CGI Bilbo?
 

I've heard everyone say how Ian Holm will be too old to play Bilbo when the Hobbit film gets made. But wait! What if he didn't play Bilbo in the flesh? Like in the Beowulf CGI film where 52 year old Ray Winstone voices the young, muscular Beowulf? They could use this technique to create a younger Bilbo i.e. younger image of Ian Holm, with Holm providing the voice. CGI tech advances quickly, and Gollum looks pretty tame compared to what can be done today.

Have to say that I loved Ian Holm as Bilbo in the LOTR films except in one scene - that one being where he is younger and finds the ring. He looked badly out of place and character. He simply is now too old to play a much younger, much more active Bilbo in THE HOBBIT a few years down the road. And he has had health problems as well.

CGI Bilbo with Holm as the voice? I do not like that idea either. Actors and actresses give films a reality that CGI can never touch. Its great for fantasy characters like a Gollum or Fell Beast or Cave Trolls. Those characters were wonderful especially Gollum with Serkis behind him. However, I would go for the actual flesh and blood every time possible since they can convery emotion and a sense of actual human reality that CGI still falls short with.

Find a younger actor for Bilbo.

:( I guess I am totally of a different mind-set. I thought Beowulf was not so good as CGI goes. It would have been a much better film had it been live action.

And I too think Ian is too old for the part. I have thought that perhaps Jonas Armstrong would make a rather good Bilbo. He is tall so Jackson or whoever helms The Hobbit would need to work that magic again.

Do we need a young Bilbo though? Why not have an old one and keep Ian Holm? After all, the casting directors didn't let the notion of the characters' age stop them from having a 13 year old play Frodo, did it? ;)

Dear heavens. Elijah Wood was 19, not 13, when they started filming, and nearly 23 when they finished. Perhaps a bit young to play a 33-plus hobbit, but then again, that's just barely when hobbits come of age, so the look is ptrobably not far off, comparatively speaking.

Frodo was meant to be in his 50s...

If the period of early thirties are equally to much younger humans, what would the hobbit equivelant of the Fifties be?

I think not a man in his late 70's, especially one with health problems.

True. I am myself an animator, and it's well known in the trade that it's very hard to do a realistic human for any length of time. There are just too many subtle things that will cue the audience that what they're watching isn't real – they do after all, see other people every day.

And we're talking about the main character here!

Holm himself has said he's no longer up to the physical demands of The Hobbit lead.

I have to say that I wouldn't even have a CGI Gollum. The flesh and blood one in the musical was amazing. Maybe I saw too many "how it was done" documentaries but I think they overused the CGI.

So how about a low tech answer to casting Bilbo? Warwick Davis, he's the right age (37 is not far of 50 in hobbit years surely) , the right height and has taken a lead in a major fantasy film.

Sorry, but there's a good reason why PJ used depth perception instead of midget actors in the LOTR trilogy. Midgets, don't have the shape of normal human beings, they're usually disproportionately shaped. Plus they're movements are not like that of normal humans. So no Warwick Davis. And as for Gollum, his strange body shape would have been difficult to replicate without CGI(I think Peter Woodthorpe's portrayal doesn't LOOK right). And if you've seen Beowulf, you'll find that kind of CGI is standard issue these days.

The Ring stopped him from aging:

As time went on, people began to notice that Frodo also showed signs of good 'preservation': outwardly he retained the appearance of a robust and energetic hobbit just out of his tweens. 'Some folk have all the luck,' they said; but it was not until Frodo approached the usually more sober age of fifty that they began to think it queer.



So Frodo looked just out of his teenage years - this is pretty much the age of Elijah over the course of the filming (19-23).

I saw an excerpt from Beowulf and it put me off wanting to see the film. It just looked like a computer game. The late Peter Woodthorpe would physically be unsuited to playing gollum in the flesh and was not (being dead) in the musical.:p

Midget used to be the technical term for a person of short but proportionate stature but it is now often regarded as an offensive term. And I am entitled ot my preference surely.... I have seen the musical and a flesh and blood Gollum and real short actors won for me over the computer generated film method ... but maybe the French and Saunders spoof stopped me ever taking that seriously again