Bilbo Baggins had played Frodo in the BBC radio series 20 years earlier. The movies omit the 17-year gap between Bilbo's 111th birthday and Frodo's departure from the Shire, as a result Bilbo mentions in Rivendell that he was unable to revisit the Lonely Mountain before his retirement. In Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit" film series, a prequel to "The Lord of the Rings", the young Bilbo is portrayed by Martin Freeman while Ian Holm reprises his role as an older Bilbo in "" (2012) and "" (2014). The International Astronomical Union names all colles (small hills) on Saturn's moon Titan after characters
The Hobbit themes explored in "The Hobbit". Maps figure in both saga literature and "The Hobbit". Several of the author's illustrations incorporate Anglo-Saxon runes, an English adaptation of the Germanic runic alphabets. Themes from Old English literature, and specifically from "Beowulf", shape the ancient world Bilbo stepped into. Tolkien, a scholar of "Beowulf", counted the epic among his "most valued sources" for "The Hobbit". Tolkien was one of the first critics to treat "Beowulf" as a literary work with value beyond the merely historical, and his 1936 lecture "" is still required in some Old English courses. Tolkien borrowed several elements from