The official trailer for Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug arrived in 2013 and announced the trilogy's most dramatically focused entry with a darkness and visual ambition that signals the film's intentions as something considerably more tonally serious and more urgent than the lighter adventure of An Unexpected Journey. The trailer's most striking quality is its sense of escalating danger, with the Mirkwood sequence, the barrel chase, and the first glimpse of Smaug conveying the film's greater momentum and its willingness to commit to a darker register. The reveal of Benedict Cumberbatch's Smaug, shown with enough visual scale and psychological menace to mark the character as the most formidable dragon in the history of fantasy cinema, is the trailer's most significant and most purely spectacular moment.
First Impressions
The trailer is darker and more urgent than An Unexpected Journey's marketing, with the escalating dangers and the Smaug reveal conveying the film's greater dramatic focus with real force. Cumberbatch's Smaug is introduced with enough visual scale and psychological menace to establish the character's considerable potential, and the trailer finds the Smaug confrontation and the barrel chase as its primary selling points without apology. The shift in register from the first film is apparent from the opening frames, and the trailer commits to it without hesitation.
What the Trailer Reveals
The trailer establishes the journey through Mirkwood, conveys the escalating dangers of the quest, and glimpses the film's most spectacular sequences with enough clarity to signal its production ambitions. The first sight of Smaug is shown with enough visual scale and genuine menace to position the character as the trilogy's most striking creation, and the footage identifies the combination of dramatic momentum and the dragon's threat as the elements that give the film its distinctive character. The material makes clear that Jackson has found the darker register the story requires, and that the dragon will be worth the wait.
Music and Sound
Howard Shore's score builds on the established Middle-earth themes with a darkness and urgency that suits the film's more serious register with real precision. The musical choices convey the trilogy's most dramatically focused entry with a conviction and intelligence that makes the trailer feel genuinely distinct from the warmer An Unexpected Journey marketing, establishing The Desolation of Smaug as the Hobbit trilogy's most purely entertaining chapter. The score leans into the threat rather than the wonder, which is exactly the right instinct.
Most Memorable Moment
The first glimpse of Smaug, shown with enough visual magnificence and psychological weight to convey the character's remarkable potential, is the trailer's most purely affecting image: a demonstration of what digital filmmaking and voice performance can achieve in combination and a preview of the most fully realised dragon in the history of fantasy cinema. One eye. Opening in the dark. The trailer has the good sense to stop there.
Trailer Verdict
A darker and more urgent trailer for the Hobbit trilogy's most purely entertaining entry. The Desolation of Smaug is the trilogy at its most dramatically focused, and this trailer captures its greater momentum and its Smaug reveal with a confidence and assurance that makes it the most effective piece of Hobbit trilogy marketing. It promised a dragon worth waiting for. The film delivered one.