10 PERFECT Casting Choices Wasted On Terrible Movies

Martin Freeman is a seriously good actor, and his much-anticipated role in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings prequel The Hobbit was the kind of casting brilliance that comes along only once in a lifetime.

Freeman was perfect as Bilbo Baggins, a peaceful Hobbit thrust into a perilous adventure by Gandalf and a host of Dwarves. Managing at once to be funny, heroic, relatable and consistently on the ball, Freeman perfectly captured every aspect of the complex and iconic literary figure (already played, albeit briefly, by the late Ian Holm) and made the role very much his own.

Though the best part of the trilogy, the films surrounding his great performance were underwhelming additions to a franchise often considered to be one of the greatest of all time. Whilst Jackson was obsessed with perfection in the original trilogy, and was massively focused on getting great real-life shots to add to the sweeping scenery, his direction in The Hobbit is much less concerned with this perfectionism and more interested in special effects and making as much money as possible.

That last point might seem harsh, but making a 300-page novel into three films totalling nearly nine hours of runtime, you can't help but think he's trying to squeeze out as much cash as he can from fans of the perfect original trilogy. The effects are overdone, the scenery lacks a sense of realism, and the plot plods all. The. Time.

Martin Freeman, then, was a breath of fresh air, totally wasted.