12 Things We Learned from the 'Desolation of Smaug' Commentary

This week brings with it the Blu-ray release of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug – Extended Edition. With approximately 25 minutes of new footage and the requisite oodles of special features, we suspect that many of the film’s fans won’t have time to watch them all. Don’t worry, CraveOnline is here to help.

CraveOnline has watched the entire Desolation of Smaug commentary track, featuring director Peter Jackson and co-writer Philippa Boyens, and filtered out all the information that doesn’t seem to be available anywhere else. The bulk of the track is about the adaptation process, the differences between the movie and the book, the new footage, and how much fun it was to make the film. That’s all well and good, but if you just want to learn some new trivia, hear some unexpected stories and get a tease for the upcoming The Battle of the Five Armies, you need go no further.

Related: 10 Movie Franchises We Don’t Want Anymore

Here are our favorite things we learned from the Desolation of Smaug commentary track, including one detail that’s so ludicrously obscure we can’t believe Peter Jackson even bothered including it. It also reveals one of the famed J.R.R. Tolkien enthusiast Stephen Colbert’s biggest pet peeves, which he insisted Jackson & Co. get right in the final film.

So enjoy, and then get on with your day. If you’re too busy to watch the whole commentary track, you’re probably reading this in a bit of a rush too.

12 Things We Learned from the ‘Desolation of Smaug’ Commentary

William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.

12 Things We Learned from the Desolation of Smaug Commentary

The Timeline [0:08:38]

The action picks up after the orc fight at the end of An Unexpected Journey, but how long after?
“We’re just jumping straight back into the action," says Peter Jackson. "This is literally a few hours after the end of the first movie now. This is a few hours after the eagles have dropped them off on the carrock, and here the orcs have not given up their pursuit.”
The First Scene [0:01:25]

When the two-film Hobbit franchise was expanded to three films, the filmmakers had to come up with a new scene to begin The Desolation of Smaug. The prologue where Gandalf meets Thorin for the first time in Brie was a scene they “always wanted to put into the movie,” according to Peter Jackson, but was cut out of the two-film version of The Hobbit and never shot in principle production.
It was put back into the movie as “an economical way […] to really get everyone on the same page again. And it gave our daughters a chance to play cameos.” (They’re the barmaids.)
The Last of the Company [0:08:38]

“This scene here is actually the last scene shot with all of the company together,” Jackson says. “That was the very last time that they ever performed together as a group. We shot it in the pickups, and that was the end of them.”
“They all had more scenes to shoot, but they were never going to be ever together again in that way.”
Roy Tolkien's Cameo [0:24:57]

Intercut with the scene where Gandalf bids farewell to Beorn, the Extended Edition features a sequence of The Witch King being entombed in the High Fells by several guards.
“One of those guards was Roy Tolkien," says Peter Jackson. "The guy who threw the knife was Professor Tolkien’s great-grandson.”
Stephen Colbert's Pet Peeve [0:52:02]

“[Thranduil] is the king of a race of elves who are actually the Woodland Elves, the Silvan elves, but he is not actually one of them,” Philippa Boyens explains. “He is a High Elf, which is an interesting dynamic that we played with in that Tauriel is very much a Silvan Elf, a Woodland Elf."
"You know who you need? You need Stephen Colbert at this moment because he could probably explain it better.”
“Yes, I’m sure he could,” Peter Jackson replies.
“But he was very concerned that we got this right, the difference between the High Elves and the Silvan Elves.”
“Right, right, right.”
The Great Pyramids [1:09:31]

“When I was thinking about these tombs, I wanted [Gandalf] to slide in down this ramp,” Jackson says of the Witch King's not-so-final resting place.
“Because I thought, no greater tombs exist than The Great Pyramids, yeah? They are the great tombs, and there’s this ramp in the pyramids. Not stairs, you know, it’s a ramp inside the interior of the pyramid, and this ramp that Gandalf slides down is exactly the same angle as the one in the great pyramids.”
“Now I hope that everybody noticed that. I’d be very disappointed if people hadn’t already realized that. I’m probably telling you something you already know.”
The Original Ending [1:13:37]

“What you’re seeing now, right at this very second, is the end of the original first Hobbit movie," Jackson says. “When it was going to be two movies this was how it was going to end, basically. It was going to pretty much this moment.”
As soon as the Dwarves actually begin talking to Bard, those are reshoots from after The Hobbit became three movies.
“So in other words," Jackson adds. "We were going to see Bard at the end of the first film but we were not going to have him speak. We were going to introduce him. We were just going to use it as a cliffhanger, really.”
Luke Evans Killed Bard's Wife [1:15:36]

“[Bard] originally had a wife, who we actually called Sigrid. But actually it was Luke [Evans] who killed her off, really,” Boyens laughs. “Because when he did his audition he was so good, he felt that he is all his children had, and that makes his story and his jeopardy even stronger, which is true.”
“And he’s quite right. He’s quite right,” Jackson replies.
“He was.”
“A Mrs. Bard would have forced us to create a whole lot of stuff. I mean the children are nice because they do indicate a history and a past and a backstory.”
The R-Rated Twitch [1:18:20]

"That’s the R-rated twitching foot. When the film went to the MPAA the thing that they were most worried about was the twitching leg," Jackson says, referring to Thranduil stepping on the still-moving body of a decapitated orc.
"But you know, I originally didn’t want to cut it out and here it is, it’s still in there. It’s strange. I don’t know what the thinking is behind that."
The Other First Scene [1:20:28]

“This is actually the opening of the second film,” Boyens explains. “When it was a two-parter we were going to open on this mysterious lake with Bard, this mysterious character, taking the dwarves and Bilbo to who knows where?”
“We wanted to keep it mysterious,” Jackson adds. “I mean, Bard’s mysterious and so I didn’t want it to be in the middle of a lake where you see a view and see pretty mountains and everything else."
"So the idea of a fog is, it’s keeping it mysterious. You know, they don’t know who he is, or really know quite where they’re going particularly. They know they’re going to Laketown certainly, but the audience hasn’t seen Laketown, we don’t really know. It’s just allowing the tension to be maintained without revealing [anything].”
Alfrid Will Blossom [1:24:26]

“[Alfrid] was created as an outsider for The Master, so The Master doesn’t have to talk to himself, which you often have to do in film when you’re adapting books,” Boyens says.
“But he was also, he’s played by an actor, Ryan Gage, that we fell in love with, and that we actually cast as another character that got written out, and we loved him so much he had to come up with another character for him to play,” Boyens laughs.
“Yeah, and Ryan really, he owns this role, “ Jackson adds. “And you’ll see a lot more of Alfrid in the third movie, by the way. He really kind of blossoms, if you can use that word. Blossoms in the third film.”
The Original Cliffhanger [2:04:33]

“We tried this, very early on, I bet you don’t remember Pete, as the last scene of the first film,” Boyens says, referring to the moment when Bilbo and the dwarves open the door to The Lonely Mountain.
“Uh, yeah.”
“We tried to get there.”
“You mean not in the editing room, you mean in the script.”
“No, in the script. It was very truncated though. It was too short, and we lost too much.”
“Well, we had an enormously long first film and a relatively normal-length second film, but yes, this was… We did think about this being the last scene of the first film.”