Inching closer to The Hobbit film

[Sauron the White]

HerenIstarion ... I do understand your point about not wanting to see all of our mundane daily existences played out on the screen. Perfectly clear on that and I agree with you. My point about kids as heroes is that it is way off the end of the Absurd-O-Meter. The average ten year old kid cannot even take the trash out thirty feet from the house and will sit there letting it stink up the house for days as long as they can still play their mindless video games. If you give them a two week assignment in class, you had better have daily reminders stressing how much time has passed and how close that deadline is. And then when the day arrives be prepared to read several poorly written notes from parents asking for extensions due to the most extreme of emergencies. I once (back in the early 70's) had a kid in junior high bring in a parental note asking to retake the final exam because they had polio over the weekend. Thats POLIO for heavens sake. Nobody gets polio for a few days and then recovers.

So watching some self absorbed pre-adolescents save the world is just not my cup of tea. That one middle kid in Narnia drove me absolutely crazy. I wanted him to get killed in the worst sort of way. He screws up everything for his brothers and sisters due to his own faults and then whines about it while everyone struggles to pull his bacon out of the fire. Gimmeabreak.

Yes, there are highly intelligent exceptional children. But tell me of an instance in reality where they saved the world.

Bilbo (and Frodo for the matter) was as unlikely 'to do a hero' as any kid would be to save the world (see above about what ifs, though), but the very fact they actually did is what makes it most astonishing wonderful

I would take issue with this. Bilbo and Frodo were not children. The possessed reason, maturity and intelligence and used it. They are part of the tradition used by many writers of having onrdinary people placed into extraordinary events and seeing them rise to the occassion. Stephen King has made a nice living off of that formula.