He's about to be 93. Hopefully they continue his legacy and attempt to be as true to JRR as possible. Christopher is awesome. We wouldn't have the magic of the Silmarillion without him.
Yes please https://screenrant.com/lord-rings-tv-series-gandalf-ian-mckellen/ Ian McKellen Doesn’t Want Another Actor to Play Gandalf Legendary actor Ian McKellen doesn’t want any other actor to play Gandalf in the upcoming Lord of the Rings TV series but himself. McKellen, of course, has a long history playing J.R.R. Tolkien’s iconic wizard character, first having embodied him in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy from 2001 to 2003, and again for Jackson’s The Hobbit prequel trilogy from 2012 to 2014. Fans immediately embraced McKellen’s heartfelt portrayal of Gandalf, as did his industry colleagues, who nominated the master thespian for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his first turn as the wizard in 2001’s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. While McKellen came up short in his bid for an Academy Award, he did receive a different prestigious honor in playing Gandalf when Screen Actors Guild named him Best Supporting Actor at its ceremonies in 2002. Effectively, McKellen’s love for Gandalf is so deep that he doesn’t want to give up the role to another actor when casting begins for the five season-long Lord of the Rings TV series that’s in development at Amazon. In an interview this week on BBC One’s The Graham Norton Show (via Digital Spy), McKellen, made it pretty clear he’s up to reprising his role as Gandalf when Norton asked him, “Amazon are doing a TV series of Lord of the Rings. Now isn’t that annoying? That there’s going to be another Gandalf in town?” In his response, McKellen said: “What do you mean, another Gandalf? I haven’t said yes because I haven’t been asked. But are you suggesting that someone else is going to play it? Gandalf is over 7,000 years old, so I’m not too old.” McKellen, who is 78, makes a great point about Gandalf’s age and how it effectively shouldn’t preclude him from playing the role again. As for the fact that the show predates the events of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, an earlier storyline should matter little, since McKellen has already played a younger version of Gandalf for The Hobbit trilogy. Naturally, the decision to cast McKellen as Gandalf again will be up to The Lord of the Ringsshow creators, but since the actor has stated publicly that he wants to play Gandalf for the series, it’s an opportunity they should not pass up. And while no other actor from The Lord of The Rings trilogy has lobbied to reprise their role in the prequel TV series, one person they can count out is ageless Sean Astin, who says he’s more interested in seeing who the creators choose to play Frodo Baggins’ loyal friend, Samwise Gamgee.
the Fellowship's passage through Moria is one of the most haunting and vivid passages of LOTR. Tolkien somehow folded a spooky mystery story into epic high fantasy, and it worked great.
As much as I know about LOTR, it never really occurred to me that Ori from the hobbit was the author of the account the fellowship reads in Moria
I don't think it's the extended edition. Started watching a few weeks ago and got flustered when Isildur's ambush at the Gladden Fields during the intro was truncated. Had to pop in the bluray to watch the better version.
I always knew the Shire was in Topeka. It's been right under our nose the whole time Also makes sense... JAX is awful. Proud to be a resident of Osgiliath (I think?)
Bump for Fellowship starting on STARZ, I don't know how hot of a take this is but.... Fellowship is by far the best of the film adaptations.
Wrong...fucking up return of the king and the gay ass ending in particular was easily the worst part of the trilogy.
I don't deny that ROTK was in its own way a bloated steaming pile of shit, and that leaving out the Scouring is worthy of Jackson being vilified until his dying day. TT had the Battle for Helm's Deep be some huge spectacle, where in the book it took about three pages. Elves show up there, for some reason. Dwarves get fucking tossed. Legolas takes leave of his senses and screams WE ALL GONNA DIE. Gimli, a 120-year-old dwarf, at one point tells 3000-year-old Legolas "Leave him be, lad." LAD. Think about that for a minute. That stupid fucking line made it past Fran, Philippa, and Peter, all three signed off on that absolute shit line. TT also has the meaningless added BS of Aragorn going over the cliff during a battle that, lo and behold, wasn't in the fucking book either. But he goes over just to give some tension and make Miranda Otto look forlorn for a bit when he doesn't return. Absolutely unnecessary for the Eowyn crush subplot. Look, all three movies drifted from the books in their own ways, so it all depends on what each of us thinks about how Jackson and Co. handled the source material - what they put in as much as what they left out. It's just that, to my mind, the most egregious crimes were perpetrated in TT, not ROTK. Plus, FOTR was such a pleasant surprise, (I was really hoping that Jackson wouldn't fuck it up the way Lynch absolutely murdered the awesome Dune source material), that we may have had our hopes up after we saw it. Then we get TT. Thud. So our expectations are tempered by the time ROTK comes along, and it's predictably mediocre. So maybe it's FOTR's fault for making TT look so lousy in comparison.
I agree with Jackson leaving the scouring of the shire out. It would have been cool to see from a bookfag’s perspective but for the movie it made no sense to continue past the destruction of the ring and fall of Sauron. the movie ended (almost) when it should have.
Do wish that Jackson put Grima killing Saruman at the top of Orthanc in the theatrical version instead of the extended DVD one.
Amazon has a $500 million budget for 2 seasons after acquiring the rights for $250 million. (Bezos looking straight out of Middle Earth in that pic)
I'm guessing Bezos is an enormous Tolkien fan and doesn't care too much about his ROI on this show. Though it will have huge amount of views.
Well, it's all about the choices that Jackson made and what kind of movie he wanted to make and story he wanted to tell. If he had cut down the bloated battle scenes (Oh, let's show Legolas being a bad-ass with a mumakil! Because we can!), he would have had time/viewers' mental energy to devote to the Scouring. But instead he decided to make a few high-production-value hours of battle and action, getting away from the character-driven elements that made the first movie such a pleasant surprise. And I think he did a disservice to Tolkien's story, since it is after all the hobbits' story - or at least a larger story seen through their eyes. And Tolkien felt that it was important to show that they not only experienced these things, but that they were changed by the experiences, they learned from them, and they put that learning to use when they needed to, on their own with no wizards elves or humans to help them, once they got home. Is that a bit anticlimactic? Perhaps, if you're an overgrown boy with a huge budget who wants to make an expensive grandiose war film instead of something a little more complex, sophisticated, and fulfilling. Maybe ROTK was worse than TT after all. It's like having to choose between Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones: there's just so much not to like in each of them.
Yeah but they would've made for boring movies if he'd followed the books to the letter. Really, watch the movies with the commentary on. They explain a lot of things. Like frodo's vision being their way of doing the savsack of the shire
I haven't seen the movies and only read 1.5 books but I read this entire thread just because the turbo nerd breakdowns like that throughout are entertaining
Not having the Scouring was pretty understandable...45 minutes of Sam and Frodo gently 69ing wasn’t a very good replacement though
Ps last night y'all had me interested talking about how Tolkien invented the genre and such so I was reading up on Wikipedia. They mention this guy George MacDonald as being Tolkien's main precursor. (Not saying Tolkien ripped him off or anything, just that he is one of the cornerstone guys of the fantasy genre). Anybody ever read anything by him? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_MacDonald
I don't really fw movies, especially really long ones, but reading the reactions to the Helms Deep battle ITT did make me intrigued