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Ian McKellen Says Which Female Tolkien Character Will Show Up In The Hobbit Extended Release

Questions! Questions That Need Answering

The Hobbit, as well as The Lord of the Rings, are lacking in women in a big way. You can blame the guy who wrote the first book in 1937 if you feel the need, but when adapting those stories to film in 2013, the absence is noted. Peter Jackson went so far as to add a new elf, Tauriel, to his Hobbit trilogy but it turns out a few of the women who already existed in J.R.R. Tolkien’s world didn’t make the cut for theater viewings. Sir Ian McKellen explains who. 

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McKellen keeps a blog on the films’ production on his website. He recently posted about the lack of women in Tolkien’s world but when on to give some intriguing information.

One thing Middle-earth is short on is the feminine. It’s a pity, because a female dwarf would have been fun. Bilbo’s mother, the “famous Belladonna Took,” will make a brief appearance in the extended DVD/Blu-ray edition but in the film itself, thank goodness for the ravishing re-appearance of Cate Blanchett’s serene Galadriel. She is so sweet to Gandalf, countering the sinister presence of a mournful Saruman at the conference table. Actually Christopher Lee wasn’t with the rest of us, filming in New Zealand. His contribution was shot back home in London and then sliced into the scene, though you can’t tell, of course.

Also on hand with the other gorgeous-looking elves in Rivendell is FIGWIT: and if you don’t know who that is, you haven’t been following the Flight of the Conchords’ subplot. It’s a Kiwi in-joke.

I don’t think he’s realized how far Figwit has come.

That aside, we’re with McKellen here, some dwarf women would have been great. Not to mention, Belladonna totally should have made the cut, and holy crap, Christopher Lee wasn’t with them in that scene!?

The moral of this post is, McKellen should talk more often.

(via Blastr)

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Author
Jill Pantozzi
Jill Pantozzi is a pop-culture journalist and host who writes about all things nerdy and beyond! She’s Editor in Chief of the geek girl culture site The Mary Sue (Abrams Media Network), and hosts her own blog “Has Boobs, Reads Comics” (TheNerdyBird.com). She co-hosts the Crazy Sexy Geeks podcast along with superhero historian Alan Kistler, contributed to a book of essays titled “Chicks Read Comics,” (Mad Norwegian Press) and had her first comic book story in the IDW anthology, “Womanthology.” In 2012, she was featured on National Geographic’s "Comic Store Heroes," a documentary on the lives of comic book fans and the following year she was one of many Batman fans profiled in the documentary, "Legends of the Knight."

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