The Hobbit Movie Quiz

One short book, three long films

Tolkien’s The Hobbit is a single children’s novel, and for a long time it was planned as two films, with Guillermo del Toro first attached to direct. When he left, Peter Jackson took over, and the project grew into a trilogy: An Unexpected Journey (2012), The Desolation of Smaug (2013) and The Battle of the Five Armies (2014). To fill three films, the screenplays drew on the appendices of The Lord of the Rings and added new material of their own.

The biggest additions run alongside Bilbo’s journey. Gandalf’s visit to Dol Guldur, which the book only mentions as an errand, becomes a full storyline in which the White Council drives out the Necromancer, revealed as Sauron. Azog, long dead in Tolkien, becomes the company’s pursuer. Legolas returns from the earlier trilogy, and Tauriel is created to give Mirkwood a character of its own.

The trilogy was filmed in New Zealand in 3D at 48 frames per second, double the usual rate. Martin Freeman plays Bilbo, Richard Armitage plays Thorin, and Benedict Cumberbatch gives both voice and performance capture to Smaug and the Necromancer. Ian McKellen returns as Gandalf, and Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving, Christopher Lee and Ian Holm reprise their Lord of the Rings roles in scenes added to connect the two trilogies.

An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation of Smaug

The first film is the closest to the book in tone: the unexpected party at Bag End, the trolls, Rivendell, the Goblin-town and Bilbo’s riddle game with Gollum. Our guide to the riddle game compares the film’s version with Tolkien’s chapter, much of which the film keeps. The film ends with the eagles carrying the company away from Azog and a first look at the Lonely Mountain.

The Desolation of Smaug moves through Beorn’s house, the spiders of Mirkwood, Thranduil’s halls and the barrel escape, then Lake-town and the mountain. Bilbo’s conversation with Smaug, voiced by Cumberbatch, is the centrepiece. The film then invents a long chase through the halls of Erebor, ending with the Dwarves trying to drown the dragon in molten gold.

The Battle of the Five Armies

The last film opens with Smaug’s attack on Lake-town and Bard’s Black Arrow, then turns to Thorin’s dragon-sickness inside Erebor. Bilbo gives the Arkenstone to Bard and Thranduil to force a bargain, as in the book, and Dáin arrives from the Iron Hills with an army of Dwarves.

The battle itself is far larger than Tolkien’s chapter. It moves between the valley, the ruins of Dale and Ravenhill, where Thorin kills Azog and is mortally wounded. Fíli and Kíli die too, as they do in the book, though the film gives each a different scene. It ends with Bilbo walking home to Bag End, sixty years before the events of The Fellowship of the Ring.

The final shots tie the trilogies together on purpose. Bilbo returns to a Bag End whose contents are being auctioned because he was presumed dead. The film then jumps sixty years, to an older Bilbo hearing Gandalf knock at the door, the visit that opens The Fellowship of the Ring. Seen in order, the six films run as one story from the fall of Erebor to the Grey Havens, even though they were made in reverse.

Thranduil, Tauriel and Legolas

The Wood-elves get far more screen time than the book gives them. In Tolkien the Elvenking is a wary, treasure-loving ruler who imprisons the Dwarves and later marches to the Lonely Mountain to claim a share of the hoard. Lee Pace plays him as cold and proud, and the films add a reason for his coldness: the loss of his wife, and old grief over the Dwarves who would not give him the gems he was owed.

Tauriel is the films’ largest invention. She is a Silvan Elf, not one of the Sindarin lords, and her story turns on a choice between Thranduil’s policy of shutting the forest gates and the wider fight against the Orcs. Her bond with Kíli divided audiences, but it gives Mirkwood a character who argues with its king rather than simply serving him.

Legolas links the two trilogies. He is younger and harsher here than in The Fellowship of the Ring, and the last film sends him north to look for a young Ranger, which sets up his place in the Fellowship. Our guide to Legolas separates what Tolkien wrote about him from what the films added.

The Elvish of Mirkwood

Tolkien wrote almost no Elvish for The Hobbit, and the Elvenking is not even named Thranduil in the novel. So every Elvish line in these films is new writing, composed in Sindarin by David Salo, the linguist behind the Lord of the Rings films. We call it film Sindarin: the words are mostly Tolkien’s, the sentences are not.

The most widely transcribed line is Thranduil’s order to Tauriel, Farn! Tauriel, ego! Gwao hi!, subtitled "Enough! Tauriel, leave! Go now!" Legolas shouts Holo in ennyn!, "Close the gate!", where ennyn is the same plural that opens the inscription on the Doors of Durin. Tauriel’s healing blessing over Kíli is the most requested line, but several of its words are still uncertain in fan transcriptions. Every line we could source is in Elvish in The Hobbit films, and the character behind the crown is covered in Thranduil explained.

If the Mirkwood scenes made you want to learn the language itself, our free Elvish course teaches Sindarin and Quenya from Tolkien’s own words, and the Tengwar name tool writes your name in Elvish script.