The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

When the second installment of the Hobbit trilogy, subtitled The Desolation of Smaug, hits theaters on Dec. 13, 2013, we’ll encounter some familiar faces as well as some new ones as Bilbo and the dwarves continue their perilous journey to the Lonely Mountain, home of the dragon Smaug. One familiar face will be Orlando Bloom’s elf Legolas, a major character in the Rings trilogy but one not mentioned in the Hobbit book. So what is he doing in the film? ”He’s [elven king] Thranduil’s son, and Thranduil is one of the characters in The Hobbit, and because elves are immortal it makes sense Legolas would be part of the sequence in the Woodland Realm,” Jackson explains. Conferring with Legolas above is one of the Hobbit trilogy’s major new faces: the heroic human Laketown warrior Bard the Bowman (Luke Evans). ”Bard is an interesting character, but [in the book] he’s kind of a random character who comes in after the fact,” says screenwriter Philippa Boyens. ”We take more time introducing him. We know from what follows that he was a father, so we [explore] that. I don’t think we take liberties, because it’s all there in the storytelling.”