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This could very well be our first grotesque look at what the Great Goblin will look like in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit trilogy. The character is being played by Barry Humphries. I absolutely love the design, but they haven't been confirmed. It looks like something Jackson and his creative team would come up with though! They come from a French Tolkien web-site, and for those of you who don't want to know who exactly this character is, and the part he plays in the Middle Earth story, don't read ahead because it's full of spoilers.
Here’s the English translation of the Great Goblin description from the website...
The Goblin King is a huge, grotesquely bloated monster that in the years of his tyrannical rule over the miserable inhabitants of the Goblin town grew fat and flabby. The Goblin town is a collection of skew-whiff ramshackle huts deep in the caves of the Misty Mountains. He commands a bunch of foul, polluted, with scars and ulcers studded goblins.
Basically, they are bandits, they live by what they can pick up from passengers on the passes through the mountains. The Goblin King and his followers manage to capture Bilbo and the dwarves. The Goblin King is more wily and smarter than it seems. He takes pleasure in torturing his prisoners — he almost succeeds to finish off Thorin Oakenshield and his companions.
What do you think of the Great Goblin design?
Here's more of a detailed description and History of the character:
The Great Goblin was a goblin leader who lived in the Misty Mountains in Middle-earth during the Third Age.
The Great Goblin was a Goblin chieftain of the Misty Mountains. The Great Goblin was a very large creature with a huge head. He was the chief of a group of Goblins who lived in Goblin-town near the High Pass. They preyed on travelers who used another, easier pass near the main gate of Goblin-town until people started avoiding that route over the mountains. The Goblins then made another gate that opened into a cave that they called the Front Porch at the top of the High Pass. He also sometimes ordered his goblins to catch him fish in Gollum's lake, which were sometimes killed by Gollum.
In the summer of 2941, the Dwarves of Thorin and Company along with Bilbo Baggins were captured on the Front Porch and were brought before the Great Goblin in his great cave. He was seated on a flat stone and surrounded by armed guards. The Great Goblin demanded to know what the Dwarves were doing in the mountains. He seems less hostile than the orcs during the later war, as his questioning seems to imply that he has not decided beforehand if he will order to kill the party, to make them slaves or even let them go, and that he will decide according to their answers. The orcs taking prisoners during the war seems more inclined to torture people before asking, and are only barely restrained by orders. Perhaps this reflects the growth of Sauron's evil influence.
However, when it was revealed that Thorin carried the Elvish sword Orcrist - which the Orcs feared and called Biter - the Great Goblin was enraged and at once leaped to attack Thorin. Gandalf then appeared and killed the Great Goblin by running him through with his sword Glamdring, called Beater by the goblins.
The death of the Great Goblin angered the Goblins of the Misty Mountains. A great army of Goblins and Wargswas amassed by Bolg - whose father Azog had been killed by the dwarf Dáin II Ironfoot. Bolg's forces tracked Thorin & Company to the Lonely Mountain where they fought the Battle of the Five Armies against the Dwarves,Elves, and Lakemen.
