If there’s one thing that can be said for Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings, it’s that it doesn’t nearly muck up Tolkien’s source material to the degree the many adapters of Howard’s work have. For all the alterations made to the story and characters, it could so easily have ended up even worse: Arwen joining the Fellowship and lending a sword at the Hornburg, Sauron laying the smackdown on Aragorn at the Black Gates, Frodo pushing Gollum over the precipice at Mount Doom, and other heinous elements in the early two-film script. At least they didn’t add in superfluous secondary characters beyond Lurtz in Fellowship and Sharku in Towers, and the odd cameo of someone’s adorable kids. Or Peter Jackson.

With Boyens, Walsh & Jackson doing the script for The Hobbit, my hopes weren’t particularly high, but I at least had some idea what to expect. I thought. Unfortunately, as reported on TORN, a list of major roles for The Hobbit was posted on spoilertv.com, and it’s… well, you guys might want to have a seat and a dram ready before reading this.

WARNING: The review below has been written in full “snark” mode. Luckily, it isn’t four thousand words long, as that other overview was, indicating that things aren’t that bad.

SpoilerTV.com just alerted us to a list they posted today of major roles being cast for “The Hobbit.”  The complete list of roles can be found on the Spoiler TV.com website . Be sure to share your thoughts about these roles on our Hobbit Discussion board or Barliman’s Chat.

Update: After touching base with more of our contacts, we’ve been notified that this is not a valid list of lead roles and, in fact, some of the roles listed in the links are not relevant. Stay tuned here for more casting information as we get it, and rest assured we will follow every new story to confirm whether or not it is legit.

No need to panic quite yet, since the veracity of the list has not been confirmed: nonetheless, I feel I have to comment.

Brian Blessed as Balin: this, I demand.

First of all, there are three notable omissions in the list: Gandalf, Balin and Beorn. Gandalf I don’t think we need to worry about, since it’s pretty clear that Ian McKellan will be reprising the role. The absence of Balin is more worrisome, and I dearly hope that it’s a result of an actor already being cast for the role (please, please, please be Brian Blessed) of my favourite dwarf from the book. I’m sure fellow blogger Brian Murphy will be as dismayed about the nonappearance of Beorn as I am: hopefully he’s also been cast.

As a welcome divergence from that other casting sheet, the major players Bilbo, Thorin, Bard, the dwarves and Smaug are largely how they appear in the book. No superfluous “origins,” contradictory personalities, or invented traits that I can see. It’s hard for me to openly commend them for that, though, since that’s pretty much what you’re supposed to do for a film adaptation of a book. Interestingly, Radagast the Brown makes an appearance: in the book, the Brown Wizard only appears offstage, when Gandalf mentions his “cousin” in the meeting with Beorn. I guess Jackson & co feel they needed to make up for his cutting from Fellowship, because Tulkas knows we really needed Merry & Pippin’s fireworks shenanigans and that five-minute chase sequence on the bridge in Moria.

Most mysterious is the appearance of Primula and Drogo Baggins, the parents of Frodo. Tolkien says very little of the Bagginses, save that they drowned in a boating accident on the Brandywine river, leaving Bilbo to help raise little Frodo. Still, the character traits don’t seem too bad: Drogo is “outgoing, friendly, likes his food, good ale and the companionship of others,” “good looking,” “well liked,” and “a bit of a ladies’ man”–so far, so Hugh Grant. Primula is “bright, lively and pretty,” considered to be “wayward” and “not proper,” but of course she “doesn’t care.” How very Jane Austen. They seem painfully generic and uninteresting to me–possibly a Petey Stu and Frannie Sue, given the husband and wife team already cast themselves as Baggins family members–though perhaps they will be more fleshed out in the film. Already unpleasant and outlandish theories are swirling about my head: will the Bagginses be involved in the Quest for Erebor, or the White Council? Will there be some nonsense about their son being “destined for some great purpose”? Will their deaths instill some sort of resolve in Frodo a la Bruce Wayne? Heck, will the Bagginses’ untimely death not be an accident, but an assassination by agents of the Necromancer? Perhaps I’m getting carried away.

