Sunday, December 9, 2012

AS SEEN ON TV: SMAUG


The first movie in the "Hobbit" trilogy opens this coming Friday, so I thought we might spend the week in salute to this fantastic story which first set me on the path of my O'Bsession with Fantasy......

SMAUG

AS SEEN IN:
"The Hobbit"

CREATED BY:
J.R.R. Tolkien

VOICED BY:
Richard Boone

TV STATUS:
Multiversal Recastaway
(BookWorld, Toobworld*, Cineverse, WorldStage)

TV DIMENSION:
*The Tooniverse

From Wikipedia:
Smaug is a fictional character in the novel The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien and the main antagonist within the story.

One of the last great dragons of Middle-earth, Smaug rose to prominence by laying waste to the town of Dale and capturing the Lonely Mountain (Erebor) with all of its These events occurred some 150 years before the events of The Hobbit, and Smaug was already centuries old at the time. The Hobbit recounts the tale of a party of dwarves (consisting of a few of the original residents of the Lonely Mountain and their descendants) and the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins (their titular burglar) to recapture the mountain and kill the dragon. In the book, the dragon is sometimes called Smaug the Golden or Smaug the Magnificent.


Centuries spent sleeping atop his gold hoard caused gold and gemstones to become embedded in the flesh of Smaug's belly, augmenting the already essentially impenetrable armor of the scales that covered most of the rest of his body. However, when Bilbo observed him in his lair, the Hobbit discovered a small bare patch on Smaug's left breast. When Bilbo discusses this with his Dwarven companions about Smaug's weakness, he was overheard by the thrush that roosted by the mountain's secret door. The thrush in turn told Bard the Bowman of Esgaroth. When Smaug attacked the town, Bard shot his Black Arrow into Smaug's left breast, the weak spot in his armour, and the wound proved fatal.

Among the items in Smaug's possession were the Arkenstone and a number of mithril mail shirts, one of which was given as a gift to Bilbo by Thorin Oakenshield, the company's leader. In The Lord of the Rings, set years later, the shirt saved Bilbo's kinsman Frodo from injury several times.



O'BSERVATIONS:
There were a LOT of things wrong with this production of the Tolkien book, but the casting of Richard Boone as the voice of Smaug was not one of them.....

BCnU!

No comments: