Amazing image, thanks for sharing!

"Fly inside the dragon at Smaug air."

Its to bad they have to kill off an awesome dragon/ :/ Man, I hate dragon slaying.

I rather enjoy it. The job usually pays for itself, on top of the bounty, and hey, free food!

You look like free food to me. ^.^

I honestly do not think there has ever been a 'dragonslayer story' written, that could be considered intelligent adult fare. They are only fit for ignorant little children (which in fact, was the intended audience of "The Hobbit"). When there is an attempt to write such stories for adults, it always becomes painfully evident that the author has absolutely no idea of real animal and human capabilities. The scientific fact is that humans could have never survived a world of walnut brained, large carnivorous dinosaurs, let alone, huge flying dinosaurs with human intelligence and flamethrowers. It is no wonder most adults are unable to take the fantasy genre seriously when it is so rife with utterly childish, dragonslayer nonsense.

Well, it's fantasy. I'm not sure of any way that dragons could actually exist as written in the 'real world' - certainly not ones that fly while still having solid bones and heavily-armored scales. And for that matter, my characters are even more absurd, so yeah.

The largest skull of any land animal ever found, happens to belong to a flying reptilian pterosaur, ten feet long and with yard-wide maw that could easily swallow an adult human. So the idea of a huge, flying dragon is essentially quite plausible. If humans saw such a pterosaur they might call it a dragon. What makes so much fantasy literature ridiculous isn't the existence of dragons, but the absurdity of humans with iron age technology being able to kill them or simply daring to, when a single intelligent 'dragon' would have the capability to creat a famine that could wipe out tens of thousand of agriculture-dependent humans.

*Points to the 1981 film 'Dragonslayer'.*

It's pretty good. It plays with a lot of conventional heroic fantasy tropes without constantly winking at the camera, the eponymous weapon is a weapon actually, rationally designed for slaying large beasts, and the dragon herself is brilliantly realized and utterly terrifying.

Humans have killed all kinds of large angry things? Small annoying things have also killed plenty of humans, with some truly pathetic weaponry. Size and weaponry and even intelligence are not the only deciding factors in fights like this--there's also the strange assumption that these species would inevitably clash. There is this weird assumption that every living thing, including carnivores, wants to kill everything else, when that's simply not true--living things want to live, and they find the best way to achieve this.

Agreed. I honestly do not think there has ever been a 'dragonslayer story' written, that could be considered intelligent adult fare. They are only fit for ignorant little children (which in fact, was the intended audience of "The Hobbit"). When there is an attempt to write such stories for adults, it always becomes painfully evident that the author has absolutely no idea of real animal and human capabilities. The scientific fact is that humans could have never survived a world of walnut brained, large carnivorous dinosaurs, let alone, huge flying dinosaurs with human intelligence and flamethrowers. It is no wonder most adults are unable to take the fantasy genre seriously when it is so rife with utterly childish, dragonslayer nonsense.

you should see the cover of my book. ^.^

Cool!

He looks!......... Exactly like every other cinematic dragon. Down to the last detail. I mean, I wasn't expecting the mega-Snarf from the animated movie, but REALLY, Weta? Are you THAT creatively barren?

to be honest i think they were going for believability with his design. Incorporating things that are already present in monitor lizards and such. And their problem was Smaug is such an iconic character, and no doubt a TON of peoples favorite book character. There's a lot of expectation weighing on them to make him exactly right. He is what many people envision a dragon to look like, so if they stray too far from the classic more people will reel in disgust and dislike him. But of course if you dont like him, fair enough. But in my opinion they did an incredible job on him, and him in the film is unlike any other dragon I've ever seen in film before. Design is only half the battle. Personality and overall impact is worth more.

Yeah, that's what they said the last eight times they did it. It worked for a while, but I expect something different this time. Smaug is an iconic character on whom our modern ideas of dragons are based. He should be memorable to look at. This is just a Reign of Fire/Harry Potter/Dragonslayer/Skyrim/Dragon Storm/Google stock dragon. It looks *good*, but it also looks exactly like every single dragon Hollywood's produced in recent memory, Sean Connery-osaurus notwithstanding.

There are soooooo many ways to design a dragon. I'm sick of Hollywood trying to constrict the definition into one extremely narrow image.

Frankly, Id rather they focused on coming up with interesting iconic designs that didn't have to be dragons in order to draw crowds. There's a lot of ways to design a dragon, but there's a lot MORE things out there to design.

But the dragon was the major protagonist in the original book that was the basis of the film. If there were no dragon in that book, it never would have been as popular as it was, and it never would have been made into a movie.

Yeah, I didn't mean The Hobbit, I just meant movies in general.

I agree with that. But this is The Hobbit. A dragon is already a major established character.

Yeap, a very dragony dragon, amongst very established evlvy elves, and very dwarfy dwarves, and very hobbity hobbits. Not at all surprised with what they went with with smaug, especially because a lot of it is based heavily on some of the more popular artists who commonly draw tolkien, though I didn't expect him to be quadrupedal. That said it is pretty internally consistent considering the nazgul steeds.

The trend seems to be making dragons seem more like real 'Earth' animals with four limbs instead of six. like real flying reptiles of the past. Some of the early pterosaurs with toothed snouts, (and even spade tails), are essentially "Wyvern" type dragons.

The biggest problem with the movie Smaug, for the Tolkien purist is that Bilbo himself, in his Red Book, draws Smaug as a four footed two winged dragon, so Jackson should have made him look like Bilbo/Tolkien's original drawings. After all, Bilbo saw him face to face, and would have known how many wings and legs the drgon had.

Nooo. Pterosaurs are not 'wyvern type dragons' any more than komodo dragons are 'wyrm type dragons' or amphisbaenans are 'lindwyrms'. :I These are real animals, not classless chimeric fantasy creatures. And they are more than interesting and unique enough on their own without lazily linking them to dragons.

I do find it a little weird that they make him quadrupedal, but not surprising, especially considering it looks like they were using it as a link to the other winged reptiles in that world. Though, if you think about it, he does have four legs and two wings--it's just that two legs are wings too. :B