Lord of the Rings Miniatures - The Fellowship Returns

These old plastic hobbits aren't of very good quality, especially in comparison to the more detailed metal versions below.  I can see why so many hobbyists were metal snobs, though the sculpts companies are now doing in plastic is quite amazing.

After a nice spring break away from the hobby table, I returned home to my piles of unpainted minis calling for attention.

I have a long term goal of replicating a small piece of the battle of Helm's Deep.  I've built a rough approximation of the redoubt out of foam and bought the fellowship and a few bad guys.

More recently I procured a pile of Uruk Hai and, facing a long cycle of batch paintings, I realized I better paint up the more famous faces before I tired of painting within the lines.

After a few nights, here's where the first group of minis stand:

These two came pre-painted, but not well.  I probably should have stripped them, but have so many other projects, I just tried to touch them up as best as possible.  

This is a great sculpt, but it took three tries to get the face to resemble Gollum.  Still not happy, but done nonetheless.

My favorites of the bunch, these metal minis really captured the likeness of Elijah Woods and Sean Astin.  Very fun to paint up, despite their small stature.  

Merry and Pippen weren't at Helms Deep, but I may pretend otherwise, just so these two can get some action.

These two are plastic sculpts, though the poor detail is less noticeable on these larger minis, as opposed to the hobbits.

Metal on the left, plastic on the right.  

Metal Gandalf, looking quite grey.

We just finished watching the last Hobbit movie last night.  While I sort-of enjoyed the Hobbit series overall, the last one fell far short of the standard set by the series as a whole (though I did enjoy seeing the Laketown architecture, in all its Mordhiem-ish glory).

I'm hoping to rekindle some of the magic from the original LOTR films, of which the Two Towers was my favorite.  They were a remarkable achievement in filmmaking, and it's a shame to see their pop culture impact fading.