You're concerned that the elves will play more than an incidental role in their escape from the spiders. That would worry me, too. That would indeed undermine Bilbo's role a bit. I don't know anything of course, but I don't see that they need the elves. I could quite easily see the elves capture the dwarves after the initial escape is done, and the dwarves are trying to fight their way out of the spider glens.

The difficulty here is motivation. Bilbo would trust elves not to be horrible to his friends, but he wouldn't want to be captured with them. It also brings up the question of whether Thorin is captured with or without the rest of the dwarves. If he's NOT with them, it's further reason for Bilbo to follow and see if Thorin was captured in the same way. If he's with them, then he just kind of tags along invisibly. I don't know. I'm trying to think how the scenes would be most exicting and action packed. Legolas shooting 32 spiders at once with one arrow would be nifty to see, but it does undermine Bilbo's individual effort to rescue and rally his friends. Now that he's more accepted by Thorin and Co. it means he would be going ahead with his pledge to help them.

I think the barrel escape is quite a different matter. There's a lot of rumors about Tauriel etc. What we know is that Ev Lilly said she has a line sort of like 'the cells are empty'. Now if she was helping, I don't know if that line makes sense. That would raise the alarm. Of course she could be taken totally out of context.

Of course, she could say it with a complete sense of being dumbfounded. Unless she KNOWS Bilbo is around somewhere (they met somehow while he was stealing something to eat) I don't see how she's going to be motivated to help get all the dwarves away. That's really Bilbo's job and plan. She could 'look the other way' I guess, and somehow feels sympathy. Is she going to betray her King and people by letting these dwarves escape because of a casual meeting with a somewhat handsome dwarf? That's a serious stretch, unless you turn the wood elves into highly emotional creatures very different from the Noldor -- which they are -- but still, it's a stretch for a script-writer. All characters are hopefully written with something they want as a goal. What does Tauriel want?

The whole idea of Tauriel and Kili is interesting. Since it's a totally made up thing, I wonder at its believability, and wether they can devote much time to developing any kind of feelings or admiration or puppy love or whatever. The only precedent is Gimli's wonder at Lady Galadriel. It's quite different. Gimli's situation was different, and Galadriel is extremely powerful and charismatic. He wasn't going to get much from any kind of crush. Tauriel is from a more down-to-earth sort of elven strain, more could happen I guess.

I guess it all depends on whether they have been joking around about it, and they're throwing things to the media to spin, or whether there's an actual scripted set so scenes and conversations. Have there been any pictures of Tauriel with Kili? Even with her holding him at arrow-point? The hand in that one picture is holding Gloin at arrow point, and most people think it's Legolas.

I'm thinking out loud here...anyone else?