Mistake?

No it isn't a mistake as in "They F'ed up"

Its because Ian Holm is an old man and he played Bilbo in this film. In the scene in question they tried to make him look younger but he is still an old man in real life.

In The Hobbit, Martin Short played the role and he is a younger man.

The films were not made in chronological order. The Hobbit takes place before Lord of the Rings but was filmed many years later after Lord of the Rings



I joined the Navy to see the world, only to discover the world is 2/3 water!

Try thinking of it this way: What we see in FotR is how Bilbo how is remembering it there. What is shown in AUJ is how it actually happened (in the films, not the book).

"Hell hath no fury like that of the uninvolved." - T. Isabella

In the book Bilbo doesn't age and it creeped out his fellow hobbits, but PJ decided not to do that and hired an actor in his sixties. I can see why he did that, because if Bilbo looked hardly older than Frodo then they'd have to take a long time explaining why they looked like they were the same age but Frodo treated Bilbo like a father. Some things just don't translate well from page to screen!

Although they did a limited version, when the ring goes bye-bye Bilbo is suddenly much older and frailer, we can see that the ring did have the effect of keeping him youngER, if not young.




“Seventy-seven courses and a regicide, never a wedding like it!