Waiting for 'The Battle of the Five Armies'...

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Just emphasis to me that film Smaug is a bloody stupid size. He's not fecking Godzilla  

Well, let's look at this.
Smaug certainly did not need to be as large as he was. But I don't think we can really argue that he is too large. In terms of size the only explicit measurement I know of from the source material is that he was too big, even when he was a young dragon, to fit through a ~5x6 foot doorway.
In the book we see Smaug from the viewpoint of Bilbo, who describes him as vast, like an "immeasurable bat." In the film we've seen him inside of dwarf-halls and next to dwarves and a hobbit, so that when we see him next to men he should actually be appearing somewhat smaller. As concerns that he does appear to be quite large. At least 30 feet tall at the shoulders when standing up as he is in the poster. Here's a size comparison:


The size looks consistent at least.

Azriel is right of course that the poster is for visual effect and may not be quite indicative of the actual relative size of Smaug in the BoFA. But if we consider that the force of the falling body of the dragon hitting Lake-town ("His last throes spintered it to sparks and gledes.") is sufficient to destroy it, then I would argue that Jackson pretty much has to have a large dragon considering just how big Lake-town is in the movie.

I really don't mind that he's as big as he is. And hey, it could have been a lot worse:

Caution: Similar to the Lovely Centaur Couple we saw a few weeks back:

(Bloody fan art )
Edit: For the record Petty, Smaug is not Godzilla you are correct. Smaug is about the size of Godzilla's foot.

Spoiler:

We know how big Smaug is supposed to be more or less from Tolliens illustration, as Bilbo is in it for comparison.



According to one of the WETA guys when talking about the problems of conveying Smaug's personality - "how do you give emotion to a head the size of a bus?"

Its clear Pj has increased Smaug's size by many times, when you then take into account the massive gigantic halls he is inside and all the other stuff, like the massive furnace place and that the interior is large enough for Smaug to glide in, then the movie Lonely MT must be about 4 time the size of Everest!

Pettytyrant101 wrote:We know how big Smaug is supposed to be more or less from Tolliens illustration, as Bilbo is in it for comparison.

I don't think that's fair Petty.

The Annotated Hobbit wrote:In 1938 Tolkien wrote to his American publisher: "The hobbit in the picture of the gold-hoard, Chapter XII, is of course (apart from being fat in the wrong places) enormously too large. But (as my children, at any rate, understand) he is really in a separate picture or 'plane' -- being invisible to the dragon."

I certainly agree about the immensity of the interior of Erebor (clearly Jackson suffering from penis-envy relative to his depiction of Moria), but the mountain itself is not so bad. The peak is certainly inaccessible-looking, but the ridges could feasibly be hiked to. A mountain half the size of what we see in DoS would be far better though.

As for the hyperbolic "four times the size of Everest"!
It's rather difficult to compare the two, considering that the Lonely Mountain is a loner and Mt. Everest has more friends than it knows what to do with.
However, by every measurement Everest dwarfs Erebor. In terms of elevation, visible height from base to peak, width, etc...

Erebor:

Mount Everest (the peak in the middle):

There really is no comparison. Mt. Everest is several times larger than Erebor. Even the images I posted here are deceptive, as the Lonely Mountain is seen from the lake while Everest is viewed here from a high-elevation airplane.



On an awesome side note, the International Astronomical Union has named any mountains they've found on Saturn's moon, Titan, after mountains in Tolkien's work. There is an Erebor Mons.

Edit: Excellent contribution David. We shouldn't be too pedantic about Tolkien's illustrations after all.

Well picked Dave, I'd forgotten that comment, but didn't Pj say he had made Smaug the size of 2 jumbo jets? I dont think Tolkien got the scale quite that much out.

You guys can 'negotiate' all you like but, my eyes see a dragon far to big, my heart feels Smaug is to big, I am going with my gut reaction and say.......Smaug is to big ! His head is to Jurassic Park looking for me, its not mythical for me, When I saw that fooking head sniffing about for bilbo all I could think of was that Jeff Goldblum & Dickie Attenborough would turn up in a mo riding a bright yellow jeep ! I prefer how I read The Hobbit & the illustrations that come with it. Looking at those I feel more like "Knights, fair damsels & Dragons of a sensible size" ! smaug does feel like he's been devised by some Japanese person who should be called Yamamoto Chong or something.

