless you know how to kill it, and they don’t know how. His choice is not to use his force, but he could. Choosing not to do it, he’s taking the same risk as if he chose to do it, because he will still change the outcome of a conflict.

Q: This trilogy is based on one book. How deeply did you go into Tolkien’s writing to learn about your character?
LP: The book is great stuff. Tolkien was such an incredibly knowledgeable person, a real intellect. There were all these great sources he drew on to put his story together. You can’t beat it. It’s literature, it’s mythology, it’s cool. In many ways, it’s English story-telling, English language at its peak. For me, that material was not only a fascinating work but necessary. Decoding those riddles and symbols that he put in was very interesting work. You have to understand it, and be inspired in the same way he was inspired. So many things I read would occur to me later in the shooting, like that all of these kings live in underground caves. What is that about? How did Tolkien come to that? Was it reading Icelandic literature that inspired him, or was it some kind of expression of his imagination that he put these kings in underground fortresses in a very wild world? This is one of the most profound ideas in the story.

Q: Did you train to do any fighting?
LP: I trained to fight with swords. The fight scene was one of the most fun things I did on this movie. The stunt guys are so good, and I had the opportunity do quite a bit of the great stunt work, especially in the Battle of the Five Armies.

Q: What did you take away from playing your character?
LP: My sword skills? You always take a little bit from a character you’ve played. I don’t know what it will be with him. The research did to find him was taking long hikes in New Zealand and just going into the woods and thinking about woods. I’m a pretty gentle person.

DP: Do you think of your character as a bad guy?
LP: Thranduil is not bad, he’s just badass. You can’t compare him to humans because he’s not human. He’s wild. If you encounter a bear in the woods and it mauls you, you can’t say it’s evil. It’s a wild thing. Do you know what I mean? He’s a king, a significant king, a formidable force in this world. He makes no secret of it–he’s not devious. He know he has rules and principles.

DP: Do you think Thranduil’s been misunderstood?
LP: Definitely. In Ralph Bakshi’s animated feature, he’s portrayed as a pretty nasty character. But I look at him a little deeper and don’t believe that he is bad. He’s just not a friend of the dwarves; he doesn’t like them. When I think about him, it makes sense–if they are going to accumulate that kind of wealth, a dragon is going to come. I think that’s his wisdom. He’s looking at these dwarves acquiring a huge pile of treasure, and he knows evil will come a result. Thranduil knows because he’s been around for 3,000 years.

DP: He has a son, Legolas, played by Orlando Bloom, who reappears in this film. What’s the father-son relationship?
LP: It’s a very interesting relationship that evolved as we shot this movie. It’s about immortality as well. Thranduil’s heartbroken because of things that have happened in the past that makes this relationship very complicated. It’s very hard. It’s a movie very much about fathers and sons–there’s that storyline throughout the movie.

Full interview here.