Martin Freeman is the Hobbit

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Chrissy_Lynn87

New member
Has been confirmed that Martin Freeman will play the part of Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson's movie the Hobbit. I actually think he is a great choice, there is deinately something "hobbity" about him at least :)
 
I have an image of him standing around sighing and looking slightly peeved all the time. 'Dwarfs want me to go on a quest with them' - grimace at camera, roll eyes, sigh.
 
really out of so many great actors him:( would have been great for Elijah Wood to play Bilbo, we would sort of get an idea that young Bilbo going of on a quest just like Frodo would in the future, would have worked well i think:)
 
The thing is, that kind of IS Bilbo. He's very much a reluctant adventurer to start with and the Dwarves are a constant hassle to him. Martin is perfect for the role. I reckon it'll be easy to buy him as a younger version of Ian Holm's Bilbo.

Some of the Dwarves have been cast too. Robert Kazinsky (who used to play Sean Slater in Eastenders), Richard Armitage (Spooks, Robin Hood etc.) and Aiden Turner (Mitchell in Being Human) are among them. Totally left-field choices for Dwarves IMO, especially when John Rhys-Davies as Gimli is exactly how you picture the Dwarves in the books to be.
 
It was bad enough the first time round...

"We....................set out..................................to........................save............................the Shire..........................Sam"
 
i think its a fab casting - i was abit worried cause i thought ian holmes would be irreplaceable as bilbo but i think they have it spot on with martin freeman i think hel do a great job. dont care about his other acting performances all i care about is if he will do a great job in this and i think he will !

was shocked (but pleased) at seeing Rob Kaz in there too, ive not seen him in anything since EE, and richard armitage - wow just swoons away from thread, cant wait for the release :D
 
Good casting, I agree. Little concerned about the film, though. The original book was written for ten year-olRAB and is barely 300 pages in length, which is on the long side for a children's novel, admittedly. Even so, is there enough there to get two full length feature films out of it?

It is logical that the man who made such a triumph of 'The Lord of the Rings' (in my opinion) should also make 'The Hobbit', but my view is tempererd by what he did with 'King Kong'. The original 1933 version was barely 90 minutes long, yet Peter Jackson's 2005 remake ran to three hours! I will be the first to admit that it was a fantastic film in many ways, but I still believe it was a good forty minutes too long.
 
I think the second of the two films will cover a lot of what Gandalf gets up to while he's away from Bilbo, meeting lots of the folk who eventually feature heavily in Lord of the Rings, there's all that "a dark power rising in the wooRAB" which dovetails into LOTR.

I think Freeman is a perfect choice for Bilbo, better than James McEvoy would have been imho.

As for "getting the same performance every time"... well that's what Hollywood considers as acting these days, Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Geroge Clooney, Tom Hanks, Russell Crowe....I could go on, but all of the biguns do the same thing in EVERY film.

Oh, and I liked him as Arthur Dent, I thought it was a good reworking, but I realise I'm in a minority there..
 
I think you'll find all of those you just listed have at least two or three standout roles each which are totally different from each other. Freeman plays nobody other than himself.
 
Is that such a bad thing? Plenty of major stars have done exactly that. Having made that comment, I would like to point out that my favourite actor is Johnny Depp, who is most definitely a character actor. Wouldn't have been a bad Bilbo either.
 
One of the things I could never quite get my head around is how in The Hobbit, they basically go in a pretty uneventful straight line from the Shire to Rivendell, but all of a sudden in Fellowship of the Ring, it's not possible to take this route and they instead have to do a big semicircle encompassing about 200 pages' worth of assorted dangers and perils.
 
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