FILM · 2013 · NEW ZEALAND
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
- Directed by
- Peter Jackson
- Runtime
- 161 min
- Studio
- New Line Cinema, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, WingNut Films
139 archived facts 5 topics 1 source Last reviewed Nov 2026
The Dwarves, Bilbo and Gandalf have successfully escaped the Misty Mountains, and Bilbo has gained the One Ring. They all continue their journey to get their gold back from the Dragon, Smaug.
139 Interesting Facts About The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Interesting Facts (58)
- #001
- #002
The Mirkwood scenes required removing almost all color from the image so the forest would look "sick." As a result, objects that had to keep their color, such as certain mushrooms and lichens, had to be painted in neon colors so they would be noticeable in the final film. Sir Peter Jackson said the set looked as if it had been painted in 1967. The actors also had to have their faces painted an unusually deep red to preserve color.
- #003
- #004
While filming the barrel escape scenes in a specially built enclosed "rapids" tank, the actors said many of them had to urinate in the water because they were forced to stay in the tank for so long, sometimes without even a lunch break. Martin Freeman was very angry because Bilbo spent all of that scene directly in the water and swallowed a large amount of it.
- #005
- #006
The sudden scars on Thranduil's face are an invention of the film adaptation. However, the scars may reflect a somewhat emphasized aspect of J. R. R. Tolkien's lore: Elves' "Fëa" (a metaphysical concept similar to a "soul") can at times affect the "Hröa" (the bodily, physical body), especially in moments of extreme stress. This fits J. R. R. Tolkien's texts and books, since the last battle Thranduil fought was the Last Alliance, at the end of the Second Age (roughly three thousand years earlier), in which Sauron was defeated.
- #007
Thranduil states openly that he does not consider Tauriel worthy of his son Legolas, but the film avoids explaining why. In the books, the Wood-elves of Mirkwood are identified as Silvan, while Thranduil and his family are Sindar ("Grey Elves"), a nobler ruling class of Elves. The film also touches on this difference through the fact that Thranduil and Legolas are blond while all the other Mirkwood Elves have darker hair (although Legolas's hair color is never stated in the books).
- #008
Bilbo steals the prison keys from an Elf named Elros. Elros is also the name of Elrond's brother. The two brothers had both human and Elven ancestry on their mother's and father's sides and were therefore fully half-Elf and half-human. Elrond chose to be an immortal Elf, while Elros chose to be a mortal human. He thus became the ancestor of the race of Númenor and of Aragorn.
- #009
Martin Freeman and the Elf actors all play characters who cannot grow beards. However, not only did the actors lack beards, but even if they were clean-shaven at the start of the day, a full five o'clock shadow appeared by the end of filming. This shadow appears blue on film. Instead of shaving repeatedly during the day, the actors applied an orange makeup that canceled out the blue shadow.
- #010
- #011
- #012
At the start of the film, as the camera moves through the town of Bree, a drunken man exits a bar and eats a carrot. There was a similar cameo in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001). Jackson also shot another cameo for this film. He played another spy, a man hiding in a basket in Lake-town who signals his companions with wild bird calls. The scene was strictly vetoed by co-producer and co-writer Philippa Boyens and was never used.
- #013
Richard Armitage hated the tan coat he was given as the Company traveled from Lake-town to Erebor and begged Sir Peter Jackson to find a way for him to lose it somehow. Jackson then wrote the scene in which Smaug unleashes a blast of fire at the Company, setting the back of Thorin's coat alight and requiring the coat to be removed.
- #014
When Bilbo first meets Smaug, he explains who he is using various aliases. He says he comes from "under hill," and Smaug responds, "Underhill?" This is the name Frodo Baggins uses to conceal his true identity in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) at Gandalf's request.
- #015
- #016
The fish thrown into the barrels to hide Bilbo and the Dwarves were real fish mixed with a few rubber props. At one point, roughly four hundred pounds of fish were dumped directly onto Adam Brown (Ori). Brown hates fish and had to contend with his own phobia while buried among the fish in the barrel, waiting for the crew to pull the fish off him. Because the fish were slippery, they had to be removed by hand one by one.
