For all of the buildup of an onscreen Smaug, I was underwhelmed. I don’t know who Benedict Cumbersnatch is but he did the voice well.
I submit that the dragon from the movie Dragonslayer is the standard. It still holds up and kicks the crap out of the modern stuff.
There was so much hype about Cumberbatch in that role–about the eerie, ethereal quality of his screen test–that I went to the second movie just to see it.
What a let down. Ho, hum.
Engelbert Cumberbatch? Cedric Bandersnatch?
It’s been a while since I’ve read The Hobbit, but ISTR Smaug is more cerebral than Vermithrax Pejorative was. That is, Smaug could hold a civil conversation, whereas Vermithrax was basically instinctual.
My point exactly. You would think that they would squeeze every bit of evil from the performance. I still watch the dragon, Vermithrax, and feel threatened.
I don’t remember the hype about him in the role. I just read he was in it. What hype did you read at the time?
I do have an allele linked to excellent memory retention, but that one’s straining my capabilities. It might have been an interview with Peter Jackson. I definitely read it before the first Hobbit movie came out, because I remember sitting through that movie waiting for the dragon, and… well. Not so much dragon.
Anyway, the article was written in that golden era when we were all just beginning to see Cumberbatch in Sherlock and he could do no wrong. Before he was in fuh-reakin’-everything.
The article basically said that his screen test for Smaug was godly, numinous in its otherwordly brilliance. Like no performance ever seen. Performance to end all performances. Cumberbatch like, literally shapeshifted into a dragon or something.
Wow, I have zero memory of that. I think lots of people were encouraged and excited he was in it as Smaug, but I don’t remember any hype about it.
I’m seeing a theme here. His performance was not memorable.
I might have remembered… Had I known he did the voice, or cared who the voice actor was. 
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Easy to say sitting there in your armchair!
There’s probably a fancier term for this, but at some point something is too big to be scary. It has to have a certain level of intimacy in relation to normal human experiences. A titanic monster like Godzilla or Smaug is too big to be scary, or at least, it’s scary in a different way than other scary things. It’s like being scared of a hurricane or a volcano. Yes, it could squash you instantly, but it almost seems absurd.
For this reason, a velociraptor (or at least the made up movie version) is scarier than a T. rex. A raptor can follow you into your house and everything. I feel like a Jurassic Park T. rex is just on the border of these two types of scary, probably because it’s not quite big enough to be able to eat you in one bite. Or maybe because you can imagine barely being able to outrun it, in some but not all circumstances.
In the first Hobbit/Smaug movie it was clear that they were using sound filters on his voice. I’d love to hear the performance without them. It sounded almost “auto-tune” obvious. I did think his use of breath as well as voice was good.
/aside I’m relieved to see I’m not the only one who confuses his name with Englebert Humperdink’s. The rythym of it is so compelling!
Hmm. I don’t know if I agree about big things not being so scary. They are certainly scary in a different way, but I find it way more terrifying. A velociraptor is at your eye-level. Maybe you can trap it. Maybe you can kill it. Whereas the elemental force of an earthquake or a hurricane or a tornado… that is some seriously terrifying shit. Nothing’s going to stop it and the destruction is total.
Some of the scariest videos I’ve seen are of tsunami waves coming to land.
I think the “big monsters aren’t as scary” theory goes out the window when you’re talking about water-based monsters. Giant sharks are fucking terrifying.
If Smaug was meant to be terrifying, the other characters should have acted like it.
No Bilbo taking off his Ring of Don’t Let The Monster See Me.
No dwarfs playing keep-away.
No Bard and Smaug getting into an idiotic duel.
It’s not rocket science.
In 1977’s TV movie version of The Hobbit I rather liked Richard Boone as the voice of Smaug. Deep and gritty, and boy could he roar when he got pissed off.
From my experience with museum tours of audioanimatronic dinos, wow, I have to disagree. Those big honking Rexes are so goddamn scary, I cannot force myself to walk past them. I have to go the other way around. My intellect tells me, “These are just big toys.” But my instincts shriek, “GET OUT OF HERE! That thing is SCARY!”
I might have some sense of relative safety with something as big as Godzilla. There’s the sense that if I curl up, he might overlook me.
Certainly Smaug in the movies was scarier than he was in the book. In Tolkien’s “The Hobbit,” he was a big egoistic blowhard, and not at all as clever as he thought he was. At least, in the movies, he wrought some havok on the town, killed many, destroyed widely, and earned his reputation as fearsome.
I think the movie downplayed this a little, by soft-peddling the death. Peter Jackson spared us the sight of people burning alive, or blackened corpses. So Smaug comes off a little cartoonish, like Wile E. Coyote with an anvil.
Vermithrax Pejorative was portrayed a little more overtly deadly.
Also, if you can talk to something, it automatically becomes a little more approachable, a little less terrifying. V.P. would have lost much of his effect if he’d paused and chatted a bit with the protagonist.
Benedict does a bit using his Smaug voice during this interview. All natural, no voice filters. I wouldn’t say it’s indistinguishable, but it’s awfully close. (Plus the other bits are pretty funny.)
Agreed - he’ll always be Smaug for me. I understand the English=evil meme (that Jaguar commercial is quite good), but a dragon shouldn’t be cerebral evil - you should feel like he’ll squash you at any point, which is more of an American bad guy thing for me than an English one (with apologies to Vinnie Jones, who will squash you whenever he feels like it).
