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Tevildo, Prince of Cats

Yeah, I remember something about that. Who was the original actor again? It's been forever since I've considered that aspect.

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I had to look it up, it was Stuart Townsend.

But yeah with how much Viggo invested into the character, especially watching the behind the scenes, was amazing!

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Top banner done by Thranduil.

Ah, I see. I think he could pull off the part with his looks but he is a little young. I still think Vigo looks the part better.

Personally I have not seen him act in any movies so I don't know what the would have acted like... but yeah.... as much as Vigo put into that role I can't imagine anyone else doing it that good. He went all out which was really cool. I loved the behind the scenes stuff and how he wore his sword into resturaunts to get used to it and all that stuff.

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Tevildo, Prince of Cats

Really? Seems like a hard performance to top! I do think of him as a very talented actor, though.

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I heard this fabulous conversation with him the other day: http://www.wnyc.org/story/htt-viggo-mortensen . It's also available as a podcast.

He's such a private person, I don't think I've ever heard him speak for so long. It's lovely to get to know him better.

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Tevildo, Prince of Cats

Ditto!

He always was one of my favorite actors.

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Hanasian
Annalist, Physician, & Historian
of The Black Company of the Dúnedain,
The Free Company of Arnor
~ ~ ~
Durian: Dúnedain Ranger of the North: Rhudaurian Lineage
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Roleplay Repository

I knew most of this stuff but it just impresses me every time I read this stuff.

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I have no issue whatsoever with Viggo Mortensen. But I don’t see him as being ideal physically (and that includes facially) for the role of Aragorn (Stuart Townsend, whom I saw in his performance of Dorian Gray in “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” seems even less ideal to me). I’ve racked my brain about which actor that I know would fit Ralph Bakshi’s cartoon rendering of Aragorn, and the best I can do to date seems to be Liam Neeson. He may not be just under the 6’6” like I imagine Aragorn to be, but especially his performance in “Batman Begins” puts him in the current lead (pending unlikely discoveries on my side, with my ignorance of movies post RoTK). “Cool” in the original sense. Restrained. But when it comes to it (displaying a “not amused” persona when needed) it should scare the s**t out of friend and foe near him – Éomer and the Rohirrim meeting him in TTT, for example.

Now we come to the very serious issues I do have with somebody – he got so much right, how could he so thoroughly screw up on issues that are utterly not secondary to the book? Why does he seem to feel this sick need to wimpify almost every character opposed to Sauron??? Aragorn wrenching the Orthanc Palantir from Sauron – correct description? Think Gandalf poking decrepit Théoden on the forehead with his staff, result: Saruman crashing to the ground on his back with a very serious lump on his forehead! Gandalf THE WHITE on Shadowfax facing the Witch-king – the latter gets distracted by the Horns of the Rohirrim, otherwise he would have been annihilated – Gandalf was ALSO not a man, and Shadowfax would have kicked the Fell Beast into the east way beyond Mordor (I exaggerate minutely). The totally junkie zombie he portrayed Frodo as … The Ents including Fangorn are such pathetic morons that they have not noticed what Saruman has been up to on their borders, and thus instantly revise a decision (totally wrong as per the books) that they took some days arriving at? Faramir such a brain-dead, pathetic wimp??? (Faramir was wiser than his father Denethor by far …). And then out of his here extremely perverse, sick little mind, “giving Gollum his little [I forget]”, and basically turning the entire LoTR on its head, that Frodo needs Sam, and Sam wil never, ever, abandon Frodo ... Sam killing Gollum would have been much more believable here ...

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I have to admit but Liam Neeson as Aragorn is about the only acceptable option I have heard other than Vigo. I myself only saw the cartoons once when i was very young ao I base little to nothing of my LoTR expectations off of that. But you are correct that Liam's performance in batman begins was an outstanding performance and I was highly impressed with it.

As for the other tid bits, I do wish PJ had stuck closer to the books in many cases. All in all, I guess I'm not a pure pureist nor am i a total movie fan. I love the written works but I feel like PJ did a very good job with LOTR over all. Yes, there are several things I wiah would have been better "Book aligned" but I can hardly imagine anyone else doing a much better job to be honest.

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To put it another way probably anyone else would have done a worse job (more Hollywood-brainwashed, and I’m not even going to start commenting on Disney), but in the EE, for example Tom Shippey (and others) commented; had PJ just read Shippey’s books and understood them, brain-dead moronity should have been seriously reduced. But maybe PJ’s background in splatter and comedy / horror movies had deformed him too much towards the “funny” baddie side to keep out this garbage from the LoTR, being of an entirely different sensibility.

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I gotcha.

And yeah, I honestly have never seen any other film by PJ so I have no idea his film history but it does seem odd to go from that to LOTR

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Erm – as this is a Viggo thread, I’ll move my reply as to PJ’s other moviemaking activities to Movie Discussion >> New Zealand (Miscellaneous Movie Discussion) >> PJ's other movies (new thread).

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