Late last week, it was rumored, then quickly confirmed that Elijah Wood was returning to Middle Earth for Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit, even though the action of that story takes place decades before Wood’s Lord Of The Rings character Frodo Baggins is born. At the time we, and several others, speculated that perhaps Jackson is going to use a framing device in which an older Bilbo Baggins, the hero of The Hobbit, relates his adventures to his nephew Frodo. But that’s all it is, speculation.
It seems that Wood has a bit more of an idea as to what he’ll be doing, but not much. As he told IGN –
We thought we were finished and the character doesn’t even exist in The Hobbit, so it was not even a pipe dream to imagine the possibility would be there for me to reprise the role of Frodo. But they’ve come up with something that I think is kind of interesting and I think very fitting that doesn’t necessarily infringe upon the integrity of the original novel. It’s great. I’m really excited. I think [the roll will] be relatively minimal. That’s my impression. I actually haven’t read anything yet. I haven’t read a script. I have almost as much information as you guys have!
I would say, judging by what Woods says and doesn’t say, that we are pretty much on safe ground with the narrative framework guess in regards to his appearance in the film. The idea of Bilbo reading the story to Frodo certainly keeps the integrity of the book, especially when you consider author J R R Tolkien’s conceit that both The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings were written by Bilbo and then Frodo as part of a history of Middle Earth known as The Red Book of Westmarch. Can we read his “I have almost as much information as you guys have!” as an admission that yes, the online press have it right? I think so.
