BlkPaladin on 30 May 2017
If I remember correctly the dialog during that time offers the best proof. Thorem and he were talking about the facing the dragon. And he mentioned, I don't remember the wording, but it seems he faced off with something about as powerful, which kicked his butt. And yeah I'm guessing this is drawn from the "unfinished/originally unpublished" short stories that Tolken's estate had published after his death, and Peter Jackson used these to pad the story to make one book into three films. (So the scene was mostly a dick measuring contest.)
