That’s the big question posed by Ben Child of The Guardian!
To begin with, fans have long known that Peter Jackson’s vision for his two-part adaptation of The Hobbit involves plans to include the activities of the White Council and the Necromancer of Dol Guldur, a rather sketchy storyline that minimally involves Gandalf, Saruman, and Galadriel, and occurs parallel to the main story of Bilbo’s journey with the thirteen Dwarves to the Lonely Mountain.
But while it could be argued that the White Council storyline is at least canon, what can be said about the surprising inclusion of Frodo, his father Drogo, an older Bilbo (played by Sir Ian Holm), and Legolas?
In his article Ben poses genuine questions that most fans (on TheOneRing.net at least) have been pondering over for months now:
What shape will Sauron take – Tolkien offers no clues – as he will presumably not yet have assumed the form of a great eye in which he appears in Lord of the Rings?
Does this mean that the 89-year-old Christopher Lee has made the trip to New Zealand after all to reprise his role as Saruman?
Going further than questioning the practicalities of filming this prelude to the Lord of the Rings, the article delves deeper into the question at the heart of the much-anticipated cinematic phenomenon – by pulling us away from the central story, will the films present The Hobbit through a very different prism than what was originally intended?
