Hobbit Actor Quits Set, Everybody Relax

The Hobbit hasn’t had the best of luck getting to production in the past year, and so we wouldn’t blame you if you took the news that Rob Kazinsky leaving the shoot for “personal reasons” as black mark in the fortune of the whole enterprise. Here’s why you shouldn’t:

Rob Kazinsky was cast as Fíli. Nobody cares about Fíli.

Fíli doesn’t have a Wikipedia page. He doesn’t even have a page on the Lord of the Rings specific wiki! He has to share billing with his brother Kíli. His only individually unique feature is that he has the longest nose of any of the twelve other dwarves in the story.

Tolkein himself admitted that Legolas was the character in the Fellowship who did the least (at least Gimli gets to fall in love with Galadriel) but calling Fíli the Legolas of The Hobbit is even going too far. The book has a “fellowship” of fifteen characters, honestly the only individual thing I can remember any of the dwarves (other than Thorin Oakensheild, who we know is important because he has a last name) doing is that one of them falls asleep and has to be carried halfway across Mirkwood.

I think it was either Bifur or Bofur.

…

I was wrong, it was Bombur. Oh, and I suppose there’s Gloin, who we can remember because he’s Gimli’s dad.

Even with two movies to do it in, there is absolutely no way each of those twelve dwarves (other than Thorin Oakenshield, who has the Last Name of Plot Importance) will become fleshed out, rounded, individual characters.

Now hear this: I love dwarves, but I really don’t care who plays them in The Hobbit.