“Bro’s scarier than the Dragon”: Benedict Cumberbatch’s Mocap Performance in The Hobbit 2 Goes Viral for Being Even More Terrifying Than Smaug Himself

In his enduring career as an actor, Benedict Cumberbatch had a lot to contend with while trying to make it big in Hollywood in his early years in the industry. But while impressing the right person at the right opportunity may have been a crucial part of his plan, one could hardly imagine the actor being up for whatever challenges the industry might throw at him.

As such, Benedict Cumberbatch’s delightful habit of seizing an opportunity by its ears, so to speak, has made him an unpredictable actor, willing to surprise at every turn. However, nowhere in the realm of possibilities did Cumberbatch ever think that playing an actual dragon would one day fit the bill.

Benedict Cumberbatch Gets Introduced to Smaug

Peter Jackson‘s Lord of the Rings franchise is a revelation and an absolute joy to watch every single time the film happens to play on screen. However, even more promising than the Kiwi filmmaker’s Midas touch is his uncorrupted imagination that somehow supports the entire lore of J.R.R. Tolkien and his Middle-earth canon’s history.

However, despite the expansive lores and the mystical, fantastical story that weaves through it all, nothing comes close to the hilarious once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of getting to witness Benedict Cumberbatch making movie history by pretending to be a dragon in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.

Writhing and simmering with evil anticipation, the personification of Smaug remains, to this day, one of Benedict Cumberbatch’s greatest joys and most shameful embarrassments.

Benedict Cumberbatch’s Iconic Mo-Cap Performance

While the motion-capture performance in itself has been heavily shrouded in gossip and surrounded by mystery, the Benedict Cumberbatch Smaug mo-cap performance is a sight that presents equal parts hilarity and delight, alongside a sheer childlike innocence to the way he commits to his act as the dragon.

Finding the opportunity to troll his performance too delectable to miss, fans joined in on the efforts to have some fun at the actor’s expense. One fan claimed, “Benedict Cumberbatch is more dragon than the dragon itself,” while another quipped, “I absolutely prefer Cumberbatch doing this than the dragon in the movie. Much more intimidating.”

Although meant to help in emoting his character as the Smaug better while reading his lines, the mo-cap performance was another added bonus that was initially being considered to be rendered, edited, and composited into the actual film.

In the end, Peter Jackson later changed his decision, relying entirely on the expertise of the visual effects team to come up with an artificially generated Smaug, instead of Benedict Cumberbatch’s motion-captured one, leaving the iconic and comically damaging clip to float around unsupervised on the internet.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is available to stream on Max.