10 Movie Villains That Upstaged Other Villains
6. Smaug - The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug
After the impeccable Lord of the Rings trilogy, Peter Jackson's return to Middle-earth just didn't live up to what had come before it. There were more than a few aspects in which the Hobbit movies fell short, a major one being an underwhelming villain.
It was Azog the Defiler (Manu Bennett), otherwise known as the Pale Orc, who murdered Thorin Oakenshield's (Richard Armitage) grandfather and chased the Dwarf King across Middle-earth from the Shire to Erebor. In all that time, audiences were given few reasons to care about the character or his rivalry with the King under the Mountain.
His cause wasn't helped by the introduction of a genuinely compelling villain, the titular dragon in the second movie of the three, The Desolation of Smaug. His name may have been in the title, but Benedict Cumberbatch's Smaug was far from the big bad. He only truly came into proceedings in the third act, he had very little screen time, and was almost treated as a MacGuffin, giving Thorin and company something to chase.
Yet, in such a small amount of time on screen, Smaug proved to be far more compelling than Azog. The Pale Orc was around in the story before the dragon, he survived for longer after, and his battle with Thorin was a big part of the entire trilogy's finale. And still, he was the lesser of the antagonists by some stretch.