It was Dragon vs. Hobbit in an epic showdown this weekend as Peter Jackson unleashed Smaug on audiences nationwide.


“The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” follows Bilbo Baggins as he continues his trek toward the Lonely Mountain, where one greedy dragon awaits to protect his lair. When the two come face-to-face, sparks — and gold — fly.



“It was very technical,” Martin Freeman tells MTV News of his big-scene opposite Benedict Cumberbatch, though the “Sherlock” co-stars never crossed paths during production. “It’s just a lot of looking up. Looking up at an eye line there, looking up at an eye line there, having someone reading Ben’s lines and for me to respond to them.”


While Cumberbatch filmed his part in front of a green screen (the actor said that the motion capture experience was not unlike being “a kid in a bedroom again”), Freeman benefitted from an impractical set.


“Dealing with a real set that is really hard to clamber around over is helpful actually, because Bilbo would find it hard to walk in it and I was finding it hard to walk in it,” he says. “But yeah, very technical. but, between all of us, [we were] trying to make it un-technical and trying to make it a very soulful, real, suspenseful scene.”


Did they deliver? Freeman gives the scene a big thumbs up.


“I really like it,” he confesses. “I think those scenes work brilliantly, if I say so myself. They’ve done a good job with it.”


What say you, “Hobbit” fans? Hit the comments with your thoughts on the faceoff.