- #017
- #018
After the barrel-riding scene, as the Orcs continue searching for the Dwarves, one of them dips his finger into a pool of blood on the ground and tastes it, spits in disgust and says: "Dwarf blood!" This mirrors a scene from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) in which Gimli similarly dips his finger into blood left on some leaves and tastes it, but spits in disgust and says "Orc blood!"
- #019
In addition to providing Smaug's voice, Benedict Cumberbatch also provided a motion-capture performance to portray the dragon. However, because full motion capture of Smaug's body was impossible, only Cumberbatch's face, upper body and arms were captured, and the rest of the body was completed with keyframe animation.
- #020
When the group enters Beorn's house, Dori (Mark Hadlow) tells Ori (Adam Brown) to stay away from the door and says: "It's not natural. None of it." This is the same thing Samwise Gamgee (Sean Astin) says to Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood) at the beginning of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) after descending on Elven rope.
- #021
The stone Kili carries is called labradorite, named after Labrador in Canada, where it was discovered. The Inuit people call it the "frozen fire of the Aurora Borealis" and consider it magical; this may be why Kili jokes about what might happen if someone touches it. Labradorite can appear black, gray-green, dark gray or grayish white, and in light it refracts colors such as blue, green, gold and red. You see these qualities as Tauriel examines the stone.
- #022
Contains a major spoiler — show
When Kili is saved from the Morgul-tipped arrow by Tauriel, Kili sees Tauriel surrounded by light. In The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), Frodo, similarly wounded by a Morgul blade, also sees Arwen surrounded by light when he first sees her.
- #023
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- #027
- #028
- #029
- #030
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- #033
The first meeting between Gandalf and Radagast takes place in the High Fells of Rhudaur, where they investigate an underground cavern. They see that the sanctity of some tombs has been violated and their iron doors blown open. These are the tombs of the Nazgûl (the ancient nine kings of men) that Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) mentions in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012). Rhudaur is a Sindarin word (a fictional language created by Tolkien) and means "Eastern Forest".
- #034
- #035
Sir Christopher Lee (Saruman) would have loved to voice the dragon Smaug in a film adaptation of The Hobbit.
- #036
- #037
- #038
- #039
Contains a major spoiler — show
In the Extended Edition of the film, Thorin searches for his father Thráin, who was lost during the battle between Dwarves and Orcs at the gates of Moria. Gandalf later finds Thráin in Dol Guldur; after years of torture and imprisonment he has lost his memory, and Gandalf discovers that the Necromancer is Sauron, who ultimately kills Thráin during their escape. In the novel The Hobbit, Thráin is already dead; much of his story was adapted not from the novel but from 'The History of Middle-earth' and the Appendices to the novel The Lord of the Rings. There are some major differences: in the books, after the battle with the Orcs, Thráin initially returned to his people and disappeared 46 years later, during an earlier attempt to retake Erebor; Gandalf actually found him five years later, 91 years before the events of The Hobbit, in Dol Guldur during a secret survey of the ruins. Thráin died of natural causes after giving Gandalf the key and map of Erebor, and was not imprisoned by Sauron. The Hobbit films significantly shortened the timeline of the books and moved Thráin's backstory so that it runs concurrently with the Dwarves' quest.
- #040
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- #042
- #043
- #044
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- #046
Most notably, Smaug appeared to be a four-legged western dragon in the first film, but based on the description in the book, where he is referred to as a "Wyrm," he was redesigned in this film to be a more serpentine or bird-like Wyvern-type dragon. In the Blu-ray Extended Edition of the first film, his front legs were transformed into wing-arms. Many other parts of his body were also changed from his appearance in the first film.
- #047
- #048
- #049
- #050
- #051
In the "Barrels out of Bond" sequence, there are two instances of Thorin throwing a sword at Orcs to kill them; the first is to protect Balin when an Orc leaps down at him from above, and the second is to stop an Orc from attacking Legolas from behind. If you pause the film at these moments, you can see that in both cases the sword he throws has the same design as Balin's sword, which he used in both films until it was taken from him when they were captured in the forest by the Woodland Elves.
- #052
- #053
- #054
- #055
A group of heroes sets out toward some ruins to rescue a grey old wizard who has been captured by evil forces and left hanging from a gallows. Gandalf's capture probably also made him smirk in The Return of the King, when Theoden demanded that Saruman be "hanged from a gallows for the sport of his own crows."
