'The Hobbit' Is Making Room for Some 'Lord of the Rings' Characters

[anam_moon]

"Lord of the Rings" director Peter Jackson's long-awaited film(s) of "The Hobbit" -- it'll be broken up into two movies -- will finally start shooting in February, which means he needs to nail down his cast for this adaptation of the J.R.R. Tolkien book that preceded "Rings." And this week it was announced that two big stars from the "Rings"

Comments

[maniakes]

Cameos for Legolas fit very easily into Hobbit, both during the time Thorin &co are imprisoned in the Elf King of Mirkwood's palace, and when the Elf King of Mirkwood shows up with an army at the Lonely Mountain after the dragon is slain, what with Legolas being EKoM's son. He didn't show up as a named character in the book, but there's plenty of opportunity for "Background Elf #3" to turn out to have been him.

Galadriel is a bit more of a stretch, but from what I've heard part of why they're making it two movies is they're dragging in a bunch of plot bits that happened off-camera in the book and Tolkein wrote down elsewhere (Lost Tales, etc), such as the banishment of the Necromancer and the tracking and capture of Gollum. I don't know the details of that, but I know Legolas was involved in the latter subplot, and it stands to reason that Galadriel would be involved in the former.

[jackkansas]

Or it might mean that Jackson has no real understanding of the LotR. The guy who omitted Tom Bombadil ... omitted the Barrow Downs ... omitted the entire "Scouring of the Shire" ... has Gimli the Dwarf say "Toss me!" at the Battle of Helm's Deep ... this is not a man who's going to let the literal text circumscribe his artistic genius and quest for profit. Just another post-Xena-Warrior-Princess anachronism gone wild.

I never actually cared for the book. I will certainly not spring for the movie.

[anam_moon]

I would have really enjoyed seeing Tom Bombadil depicted in the film, but I can kind of understand how that part would get left out for editing purposes. I was hoping that it would be part of the bonus footage available on the DVD.