Can you guys believe that Sean Connery almost turned down the role Gandalf because he didn't understand the story? Good thing he took the role for the money. Funny thing is he ended up having a great time with Peter Jackson filming the movie even though he had his doubt about the project. Also, I heard he helped got the Hobbit movies with Del Toro direcing made faster because he said he was thinking about retiring from acting soon.
DBWI: Lord Of The Rings Trilogy (2001-03)
- Thread starter Maverick721
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Who could possibly replace him as Gandalf? "You cannt pash!" is one of the most memorable lines in his career. I can't imagine how different the resulting meme would be, if it even becomes one.
Isn't it funny? He won an Oscar for the Untouchables and The Two Towers with funny accents. The guys is still a legend, what a way to end off a great career with Gandalf.
The Trilogy also pretty much made Russell Crowe's career as Aragorn, I read that he was second in line to play Mel Gibson's role in the Gladiator.
Yeah and apparently Vigo Mortenson was the backup to play Aragorn in the event Crowe turned it down. That would not work...
May be I am a geek, but it took me a while to get used to Gandalf being played by an old Scotsman. Am I the only one that after reading the books imagined Gandalf to be sleeker and younger looking. I mean, okay he is supposed to be old, and have a long, white beard, but he is also a magician from the dawn of times and therefore technically immortal. So I always imagined him less wrinkled and more like a bearded Mr. Spock, figure and all... So sorry Mr Connery. You played a good wizard there, but a Gandalf you are not. Or at least not in the LOTR I imagined.
I'm going to commit fandom heresy here: I don't think Connery was especially good as Gandalf.
I mean, he was OK. And he was better in the Hobbit duology. But it was showing through in LOTR that he didn't understand the material. He just wasn't a the calibre of other actors like Christopher Lee as Saruman, or Sean Astin as Sam, or Sylvester McCoy as Bilbo.
I mean, he was OK. And he was better in the Hobbit duology. But it was showing through in LOTR that he didn't understand the material. He just wasn't a the calibre of other actors like Christopher Lee as Saruman, or Sean Astin as Sam, or Sylvester McCoy as Bilbo.
Again, he could've chosen the League script, which contained a car chase in Venice. Say what you will about his performance and the quality of the Lord of the Rings film. At least those aren't that stupid.
Say, had he chosen LOEG over Lord of the Rings, you think he might have retired earlier?
Probably. Before The Hobbit Part I came out he hadn't appeared in any movies for five years, and he was 82 years old by the time The Hobbit Part II came out, after all. Without the Hobbit duology he might have retired for good around 2006ish.
(OOC: Because of all the lawsuits and stuff I really don't think Del Toro's Hobbit movies could've arrived any quicker than their originally planned dates of December 2011 and 2012.)
Actually, it occurs to me now that if Connery hadn't been busy with The Hobbit then he might've been available to appear in Skyfall as Kincade the groundskeeper, instead of Albert Finney. Even if he had retired by that point, the 50th-anniversary James Bond film has got to be worth coming out of retirement for.
Wait, Viggo Mortensen, really? Where did you hear that? Everything I've read about the production of LOTR says their second choice was actually Stuart Townsend. Now that REALLY would not work.
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I get the feeling from the fanboys, I went into the movies knowing nothing about Tolkien's work so I thought he fit the powerful wizard mentor role really well, reminds me of his role in highlander a little bit.
I thought I wouldn't be a fan - Sean Connery was too recognisable to be Gandalf, I thought - but it worked. No, I liked it, and I loved the LOTR films.
What I didn't like was how it blew the starting whistle for every director and film studio to try making their own fantasy series. And they really scraped the bottom of the barrel towards the end too... Remember when they tried making a Heralds of Valdemar movie? Or Michael Bay's Eragon (2007) and its sequels? OK, Eragon wasn't the most original fantasy novel ever... but Shia LaBeouf as a fantasy Dragonrider? And of course, even though it's a fantasy world, Bay somehow managed to pander to stereotypes with the one black actor in it...
What I didn't like was how it blew the starting whistle for every director and film studio to try making their own fantasy series. And they really scraped the bottom of the barrel towards the end too... Remember when they tried making a Heralds of Valdemar movie? Or Michael Bay's Eragon (2007) and its sequels? OK, Eragon wasn't the most original fantasy novel ever... but Shia LaBeouf as a fantasy Dragonrider? And of course, even though it's a fantasy world, Bay somehow managed to pander to stereotypes with the one black actor in it...
Or Michael Bay's Eragon (2007) and its sequels? OK, Eragon wasn't the most original fantasy novel ever... but Shia LaBeouf as a fantasy Dragonrider? And of course, even though it's a fantasy world, Bay somehow managed to pander to stereotypes with the one black actor in it...
Meh. Shitty books, shitty movies. Actually, about Shia LaBeouf: I've only seen the first movie (some friends and I rented it for a bad-movies-and-pizza night) and it seemed to me that the movie Eragon is less irritating than the book version of the character.
Anyway, something tells me that the 2000s fantasy craze would've happened with or without Sean Connery playing Gandalf. I mean, Lord of the Rings would still be made and Harry Potter was being adapted into films at the same time: that's a giant signal to film studios saying "FANTASY IS POPULAR — MORE ADAPTATIONS NOW". It didn't even turn out as big as it could have been in OTL: the Narnia series never ended up adapting The Horse and His Boy or The Last Battle, for example, and The Golden Compass failed badly enough that they cancelled the sequels.
I thought I wouldn't be a fan - Sean Connery was too recognisable to be Gandalf, I thought - but it worked. No, I liked it, and I loved the LOTR films.
What I didn't like was how it blew the starting whistle for every director and film studio to try making their own fantasy series. And they really scraped the bottom of the barrel towards the end too... Remember when they tried making a Heralds of Valdemar movie? Or Michael Bay's Eragon (2007) and its sequels? OK, Eragon wasn't the most original fantasy novel ever... but Shia LaBeouf as a fantasy Dragonrider? And of course, even though it's a fantasy world, Bay somehow managed to pander to stereotypes with the one black actor in it...
That is true. However, we did get a few good films. The Chronicles of Narnia was alright. So was the incredibly underrated "The Last Unicorn." The first Discworld film is considered incredibly good. And the craze led to Game of Thrones getting greenlit.
Good point. And then there's Joss Whedon's Pathfinder TV show. Which by now, I'd say more people have watched it than played the RPG...
The Hobbit Part One and Two also did a lot for Del Toro's career. Without it we would never have gotten At The Mountain Of Madness with Tom Cruise.