- #056
- #057
For the scene in which Dwalin strikes the stone wall while trying to find the entrance to the Lonely Mountain, Sir Peter Jackson told Graham McTavish, "just set about the door… just go for it." McTavish hit the wall so hard that he "couldn't really make a fist for some time after that. It was a pretty stupid thing to do."
- #058
Production Story (69)
- #059
Contains a major spoiler — show
While shooting the scene in which Tauriel heals the wound on his leg, in order to keep Kili's body proportions correct, Aidan Turner's upper body and his stunt double's legs were filmed performing the same scene twice with the actors, then combined in post-production.
- #060
- #061
The Mirkwood scenes required removing almost all color from the image so the forest would look "sick." As a result, objects that needed to keep their color, such as certain mushrooms and lichens, had to be painted in neon colors so they would be noticeable in the final film. Sir Peter Jackson noted that the set looked as if it had been painted in 1967. The actors also had to have their faces painted an unusually deep red to preserve color.
- #062
- #063
While filming the barrel escape scenes in the specially built indoor "rapids" tank, the actors stated that many of them had to urinate in the water because they were forced to stay in the tank for so long without even taking a lunch break. Martin Freeman was very angry because Bilbo spends all of that scene directly in the water and swallowed a large amount of it.
- #064
During filming, Sir Ian McKellen had to spend several hours inside a box with nothing but a microphone and pictures of the Dwarves beside him (the image would be arranged to make him appear taller than the Dwarves), and he was so upset by this that he shouted, "This is not why I became an actor!" The microphone was still on, and as a result everyone on set heard him. The cast and crew surprised him by sticking gifts and messages of encouragement on his trailer as consolation.
- #065
- #066
The sudden scars on Thranduil's face are an invention of the film adaptation. However, the scars may reflect a somewhat emphasized aspect of J. R. R. Tolkien's lore: Elves' "Fëa" (a metaphysical concept similar to a "soul") occasionally affects the "Hröa" (the bodily, physical body), especially in moments of extreme stress. This is consistent with J. R. R. Tolkien's texts and books: Thranduil's last battle was the Last Alliance, at the end of the Second Age (roughly three thousand years earlier), when Sauron was defeated.
- #067
- #068
Thranduil states clearly that he does not consider Tauriel worthy of his son Legolas, but the film avoids explaining why. In the books, the Wood-elves of Mirkwood are identified as Silvan, but Thranduil and his family are Sindar ("Grey Elves"), a nobler ruling class of Elves. The film also touches on this difference through the fact that Thranduil and Legolas are blond, while all the other Mirkwood Elves have darker hair (although Legolas's hair color is never described in the books).
- #069
Bilbo steals the prison keys from an Elf named Elros. Elros is also the name of Elrond's brother. The two brothers had both human and Elven ancestry on their mother's and father's sides, and were therefore fully half-Elf and half-human. Elrond chose to be an immortal Elf, while Elros chose to be a mortal human. Thus he became the ancestor of the race of Númenor and the ancestor of Aragorn.
- #070
Martin Freeman and the Elf actors all play characters who cannot grow beards. But not only did the actors not grow beards; even if they were clean-shaven at the start of the day, by the end of the shoot they had a full five o'clock shadow. This shadow appears blue on film. Instead of shaving repeatedly during the day, the actors applied an orange makeup that canceled out the blue shadow.
- #071
- #072
At the beginning of the film, as the camera roams through the town of Bree, he exits a bar drunk and eats a carrot. There was a similar cameo in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001). Jackson also shot another cameo for this film. He played another spy hiding in a basket in Lake-town and signaling his companions with wild bird calls. The scene was strictly vetoed by co-producer and co-writer Philippa Boyens and was never used.
- #073
Richard Armitage hated the tan coat he was given as the Company travelled from Lake Town to Erebor and begged Sir Peter Jackson to find a way for him to lose it somehow. Jackson then wrote the scene in which Smaug unleashes a blast of fire at the Company, setting the back of Thorin's coat alight and requiring the coat to be removed.
- #074
When Bilbo first meets Smaug, he explains who he is using various aliases. He says he comes from "under hill", and Smaug responds: "Underhill?" This is the name Frodo Baggins uses to conceal his true identity in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) at Gandalf's request.
