Da Boss wrote:I didn't like film Azog or Bolg that much, because I prefer the "real actor" orcs to the CGI orcs.
IIRC, Tolkien pretty much used Goblin and Orc interchangeably. The goblins might have been a little smaller but the splitting into definitive breeds is a bit of a modern invention.
I had always imagined Bolg as a big fat goblin in armour, because Bolg is the Irish Gaelic word for "belly". So I imagined someone something like Grom the Fat but grittier (I mean, when I read the book I'd never seen Grom the Fat, but when I saw him I thought "Yeah, a big fat goblin like that!")
I never really imagined Goblins as being green like
GW ones, I thought maybe greyish/brownish and so on. Jackson's orcs are actually reasonably close to what I had imagined when reading the books originally. Reading Tolkien's descriptions afterwards I was a little disappointed at what he'd imagined.
Those miniatures look like a good representation to me though. When I read what Tolkien was describing I imagined more of a racist caricature than a corrupted, ruined humanoid.
He did pretty much use the term Goblin and Orc interchangeably. The term "Goblin" was used primarily in
The Hobbit, but "Orc" was also used a few times.
And in
LotR, the term "Goblin" tends to be reserved for the Hithaeglir region.
Untangling the racialism inherent in Tolkien's work is not as difficult as people imagine. His descriptions of Orcs are very specifically "The worst characteristics of the Mongol stereotype" (to quote him).
He also gives us other characteristics in the novels: long arms, which are often described as "ape-like" (you have to wonder where a Hobbit saw an Ape, though), broad noses, and squat legs.
The skin is also described as "Ruddy," which is just another term for "darker than the typical European." The Mongol complexion would fit that characteristic.
The last thing he describes as "Black Uruks."
He points out here that he means literally "black," and not the simply darker skin of a Sub-Saharan African. So.... If this were done accurately, there would be little chance of it looking "racist" as a mockery of Blacks.... Unless you did something like Black-face, which would be racist. I have yet to be able to get a skin-tone for these to actually work out, so I just go with the deeper melatonin content instead.
Jackson did not want to have to deal with addressing any of this, so he just gave the Orcs Vittiligo (splotchy skin). Which was a bit of a cop-out.
And the CGI Orcs in T
he Hobbit suck.
I have two more Command Groups to paint (after doing some conversion work), so I will be looking at a different means of painting the skin that I think might produce a smoother shading (which I think may be how I used to paint skin - don't remember, but we'll see how it turns out).
MB
