Helen --BBC's Ian Holm is Frodo, in my mind. I've always had an image of Frodo, as well, one that hasn't changed for me since I first got it (when I was nine). He's the one character who's never changed for me. Boromir has to be the one who changed the most, going from a black-haired Viking to my current image, which is our beloved movie!Boromir.
Frodo, however, has always looked like he does in my mind, movie!Frodo notwithstanding, and has sounded like Ian Holm since I first got the BBC tapes.
I think the change in movie!Frodo is similar to the change in movie!Aragorn; can you imagine how insufferable book!Aragorn would be if you couldn't get an insight into how the other characters felt about him? (I read some of his dialogue aloud the other day, and realized that I personally would want to smack him within twenty minutes by virtue of what he says alone) It's the same, for me, as trying to see Tom Bombadil on screen. In the book, through brilliant use of prose, Tolkien makes a serious undertone to all Tom's seeming-capriciousness, but that impression is mostly filtered through the hobbits. So is the impression of book!Aragorn.
Again, to the movie-goer who hasn't seen/adored/become addicted to the books, movie!Frodo and movie!Aragorn need to be characters we can identify with, and quickly, while not getting so bogged down in only the characters that we miss the overall arc of the story. The already much-abbreviated scripts for BBC's radio production--which still missed a good deal of Tolkien's characterization--were thirteen hours long. That's in excess of four hours per volume, and it still had the narration of impressions and vistas, which cut down on the need for extra time in that respect.
I find it hard to imagine that people can't picture Frodo easily; his facial features, right down to the wrinkles around his eyes, have been in my head for a decade. And once a character has solidified in my mind, it stays thusly.
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