After the release of the first official look at Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) last week, and the film’s first poster this past weekend, the first offical trailer for The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug has finally debuted.

Hit the jump to see the full trailer here below.

The film follows Bilbo Baggins, Thorin Oakenshield and his band of fearless dwarves, and Gandalf the Grey, who are on a quest to obtain gold that was stolen from them from a great dragon called Smaug. Not only do we get our first look at Smaug, Tauriel, Beron the Bear, and Bard, but we also get to see the return of Legolas (Orlando Bloom).

Director Peter Jackson revolutionized fantasy cinema with his epic adaptation of J. R.R. Tolkien‘s Lord of the Rings trilogy, a monumental task, in spite of the author’s insistence that it could never be filmed. Given the phenomenal success with which Jackson pulled that off, how well would he tackle Tolkien’s earlier saga of Bilbo Baggins, The Hobbit? San Diego Comic-Con Hall H fans found out earlier today with the panel for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

Moderator Chris Hardwick(The Nerdist podcast) kicked off the Warner Brothers/Legendary Pictures panel with a surprise, by pulling open curtains across the back of the hall to unveil projection screens double standard size, larger than I’d ever seen in Hall H history. Over these screens they displayed a collage of images from the film, which gave fans a hint to the epic scale of the panel to follow. Then, they screened a behind-the-scenes reel of footage documenting the exhaustive 266-day production shoot, including some of the amazing epic sets and characters of Tolkien’s Middle Earth.

Though production began long ago and we already have a wonderful first trailer to watch (a couple hundred times…per day), director Peter Jackson still had some casting to get done for his two-part adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien‘s beloved classic, The Hobbit.

It’s being reported that Jackson has brought in Billy Connolly as the final addition to the cast. He’ll play the great dwarf warrior and cousin to Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage), Dain Ironfoot.

For that past ten days, character photos have been released of the dwarves who will be the companions to Bilbo Baggins in part one of Peter Jackson‘s Hobbit films. We’ve seen Nori, Ori, and Dori; Oin and Gloin; Fili and Kili; Bofur, Bombur & Bifur; and Balin and Dwalin. But, of course, we’ve all been waiting to see the head honcho himself, Thorin Oakenshield.

Well, today, we finally get that first look at Richard Armitage as the dwarf lord Thorin Oakenshield, holding his weapon of choice — Orcrist, the Goblin-cleaver — in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

Check out the image here above.