Sixty
years before his nephew Frodo would take his own great and terrible journey in
the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Bilbo Baggins is living a contented,
peaceful existence in his cozy home of Bag End in the market town of Hobbiton.
Like all of his kind, he loves his home and knows little of the world beyond
the Shire, except what he gleans from his precious books and maps.
To
play the Hobbit at the center of the adventure in Peter Jackson's highly
awaited epic “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” the filmmakers had only one
actor in mind: Martin Freeman, who has been praised for the effortless humor
and humanity he brings to comedic and dramatic roles alike.
“Martin
has this amazing gift to be vulnerable at the same time as being staunch and
strong,” screenwriter Philippa Boyens describes. “He can be funny at the same
time as having pathos. All those qualities told us that he was Bilbo Baggins.
We knew that Martin could take you along with him on this extraordinary
journey.”
Out
of the film’s colorful group of Dwarves and Wizards, Elves and Trolls, Bilbo is
possibly the most relatable to audiences. Jackson confirms, “Bilbo is like a
regular person, and reacts the way any one of us likely would if we were in his
situation. When Bilbo is faced with a Troll, he doesn’t necessarily grab his
sword and start fighting—he panics. And that’s what’s so incredible about
Martin. He doesn’t want to pretend any of it; he’s always real and authentic.
I’ve always thought of Hobbits as being very English, with their little cups of
tea and their feet up by the fire. Martin is probably one of the nearest people
to a Hobbit that I’ve ever met,” the director adds with a smile.
Determined
that Freeman was Bilbo, Jackson rearranged the shooting schedule to build in a
hiatus for the actor to leave New Zealand and travel to the UK to perform his
role as Watson on the television series “Sherlock.” “I was truly shocked and
pleased because I really wanted to play Bilbo, and that’s not the kind of offer
that comes back,” Freeman recalls. “It showed that they had such faith in me as
Bilbo. They must have seen something in me that could play worry, but with
humor.”
Freeman
describes Bilbo as “quite self-sufficient. He is also quite self-satisfied, I
think, a learned man without having traveled the world. The things that struck
me about him suggested a certain timidity in many situations, a certain
hesitancy in life, because his world is his home and Hobbiton, and beyond that
is a bit scary.”
In
the film, Bilbo Baggins is swept into an epic quest to reclaim the lost Dwarf
Kingdom of Erebor from the fearsome Dragon Smaug. Approached out of the blue by
the Wizard Gandalf the Grey (Sir Ian McKellen), Bilbo finds himself joining a
company of 13 Dwarves led by the legendary warrior Thorin Oakenshield (Richard
Armitage). Their journey will take them into the Wild, through treacherous
lands swarming with Goblins, Orcs and deadly Wargs.
A
production of New Line Cinema and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures (MGM), “The
Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” will be released in the Philippines by Warner
Bros. Pictures on Thursday, Dec. 13, 2012.
The
second film, “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug,” will be released on Dec.
13, 2013, to be followed by “The Hobbit: There and Back Again” on July 18,
2014.
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