Smaug does look like the T-Rex from Jurassic Park, hence why I had nightmares of being chased by him!!! Regardless of size, that's a relatively frightening picture, though why is his face off with Bard the poster? That's like the first half hour of the film right? And Bard is armed with only a bow, no Wind-lass or whatever that thing is.
Are they trying to make the Poster more canon or are they just horribly forgetful?

Here is the image to which your point relates:

He is damn big.

azriel wrote:I prefer how I read The Hobbit & the illustrations that come with it. Looking at those I feel more like "Knights, fair damsels & Dragons of a sensible size" ! smaug does feel like he's been devised by some Japanese person who should be called Yamamoto Chong or something.

Well I don't think there's anything terribly wrong with a more oriental-feeling Smaug. It's interesting that you would mention that Azriel as we saw that they did use some Asian musical instruments for the scenes in the Treasure Room thingy.
However, let's not be rude to Japanese or Chinese people here. Jackson is ultimately responsible for how Smaug looks.

I am sure Azriel was not meaning to be rude, only that PJ's Smuag would be more suited to a Godzilla type film that one requiring the intelligent, cunning wyrm of Tolkien.

For me the main problem with his size i I felt it partly ruined the conversation with Bilbo (besides PJ's need to fill the scene with outbursts of action   ) it needed to be more intimate and the ginormous scale difference distances the characters too much and reduces the intimacy of their conversation and so its suspense and peril- which no amount of Bilbo surfing gold to escape a giant flying lizard can replicate.

I dont know if this makes sense, but the bigger they make Smaug the smaller he feels. They lose his personality in all the OTT shock n awe cgi Transformerfest.

the bigger they make Smaug the smaller he feels- Mrs Figg

Thats the perfect way to put it Figg (wish I'd thought of that!   )

Of course I meant no offense to Oriental people   But he does lean more to Godzilla than something more "romantically mythical" I agree with Figgs, about Smaug being smaller personally. I agree with Petty about the loss of sinister intimacy ! I want the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up when Smaug hisses his words. I wanted to feel all "Arthurian" when I saw him but, I didnt. Oh well, they can lend him out for Jurassic 4, at least they'll get rental value out of him, he'll be better suited there anyway.

Well the base problem with the scene is not the size of Smaug, but how he reacts to Bilbo.
The idea is that Smaug sits on his treasure heap and strives to find the thief, who, he believes, must be hiding in the shadows somewhere (as Bilbo is invisible). By having Bilbo remove the ring and show himself to Smaug, the dragon now has a reason to move around the chamber.
So instead of having a small figure looking up at the great and powerful dragon upon his golden hoard we get a small figure frantically sliding about on treasure heaps while avoiding various parts of the dragon's body.

In the same sense that a person can experience a large statue from a distance Bilbo should have been further away from the dragon. In the movie the dragon is all around him, and incredibly close in some parts. It's not a literal parallel, but another shortcoming of The Hobbit is that Peter Jackson has apparently forgotten the need for relative sizes.
A dragon, no matter the size, from a distance = relatable, a conversation can take place
A huge dragon's body parts and head seen from mere feet away = visually overwhelming, the focus is shifted towards physicality and body movement.

Consider the Rankin Bass cartoon. Certainly the dragon is not as large in that film, but the distance rule is observed.
Q.E.D.

I remember last year it was hard to not hope that DOS would be better than AUJ. The hype train is a powerful machine, once posters and trailers start coming out it's a great test of my mettle as a crabbit individual.

I'll say a prayer to the Lord of Light that you are able to hold firm, bungo.

As for the poster itself, it's not bad, though "the defining chapter" is a really optimistic tagline.

Eldorion wrote:I'll say a prayer to the Lord of Light that you are able to hold firm, bungo.

For the night is dark and full of fan-boys.

Yeah but there is drunk crabbit bastard waiting for the buggers in the morning with a big fecking stick.   

Given the size of Smaug if he was to try to smell out Bilbo and took a big sniff, Bilbo would just shoot up Smaug's nose.

I wish I cared enough to have a sense of severe dissapointment, at this point I don't think I really mind how it turns out, I'll see it as soon as possible, but only because I feel like I have to, any sense of morbid curiosity I felt towards the prior installments has more or less left me, I can't even muster the energy to be sarcastic.

Nice photos though, Chris, defintely looks grittier than the other hobbit films, I wonder how much of a role Thrandypants will play in the Battle.


I just read a rumour on TORn that BOTFA might be split, at this point nothing would surprise me.

Seems Bard gets given a bunch of elvish archers instead of his own men as in the book- guess that explains the production shots of Legolamb and Bard sharing archery tips