Great Goblin

"He wields the Foe-Hammer! The Beater, bright as daylight!"

- The Great Goblin upon seeing Gandalf's sword, Glamdring

The Great Goblin was a goblin leader who lived in the Misty Mountains in Middle-earth during the Third Age. He appears only in The Hobbit.

Biography


The Great Goblin was a Goblin chieftain of the Misty Mountains. The Great Goblin  was a very large creature with a huge head. He was the chief of a group of goblins  who lived in Goblin-town near the High Pass. They preyed on travellers who used another, easier pass near the main gate of Goblin-town until people started avoiding that route over the mountains. The goblins then made another gate that opened into a cave that they called the Front Porch, at the top of the High Pass. The Great Goblin also sometimes ordered his goblins to catch fish for him in Gollum's lake, and these goblins were sometimes killed by Gollum.

As described in the novel The Hobbit, in the summer of 2941 of the Third Age of Middle Earth, the Dwarves of Thorin and Company, along with Bilbo Baggins, were captured on the Front Porch (a cave) and were brought before the Great Goblin in his great cave, where he was seated on a flat stone and surrounded by armed guards. The Great Goblin demanded to know what the dwarves were doing in the mountains. (He seems less hostile in this passage than the orcs are during the later War of the Ring, as his questioning seems to imply that he has not decided beforehand whether he will order the party killed, make them slaves, or even let them go, but that he will decide according to their answers. It is also possible he was just toying with the group and would kill them afterwards.)

When it was revealed that Thorin carried the Elvish sword Orcrist - which the orcs and goblins fear and which they called "Biter" - the Great Goblin was enraged and at once leapt to attack Thorin. Immediately, all the torches in the cave were extinguished and a glowing sword "bright as blue flame" appeared. It was Glamdring, called "Beater" by the goblins, and now wielded by Gandalf, who killed the Great Goblin by running him through with it.

The death of the Great Goblin angered the goblins of the Misty Mountains. A great army of goblins and Wargs was amassed by Bolg, whose father Azog had been killed by the dwarf Dáin II Ironfoot. Bolg's forces tracked Thorin & Company to the Lonely Mountain where they fought in the Battle of the Five Armies against the Dwarves, Elves, and Lakemen.

Portrayal in Adaptations An Unexpected Journey
"Bones will be shattered, necks will be wrung! You'll be beaten and battered, from racks you'll be hung! You will die down here and never be found! Down in the deep of Goblin-Town!"

- The Great Goblin's song in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

In the 1977 Rankin/Bass version of The Hobbit, the Great Goblin was voiced by John Stephenson.

In Peter Jackson's film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012), Barry Humphries, who is more commonly known for his alter ego Dame Edna Everage, is the voice of the Great Goblin, an entirely computer-generated character. He appears as a giant bloated, fat goblin with lots of warts, lumps and scars and carries a large staff decorated with an animal skull and shrunken heads.

As stated by Barry Humphries in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Official movie guide, The Great Goblin's throne had a hole in it, allowing it to act as a toilet as well as a throne. Barry also says that the Great Goblin is "Grossly incontinent".