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Actor Benedict Cumberbatch has played quite a few iconic pop culture characters in his career. He is an iteration of Sherlock Holmes in BBC’s TV seriesSherlock, he is Khan in JJ Abrams’Star Trek: Into Darkness, and is the MCU’s Dr. Strange.
Cumberbatch made his debut in Tolkien’s Middle-Earth with Peter Jackson’sThe Hobbittrilogy where he voiced both Sauron and the dragon Smaug. For Smaug, the promotional material heavily featured Cumberbatch delivering a physical performance using a motion capture suit. However, VFX supervisor Matt Aitkins revealed that his performance was not used in the film.
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Benedict Cumberbatch As Smaug InThe Hobbit
While director Peter Jackson ended up making theLord of the Ringstrilogy first, he initially wanted to adapt the prequel novelThe Hobbit. After multiple delays due to rights issues, studio mismanagement, and production problems, Jackson finally hopped on to the director’s chair to make threeHobbitfilms.
The trilogy featured Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins, who goes on an adventure with Gandalf and the thirteen Dwarves to reclaim their mountain from the dragon Smaug. ActorBenedict Cumberbatchwas cast as Smaug in the film series and finally made his appearance as the gold-guarding dragon in the second film titledThe Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.
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Cumberbatch filmed and voiced his portions while giving a physical performance in a motion-capture suit, much like Andy Serkis as Gollum in theLord of the Ringstrilogy. Benedict Cumberbatch while speaking toAALBCcalled the experience thrilling, while also feeling a bit odd due to the mo-cap suit. He said,
“The first time I stepped off the volume I felt like a complete knob. Everyone fussed over me, offering me coffee or juice. They treated me like a colleague who’d just arrived at the office, ignoring the fact that I was wearing a gray onesie with dots on it, had my face painted like an Aborigine, and had a headset on with a camera in front of my eyes. Once I got over feeling so self-conscious, thanks to their treating me normally, I had so much fun.”
Benedict Cumberbatch also mentioned that after he got the hang of it, he started to have fun with the process and even felt that there were fewer restrictions than normal acting.
Also read:Before Doctor Strange, Benedict Cumberbatch Got Lucky With Another Billion Dollar Franchise as Oscar Winner Benicio Del Toro Rejected a Major Role
The VFX Crew Did Not Use Benedict Cumberbatch’s Mo-Cap Performance
The VFX forTheHobbittrilogy was done by Weta Digital, who are known for their motion-capture work onLord of the Ringsas well asAvatar,Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and more. Matt Aitkins was the VFX supervisor for the second film inThe Hobbittrilogy, where Benedict Cumberbatch’s Smaug makes his appearance.
Aitkins mentioned that Peter Jackson wanted to show the scale of Smaug vividly and wanted to show the slithering movements of the dragon with utmost perfection. In an interview withFlickering Myth, he said,
“Peter had a lot of fun revealing that scale in the film. We had to build a creature that worked to sell the sense of that scale. How his muscles were built, the scale of all of the surface details, and the way he moved. Smaug couldn’t move like a puppy he had to lumber…what we found with a creature the size of Smaug it wasn’t enough to do it that way.”
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Aitkins also mentioned that Benedict Cumberbatch’s motion capture was not used as a proxy for the dragon’s movements. He said,
“We also had [Benedict Cumberbatch] on the motion-capture stage doing some performance tests but we never used any of that directly. We used it as a visual reference to inform the character.”
Mimicking a mo-cap performance usually helps if the character that is to be animated is a human or a humanoid being. Since all of the movements, design, and even the look of someone like Cumberbatch were nothing related to the large-sized dragon, his performance was practically useless.
Also read:Major Marvel Superhero Who Left MCU Was Supposed To Appear In Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange 2
Source:Flickering Myth,AALBC
Nishanth A
Senior Writer
Articles Published :2419
Nishanth A is a Senior Entertainment Writer at FandomWire, majorly focusing on TV shows with over 2,000 articles published. He has been an entertainment journalist for the past two years and a scriptwriter at various corporations before that, working on educational content. With a Communications, English Literature, and Psychology triple major, Nishanth usually covers news and analyses on Star Trek, particularly Strange New Worlds and The Next Generation; Doctor Who, the DCU, and more.A Nolan fan, Nishanth spends his time exploring the filmographies of various directors with an auteurial style or can be found making short movies of his own. He has also contributed as a feature writer for Film Companion, focusing on the South division.