- #075
- #076
The romance between Kili and Tauriel had always been planned to feature in this film from 2010 onwards, and her relationship with Legolas was strictly platonic. However, when reshoots were done to turn the film into three films, the studio forced them to write Legolas into the love story and turn it into a love triangle. Evangeline Lilly and Sir Peter Jackson admitted that they hated the idea of the love triangle and only wanted to tell a simple love story.
- #077
The fish thrown into the barrels to hide Bilbo and the Dwarves were real fish mixed with a few rubber props. At one point, roughly four hundred pounds of fish were dumped directly onto Adam Brown (Ori). Brown hates fish and had to struggle with his own phobia while buried among the fish in the barrel, waiting for the crew to pull the fish off him. Because the fish were slippery, they had to be removed by hand one by one.
- #078
The film heavily implies that Gandalf set the events of the Hobbit films in motion because he wanted Smaug destroyed before the inevitable onset of the War of the Ring; if Smaug allied with Sauron, it would have meant almost certain destruction for Middle-earth, since the forces of Rohan and Gondor could not have brought him down without enormous losses. Because the Hobbit novel is quite short and is told from Bilbo's point of view, it reveals very little about the true intentions of either Gandalf or Sauron (the latter is mentioned only a few times). However, the appendices to the Lord of the Rings novels and J. R. R. Tolkien's 'Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth' (particularly a chapter titled The Quest of Erebor) place the events of the Hobbit in a much broader context: it clearly reveals that Gandalf had been tracking Sauron's return and the search for the One Ring for centuries. Gandalf does everything to prevent Sauron from reaching his full power or from getting help from Smaug. This idea is presented much more openly in the Hobbit films and is reinforced in the extended version of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) when Gandalf meets the White Council in Rivendell: he voices his concern about the possibility of Smaug allying with the new darkness Radagast encountered, but Saruman dismisses it as nothing more than a man dabbling in black magic rather than recognizing it as Sauron. He also pressures the Dwarves to continue their quest, even though awakening the dragon would have very serious consequences.
- #079
- #080
The scene in which the group fights Smaug in the forges and tries to cover him in molten gold is not in the book. It was added because the producers needed a thrill when they decided to make three films rather than two (they confirmed this when asked). The cast and some of the crew had no idea what they had actually shot until they saw the finished film. As a result, Smaug is briefly covered in gold, a nod to one of his titles, "Smaug the Golden".
- #081
When the group enters Beorn's house, Dori (Mark Hadlow) tells Ori (Adam Brown) to stay away from the door and says: "It's not natural. None of it." This is the same thing Samwise Gamgee (Sean Astin) says to Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood) at the beginning of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) after they descend the Elven rope.
- #082
The stone Kili carries is called Labradorite and takes its name from Labrador in Canada, where it was discovered. The Inuit people call it "frozen fire of the Aurora Borealis" and it is thought to be magical; this may be why Kili jokes about what might happen if someone touches it. Labradorite can appear black, gray-green, dark gray or grayish white, and in light it refracts colors such as blue, green, gold and red. You see these qualities as Tauriel examines the stone.
- #083
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- #090
The 48 fps 3D film was sent to some cinemas via a standard SATA hard drive. It was sent with a security code that prevented the content from being viewed or copied until the code was released by the distributor, about 24 hours before the film's first release time. The 48 fps 3D version of the film took up 639 gigabytes of data on the hard drive. The cinema in question could have downloaded the entire film via a secure satellite connection, but the download would have taken more than 24 hours. Given that 96 fps is required for a 3D image (48 fps for each eye), the data size of each frame (for each eye) is approximately 0.66 megabytes.
- #091
- #092
- #093
- #094
The first meeting between Gandalf and Radagast takes place in the High Fells of Rhudaur to investigate an underground tomb. They see that the sanctity of some graves has been violated and their iron doors blown open. These are the tombs of the Nazgûl (the ancient nine kings of men) that Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) mentions in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012). Rhudaur is a Sindarin word (a fictional language created by Tolkien) and means "Eastern Forest".
