The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

[ella]

Thranduil (Lee Pace) is a Sindarin word that means "vigorous spring".

[caroline]

While the novel and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) are mostly told through Bilbo's point of view, this movie shifts the perspective to mainly Gandalf and Thorin, with little involvement from Bilbo in many major scenes.

[cameron]

Only entry in the Hobbit trilogy in which Thranduil (Lee Pace) does not ride on an elk.

[melinda]

According to the lunar calendar, seen in the house of Bard, Durin's Day falls on the date 30 Halimath (September).

[russell]

Martin Freeman and the Elvish actors all play characters who cannot grow facial hair. The actors, however, not only grew facial hair, but had a complete five o'clock shadow by the end of a day's filming, even if they were clean-shaved at the beginning of the day. This shadow appears blue on film. Rather than shave repeatedly during the day, the actors had orange make-up applied, which cancelled out the blue shadow.

[carl]

According to visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri, classic European and Asian dragons (particularly the European Wyvern) served as inspirations for designing Smaug.

[charlie]

The first meeting between Gandalf and Radagast takes place in the mountains of High Fells of Rhudaur, to investigate an underground cave. They find some tombs desecrated, and its iron doors blown out. These are the tombs of the Nazgûl (the ancient nine Kings of Men), mentioned by Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012). Rhudaur is a Sindarin word (a fictional language created by Tolkien) and means "Eastern Forest".

[terry]

Originally, Doug Jones was meant to play King Thranduil, but Peter Jackson cast Lee Pace, of whom he was a big admirer since watching Pace's movie The Fall (2006).

[edgar]

When The Necromancer is revealed as Sauron, he initially appears as a ghost clad in armor, as he was shown in the prologue of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001).

[tamara]

Some of the story material comes from other Middle-Earth lore sources. Gandalf discovering Sauron hiding at Dol Guldur is not from the Hobbit novel, but is described in the Appendices of The Lord of the Rings novels. In the books, this event actually occurred 91 years before the events of The Hobbit. Gandalf meets Thrain there, who is imprisoned and dies but gives him the key to Erebor. Gandalf escapes and subsequently warns the White Council about Sauron's presence, but Saruman claims that Sauron is not a serious enough threat to intervene yet. During the second meeting of the White Council 91 years later (after Gandalf has left the company of Dwarves at Mirkwood) they finally decide to attack Dol Guldur, and Sauron is chased away. As with the Lord of the Rings films, The Hobbit movies considerably condense the timeline from the books, and have combined much of these events for dramatic purposes.

[bessie]

The fish that were dumped into the barrels to hide Bilbo and the Dwarves were real fish, with a few rubber props mixed in. At one point, Adam Brown (Ori) had as much as four hundred pounds of fish dumped directly on him. Brown hates fish, and had to fight his own phobia while buried in them in the barrel, and while he waited for crew members to pull them off of him. Since the fish were slippery, they had to be taken out by hand one at a time.

[clayton]

Smaug seems to have a will of dominance, as he was shown capable of forcing Bilbo into revealing himself.

[kyle]

After the barrel riding sequence, as the Orcs continue to search for the Dwarves, one of them dips his finger into a pool of blood on the ground and tastes it, spitting in disgust and says "Dwarf blood!" This mimics a scene from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) where Gimli dips his finger in a similar fashion into some blood left on some leaves and tastes it, only to spit out in disgust and say "Orc blood!"

[gerald]

Benedict Cumberbatch, Orlando Bloom, Cate Blanchett, Martin Freeman, Lee Pace, and Richard Armitage were chosen by the readers of Empire Magazine among "The 100 Sexiest Movie Stars" in 2013.

[sophie]

In the original screenplay, Bofur was supposed to be part of the group that accompanies Thorin and Bilbo to the Lonely Mountain. However, James Nesbitt had to return to the U.K. to work on another project, so the script was re-written to accommodate his schedule.

[morris]

When Bilbo puts on the Ring in the black forest of Mirkwood, he can understand the giant spiders. In The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), Frodo could hear the Nazgûl when both met on Weathertop.

[ava]

Luke Evans' (Bard the Bowman's) performance was dedicated to Paul Walker, with whom he co-starred in Fast & Furious 6 (2013), and who died a few days before this movie's release.

[michele]

Most notably, Smaug was apparently a four-legged western dragon in the first movie, but to follow the description in the book, referring to him as a "Wyrm", he was redesigned to be a more snake or bird-like Wyvern-type dragon in this movie. In the Blu-ray Extended Edition of the first movie, his forelimbs were changed to winged arms. Many other parts of his body have also been altered from what he looked like in the first movie.

[aaron]

Peter Jackson admits he misread the text when depicting the Eye of Sauron in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Sauron's appearance in this movie, as a black apparition forming the pupil of the Eye, is much closer to Tolkien's descriptions.