Smaug

Beowulf fights his dragon to the death in a 1908 illustration by Joseph Ratcliffe Skelton.

Tolkien made Smaug "more villain than monster", writes the author and biographer Lynnette Porter; he is "devious and clever, vain and greedy, overly confident and proud."[4] The fantasy author Sandra Unerman called Smaug "one of the most individual dragons in fiction".[7] The Tolkien scholar Anne Petty said that "it was love at first sight", describing Smaug as "frightening, but surprisingly knowable".[8]

The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey notes the "bewilderment" that Smaug spreads: he is enchanted by gold and treasure, and those who come into contact with his powerful presence, what Tolkien describes as "the effect that dragon-talk has on the inexperienced", similarly become bewildered by greed.[5] In Shippey's view, however, the most surprising aspect of Smaug's character is "his oddly circumlocutory mode of speech. He speaks in fact with the characteristic aggressive politeness of the British upper class, in which irritation and authority are in direct proportion to apparent deference or uncertainty."[5] In sharp contrast to this is his vanity in response to flattery, rolling over "absurdly pleased" as Tolkien narrates, to reveal his marvellously armoured belly.[5] Shippey comments that such paradoxes, "the oscillations between animal and intelligent behaviour, the contrast between creaking politeness and plain gloating over murder" join to create Smaug's principal attribute, "wiliness".[5]

The Christian commentator Joseph Pearce describes Smaug's weak spot as his Achilles heel, noting his boastful over-confidence in his own indestructibility, and seeing in the fact that the vulnerability is over his heart a sign that "it is the wickedness of his heart which will lead to his downfall".[9] Pearce likens Smaug's pride to that of Achilles, whose pride leads to the death of his best friend, and of many Greeks; and to the cockerel Chauntecleer in Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Nun's Priest's Tale", where a boastful reply to the flattering fox causes the cockerel's fall.[9]

From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was a professor of English Literature at Oxford University. He was a prominent scholar of the Old English poem Beowulf, on which he gave a lecture at the British Academy in 1936.[T 7] He described the poem as one of his "most valued sources" for The Hobbit.[T 8] Many of Smaug's attributes and behaviour in The Hobbit derive directly from the unnamed "old night-ravager" in Beowulf: great age; winged, fiery, and reptilian[lower-alpha 1] form; a stolen barrow within which he lies on his hoard; disturbance by a theft; and violent revenge on the lands all about, flying and attacking at night.[2]

The scholars of English literature Stuart D. Lee and Elizabeth Solopova analyse the parallels between Smaug and the unnamed Beowulf dragon.[2]

Sigurd kills the dragon Fafnir. Wood-carving in Hylestad Stave Church, 12th–13th century.

Smaug's ability to speak, the use of riddles, the element of betrayal, his enemy's communication via birds, and his weak spot could all have been inspired by the talking dragon Fafnir of the Völsunga saga.[7] Shippey identified several points of similarity between Smaug and Fafnir.[2]

Detail of Old English book of Remedies (Lacnunga). The phrase in the spell wid smeogan wyrme, "against a penetrating worm",[11] is on line 3.

Tolkien noted, in a joking letter that he was surprised to see published in The Observer in 1938, that "the dragon bears as name—a pseudonym—the past tense of the primitive Germanic verb smúgan,[12] to squeeze through a hole: a low philological jest."[T 8] Critics have explored what that jest might have been; an 11th-century medical text Lacnunga ("Remedies") contains the Old English phrase wid smeogan wyrme, "against a penetrating worm" in a spell,[11] which could also be translated "against crafty dragons". The Old English verb meant "to examine, to think out, to scrutinise",[13] implying "subtle, crafty". Shippey comments that it is "appropriate" that Smaug has "the most sophisticated intelligence" in the book.[5] All the same, Shippey notes, Tolkien has chosen the Old Norse verb smjúga, past tense smaug, rather than the Old English sméogan, past tense smeah—possibly, he suggests, because his enemies were Norse dwarves.[14]

Detail of wampum bead girdle

John Garth, writing in The Guardian, notes the similarity between Smaug's death from Bard's last arrow and the death of Megissogwon in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1855 poem The Song of Hiawatha. Megissogwon was the spirit of wealth, protected by an armoured shirt of wampum beads.[lower-alpha 2] Hiawatha shoots in vain, until he has only three arrows left. Mama the woodpecker sings to Hiawatha where Megissogwon's only weak point is, the tuft of hair on his head, just as Tolkien's thrush tells Bard where to shoot at Smaug.[3]

A somewhat cat-like Smaug as seen in the 1977 Rankin/Bass animated film of The Hobbit[20]

A dragon named 'Slag' features in Gene Deitch's brief 1967 animated film.[21]

Francis de Wolff voiced the red dragon in the long-lost 1968 BBC radio dramatization.[22]

Richard Boone voiced Smaug in the 1977 animated film by Rankin/Bass.[23] Austin Gilkeson calls the film's depiction of Smaug "distinctly feline" as he has cat-like eyes and whiskers "and a lush mane".[20] Gilkeson comments that the result does not resemble Western dragons, but that it works well, not least because Smaug's nature as an "intelligent, deadly, greedy" and lazy predator is in his view "very cat-like".[20]

Smaug as depicted in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit trilogy, with voice and motion-capture by Benedict Cumberbatch

Smaug was voiced and interpreted with performance capture by Benedict Cumberbatch in Peter Jackson's three-part adaptation of The Hobbit.[24] From the motion capture, Smaug's design was created with key frame animation. Weta Digital employed its proprietary "Tissue" software, which was honoured in 2013 with a "Scientific and Engineering Award" from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to make the dragon as realistic as possible. In addition, Weta Digital supervisor Joe Letteri said in an interview for USA Today that they used classic European and Asian dragons as inspirations to create Smaug.[25] The Telegraph stated that Cumberbatch had "the authority to make of Smaug a cunning nemesis".[26]

In the first film, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the audience sees only his legs, wings, and tail, and his eye; the eye is showcased in the final scene of the film. Smaug is a topic of discussion among the White Council as Gandalf's reason to support Thorin Oakenshield's quest.[27]

Smaug appears in the second film, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. In an interview with Joe Letteri, Smaug's design was changed to the wyvern-like form shown in the film after the crew saw how Benedict Cumberbatch performed Smaug while moving around on all four limbs.[28]

In The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, Smaug attacks Lake-town. He is killed by Bard with a black arrow and his body falls on the boat carrying the fleeing Master of Lake-town. It is later revealed that Smaug's attack on Erebor was all part of Sauron's design, meaning that Smaug and Sauron were in league with each other.[29][30]

Smaug was considered one of the highlights of the second film of the series (as well as his burning of Lake-Town in the third film); several critics hailed him as cinema's greatest dragon. Critics also praised the visual effects company Weta Digital and Cumberbatch's vocal and motion-capture performance for giving Smaug a fully realized personality, "hiss[ing] out his words with cold-blooded vitriol".[31][32]

In the 2014 video game Lego The Hobbit, the portrayal departs more from the book; rather than ever more closely simulating the book's characters, the scholar Carol L. Robinson notes, the technology has allowed new fiction to be created.[33]