- #095
- #096
- #097
- #098
- #099
- #100
- #101
- #102
Tolkien drew strong inspiration from Norse languages and mythology (Norse mythology). The names of various characters sometimes come from mythology, and sometimes simply reflect the character himself. When we first encounter Beorn, he is in bear form. Björn/Bjørn is pronounced similarly, is a Norse name, and means bear. Later, a voice is heard whispering "Attercop" (edderkop), which means spider.
- #103
While the novel and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) are mostly told from Bilbo's point of view, this film shifts the point of view mainly to Gandalf and Thorin, and Bilbo has very little involvement in many key scenes. Much of this material is adapted from the Appendices in 'The Return of the King' and the novel 'Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth' (particularly a section titled The Quest of Erebor).
- #104
Most notably, Smaug appeared to be a four-legged western dragon in the first film, but according to the description in the book, where he is referred to as a "Wyrm," he was redesigned in this film to be a more serpent- or bird-like Wyvern-type dragon. In the Blu-ray Extended Edition of the first film, his forelegs were turned into winged arms. Many other parts of his body were also changed from his appearance in the first film.
- #105
Five of the actors worked on adaptations of Sherlock Holmes stories: * Martin Freeman (Bilbo) and Benedict Cumberbatch (Smaug) appeared in Sherlock (2010) (Cumberbatch was Holmes and Freeman was Watson). * Sir Stephen Fry (Master of Lake-town) played Sherlock's brother Mycroft in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011). * Sir Christopher Lee (Saruman) played Sherlock in Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady (1991), Sir Henry Baskerville in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), and Mycroft Holmes in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970). * Sir Ian McKellen (Gandalf) took on the role of Holmes in Mr. Holmes (2015).
- #106
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- #111
A few things from the original Hobbit novel are not as important in the film but are referenced: as Bilbo tries to tiptoe away from Smaug while the dragon is still asleep, he holds a golden cup in his hand: in the book he had stolen this cup during his first journey to Erebor; Smaug notices the missing cup and comes out of the mountain to search for the thief, but cannot find him and returns inside. Later, as he passes over the Company, gold coins fall from Smaug's belly; in the book it is told that Smaug is aware of his sensitive belly, which contains a weak spot near his heart. He deliberately allowed coins and hard gemstones to be set among his scales to make his belly impassable.
- #112
In the "Barrels out of Bond" sequence, there are two instances where Thorin throws a sword at Orcs to kill them; the first is to protect Balin when an Orc leaps down at him from above, and the second is to prevent an Orc from attacking Legolas from behind. If you pause the film at these moments, you can see that in both cases the sword he throws has the same design as Balin's sword, which he used in both films until it was taken from him when they were captured in the forest by the Woodland Elves.
- #113
- #114
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- #117
Gandalf's meeting with Saruman and Galadriel in the first film does not appear in the book. After leaving the Dwarves at the edge of Mirkwood, he does not appear again in the novel until he reappears with Bard and Thranduil, a scene not shown until the third film. The intervening adventures involving the White Council, the Necromancer and Dol Guldur take place off the page of the book and are described in detail in the Appendices of The Return of the King. The filmmakers showed this part because the disappearance of such an important character from The Lord of the Rings for so long would have been "too much of a tease."
- #118
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- #121
In the book, Gandalf's pursuit of the Necromancer is mentioned but not depicted, and the character is retroactively identified as Sauron by Gandalf in the "The Council of Elrond" chapter of J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Fellowship of the Ring." In Tolkien's unfinished story "The Quest for Erebor," it is revealed that Gandalf helped Thorin and the dwarves to overthrow Smaug and retake Erebor because he feared Smaug would join forces with Sauron.
- #122
Alfrid tries to empty a chamber pot out of an open window while talking to his superior, the Master of Laketown. Unfortunately, while he is not looking, the window swings back and most of the filth returns onto him. However, he carries on with ease, and in the next few shots a dirty yellow stain can be seen on his shoulder. Alfrid also secretly takes a sip of the Master's brandy while his back is turned (or perhaps he was testing it for poison).
- #123
Orlando Bloom appeared in American library and reading-promotion posters in which he was seen reading one of Tolkien's books. One such poster hung in the library of Klein High School, which his on-screen father Lee Pace attended.
