While most people have regarded director Peter Jackson’ Lord Of The Rings trilogy, there is a small contingent of fans of the original work by J R R Tolkien who decried the changes that Jackson made in the course of his adaptations. Those folks might have something new to complain if we’re extrapolating correctly from some information in a casting description for the director’s upcoming adaptation of Tolkien’s The Hobbit.
In Tolkien’s original novel, the titular hobbit Bilbo Baggins manages to get knocked unconscious at the beginning of the story’s final climactic Battle Of The Five Armies. But Does Jackson have other plans for Bilbo? Tolkien fan site The One Ring has been passed on what may be a casting breakdown which offers this note about Bilbo –
although . . . he doesn’t have huge courage he does become, particularly in the last battle, very brave.
Can we infer that Jackson along with his fellow screenwriters Fran Walsh, Phillipa Boyens and Guillermo del Torro have made the decision to keep Bilbo active through the story’s climax?
Cinematically, this makes good sense, as seeing a battle is much more interesting than having a character tell another character about it later. I certainly can’t blame Jackson for wanting to film an epic battlefield clash of men, elves, dwarves, goblins and giant eagles. And having Bilbo take an active part in the finale makes more sense in terms of his character arc, showing how his travels have changed him from the homebody he is at the start of the story.