Other additions are less welcome. First of all is “Itaril,” a “female woodland elf,” and “shorter than other elves.” She is, of course, a natural fighter: “showing promise at a young age,” and became a member of “the Woodland King’s Guard.” Ersatz Arwen, or at least the film’s interpretation, because no major female character in a Lord of the Rings film is allowed to be anything other than a warrior or leader. I guess the lack of female characters in The Hobbit made a shoehorned she-elf inevitable, and it’s at least preferable to the nonsensical idea of a female dwarf.

Honestly, you might as well just throw in Legolas for the fangirls.

Also involved with her is “a young elf lord,” who sounds like an ersatz Legolas: “tall and good-looking,” “very athletic,” “comes from a noble family,” “wry and dry,” with a “sharp sense of humor,” and “deadly with both sword and bow.” Disturbingly, he’s also called the “Lord of Rivendell”: was Elrond on holiday during The Hobbit? I don’t see any reason to doubt that the Elf-Lord in The Hobbit is not Elrond himself. Not-Arwen and Not-Legolas, “secretly” in love: no doubt her father will be opposed to the romance, just as Film-Elrond was inexplicably stubborn about Aragorn and Arwen’s relationship. Naturally, we’ll be in for a lot of twirly acrobatic fight sequences with the two, like in Del Toro’s Hellboy 2: The Golden Army.

Let’s not come under the impression that it’s only new heroes being wedged into Tolkien’s narrative: there’s at least one generic villain supplemented to complicate matters. Lord knows the Great Goblin, Gollum, the spiders, trolls and the mighty Smaug just aren’t enough. This script sees a character known only as the Mayor, or “The Master of Laketown”: a “quintessential politician,” who’s “clever and cunning,” and attained such a position through “exaggerated promises and fear mongering.” The original Master of Laketown, like Denethor, was not a true antagonist, but a sympathetic character overcome by terror and madness. I guess Jackson, Boyens & Walsh weren’t content with the demonization and simplification of Denethor in The Return of the King, they need yet another obstructive, cowardly, bullying male authority figure for the heroes to put in his place. Still, one hopes that even Del Toro wouldn’t be so stupid as to have this Mayor be lit on fire, and run a half-mile off a precipice. The Mayor’s not alone, for he has an obsequious lackey in “Alfrid.” A spineless toad who nonetheless harbors his own designs, though without the chutzpah to do anything about it. Typical yes-man for a typical cliche character.

Overall, there’s much less to worry about than the upcoming Conan project. Certain elements are sure to make it in. Jackson & company would be idiots to mess with Smaug. The story will likely be adhered to, rather than discarded and replaced with some invented nonsense. I don’t have high hopes for the film, but if this character sheet turns out to be even a bit accurate, I don’t see those hopes ending up unfounded. The update on TORN says that “some” of the roles are “not relevant”: of the fourteen characters listed, one is a migrant from The Lord of the Rings, three are minor Legendarium characters, while three are complete inventions. That’s seven: half of the characters! Surely that means that at least some of the characters will appear? Even The Fellowship of the Ring only had one major original character in Lurtz, who was at least pretty badass and somewhat plausible in the narrative. Three invented characters is too much, in a narrative already heaving with characters. I’ll be supremely irritated if the likes of Beorn, the Trolls and the spiders were shunted in deference to Not-Legolas and Not-Arwen, let alone Middle-earth’s answer to Walter Peck.

I hear William Atherton's available: let's get him for the Mayor.

If nothing else, I have confidence that the elements the Lord of the Rings trilogy did right–the creatures, the props, the music, the set design, the cinematography, basically anything not directly related to the script–will be in evidence. Guillermo Del Toro is an accomplished director, has a much stronger knack for horror and the dark than Jackson did, and seems to have a better handle on choreographing action and sensitive drama. I might not be looking forward to what it’ll be as a Tolkien adaptation, but I’ll be intrigued to see what Jackson & Del Toro come up with for a fantasy film.