Smaug is big. The villainous, greedy dragon from “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” is big enough to take over an entire dwarven mountain, and terrorize the countryside. But is he the biggest movie dragon of all time?
With one of literature’s most famous wyrms hitting screens today, we at MTV News decided to compare the most recognizable screen dragons of all time to find out just which dragon reigns (of fire) supreme.
That said, finding out the size of fictional movie dragons isn’t as simple as it may seem. There is some info out there, sure. But for the majority of the dragons, we used the following method:
1) Find a movie still of the dragon, ideally full body, next to an adult human being.
2) Using Photoshop, take that human being and copy and paste them the full length of the dragon, from tip of the tail, to top of the head.
3) If a human standing next to a full body dragon isn’t available, copy the human onto the dragon’s head, then find another picture of the full body of the dragon, and size them appropriately.
4) From there, find out how many, say, Christian Bales a dragon is, in the case of “Reign of Fire;” or how many Mickey Rooneys to a “Pete’s Dragon.”
5) Bam! You’ve got the length of your dragon.
Point being, it’s an inexact science. In other cases, we used other people’s math, such as this excellent analysis of Smaug’s size, or simply production diaries like this one about Falkor from “The Neverending Story.” But the most part? It was Photoshopping heads on other heads. You’re welcome.
“The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” is in theaters everywhere today.
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