- #124
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- #127
For the scene in which Dwalin strikes the stone wall while trying to find the entrance to the Lonely Mountain, Sir Peter Jackson told Graham McTavish to "just set about the door… just go for it." McTavish hit the wall so hard that he "couldn't really make a fist for some time after that. It was a pretty stupid thing to do."
Behind the Scenes (3)
- #128
During filming, Sir Ian McKellen had to spend several hours inside a box with nothing but a microphone and pictures of the Dwarves beside him (the image would be arranged to make him appear taller than the Dwarves), and he was so upset by it that he shouted, "This is not why I became an actor!" The microphone was still on, so everyone on set heard him. The cast and crew surprised him by sticking gifts and encouraging messages on his trailer as consolation.
- #129
The romance between Kili and Tauriel had been planned to be in this film from 2010 onward, and her relationship with Legolas was strictly platonic. However, when reshoots were done to turn the film into three films, the studio forced them to write Legolas into the love story and turn it into a love triangle. Evangeline Lilly and Sir Peter Jackson admitted that they hated the idea of the love triangle and only wanted to tell a simple love story.
- #130
Easter Eggs & References (6)
- #131
- #132
Contains a major spoiler — show
The scene in which the group fights Smaug in the forges and tries to cover him in molten gold is not in the book. It was added because the producers needed excitement when they decided to make three films instead of two (they confirmed this when asked). The cast and some of the crew had no idea what they had actually shot until they saw the finished film. As a result, Smaug is briefly covered in gold, a nod to one of his titles, "Smaug the Golden".
- #133
- #134
Contains a major spoiler — show
Several things from the original Hobbit novel are less important in the film but are referenced: as Bilbo tries to tiptoe away from Smaug while the dragon is still asleep, he holds a golden cup in his hand; in the book he had stolen this cup during his first journey to Erebor, and Smaug notices the missing cup and comes out of the mountain to search for the thief, but cannot find him and returns inside. Later, as Smaug passes over the Company, gold coins fall from his belly; the book describes Smaug as being aware of his sensitive underbelly, which contains a weak spot near his heart. To make his belly impassable, he deliberately allowed coins and hard precious stones to be embedded among his scales.
- #135
- #136
Deeper Meaning (3)
- #137
The film heavily implies that Gandalf set the events of the Hobbit films in motion because he wanted Smaug destroyed before the inevitable start of the War of the Ring; if Smaug allied with Sauron, it would have meant near-certain destruction for Middle-earth, since the forces of Rohan and Gondor could not have brought him down without immense losses. Because the Hobbit novel is quite short and told from Bilbo's point of view, it reveals very little about the true intentions of either Gandalf or Sauron (the latter is mentioned only a few times). However, the appendices to the Lord of the Rings novels and J. R. R. Tolkien's 'Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth' (particularly a chapter titled The Quest of Erebor) place the events of the Hobbit in a much broader context: they make clear that Gandalf had been tracking Sauron's return and the search for the One Ring for centuries. Gandalf does everything to prevent Sauron from reaching his full power or from getting help from Smaug. This idea is presented much more openly in the Hobbit films and is reinforced in the extended version of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012), when Gandalf meets the White Council in Rivendell: he voices his concern about the possibility of Smaug allying with the new darkness Radagast encountered, but Saruman dismisses it as nothing more than a man dabbling in black magic rather than recognizing it as Sauron. He also pressures the Dwarves to continue their quest, even though awakening the dragon would have very serious consequences.
- #138
The Arkenstone in this film is presented as the symbol of the Dwarf kingdom. In the novel it is merely a family heirloom. In the context of the story, the exaggeration of its importance makes it a MacGuffin, an old storytelling device that makes an object more important in order to advance the story but that has little significance otherwise.
- #139
Tolkien drew strong inspiration from Norse languages and mythology (Norse mythology). The names of various characters sometimes come from mythology, and sometimes simply reflect the character himself. When we first meet Beorn, he is in bear form. Björn/Bjørn is pronounced similarly, is a Norse name and means bear. Later, a voice is heard whispering "Attercop" (edderkop), which means spider.
Related pages
- The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey — The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug comes up in the facts on that page
- The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies — The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug comes up in the facts on that page
- The Hobbit — The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug comes up in the facts on that page
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