I think he’s become—and I’ve said this to him—for as amazing as all of our actors are at embodying these characters, every single one of them, he’s one that reminds me, alongside Christopher Reeve, as just like ‘these are the characters.’ I think he’s a great actor, and I think he can do whatever he wants to do, but even when you look at his Twitter account and taking a stand on things, it’s like, ‘Is he becoming Captain America?’ – Kevin Feige
You know when someone comes at you over and over and over again, and they can’t hear you; they can’t see. You’re pleading with them, you’re trying to figure out how to get through to them and they just won’t accept it. And at some point, you just give in and you go “that’s right… that’s what you wanted.”
tom holland just posted a video on instagram like “I’m sorry that there’s no new news on the spiderman sequel but I just got the script I’m about to read it!!” and he held up the script and it said “spider-man: far from home” so yeah he just spoiled the spider-man sequel title while announcing he had no news on the spider-man sequel,, good job tom
viggo mortensen’s appeal as aragorn is 70% the voice, 25% the scene where the wild horse saves him from drowning, 12% hair, 8% ‘the beacons are lit!’, 3% swinging around the broken blade, 1.03% spitting soup back into the bowl on a windy day, .3% the way he speaks elvish (which mostly fits into the voice, but its elvish so its special), and .0004% when he kicks the orc head and screams
This is blatant “smoking a pipe with his hood on in Bree” and “shoving the double doors of helm’s deep open” erasure and I will not stand for it.
I think kicking the orc head deserves more than a fraction of a percent when you factor in that:
a) He wasn’t meant to kick the head but did it in the moment because he’s that *~extra~* and wears his feelings on the outside
b) In doing so he actually broke his foot
c) Rather than swearing his head off and calling for a medic, he fucking leaned into it and transformed his actual agony into performance, and that’s the take that’s in the movie
Yeah I’m p sure the only person more dedicated to the perfect embodiment of the world than Viggo was Christopher “That’s not actually what it sounds like when you stab a man in the back” Lee, and that’s a pretty impossible bar to top.
Honourable mention to Sir Ian ‘puttin’ the gay in’ McKellan, who made sure every passionate declaration of loyalty and handholding between Sam and Frodo actually got shown on screen. We thank him for his service.
viggo mortensen’s appeal as aragorn is 70% the voice, 25% the scene where the wild horse saves him from drowning, 12% hair, 8% ‘the beacons are lit!’, 3% swinging around the broken blade, 1.03% spitting soup back into the bowl on a windy day, .3% the way he speaks elvish (which mostly fits into the voice, but its elvish so its special), and .0004% when he kicks the orc head and screams
This is blatant “smoking a pipe with his hood on in Bree” and “shoving the double doors of helm’s deep open” erasure and I will not stand for it.
I think kicking the orc head deserves more than a fraction of a percent when you factor in that:
a) He wasn’t meant to kick the head but did it in the moment because he’s that *~extra~* and wears his feelings on the outside
b) In doing so he actually broke his foot
c) Rather than swearing his head off and calling for a medic, he fucking leaned into it and transformed his actual agony into performance, and that’s the take that’s in the movie
[Kevin Feige] did say to me recently—that when I walked out of that meeting—he said, “Well, we didn’t know whether you could really play Bucky Barnes, but we knew you could definitely play The Winter Soldier.”
Chadwick talking about his accent in Black Panther. CNET interview.
I love that actors think this deeply about their characters, and it matters so much, both for the performance, and for the people comsuming the media. Representation matters.
Okay I know we always go on about Marvel’s uncanny casting ability.
But if you thought they were the only ones, let me draw your attention to this man:
Viggo Mortensen, aka Aragorn son of Arathorn, aka Sexiest Ranger in Middle Earth
would hike, often for more than a day, to remote filming locations, in costume, for the sake of authenticity
was the best swordsman Bob Anderson (swordsmaster/instructor for LotR, Pirates of the Caribbean, etc) says he has ever trained
occasionally writes poetry (more book!canon than film!canon but um hello)
does all his own stunts
lived all over and speaks about 23940209384 languages
you know that scene at the end of Fellowship when he’s fighting the Uruk-hai? And one throws a dagger at him and he hits it away with his sword? Yeah, the guy who threw it was supposed to miss, but accidentally threw it directly at Viggo. Who just casually Aragorned and hit it away.
They actually cast Aragorn to play Aragorn
Can I just add a few things?
Would randomly give chocolates to the hobbits
According to John Rhys-Davis (aka Gimli), whenever you have a large cast, one or two actors will naturally become the leaders. Guess who ended up in that role.
Single-handedly convinced cast and crew to camp out to shoot a scene in the sunrise
Once hit a wild rabbit with his car by accident. Promptly stopped his car and went to see if the rabbit was dead, needed a vet or if the only merciful thing to do was to finish killing him. The rabbit was dead. Viggo realized he was hungry. So he took the rabbit, made a fire by the roadside and ate it.
According to cast and crew, sometimes you’d just see him disappear in the middle of the night and suddenly he’d come back with fish he’d caught
Had his sword with him at all times. Slept with once.
The best horse rider of the cast, hands down. Rides better than lots of pros, according to a horse trainer. Couldn’t bear to part with his horse at the end of the shooting, so he bough him. The next movie of his also involved horses, and he bought his horse in that one, too.
Knows how to survive in the wild. I’m not kidding.
Hand-stitched a few things in his costume for an authentic “I live away from civilization” Ranger feel. Also told the weapons department to make him a small bow because “Aragorn lives in the wild, he needs a hunting bow, or he’ll starve to death” – literally nobody else had thought about that. Also requested a small stone to sharpen his sword. Suggested that Aragorn would take Boromir’s arm guards after his death.
Speaking of hand-stitching, once he was touring Japan with a reporter for an article. Walked into a store, took a tshirt, bought it, cut off the print and hand-stitched it into the hat he was wearing. The reporter was going “?????????” the entire time.
Peter Jackson literally sometimes called him Aragorn by accident
• Came up with the tune for the Song of Lúthien that he sings in the Extended Edition.
• Not only was he the best swordsman Bob Anderson trained, prior to filming, he had absolutely no training WHATSOEVER.
• The fight on Weathertop was the first thing he filmed as Aragorn, with like a couple weeks of training, and he did in wonderfully.
• He and Sean Bean basically became brothers on the set, very much like how their characters came to consider each other brothers.
• He made friends with the stunt crew—who were almost entirely native Maori—by head butting them. It became so popular that it spawned the head-butting greeting between Balin and Dwalin in The Hobbit.
He grew so attached to his horse that he ended up adopting him and bringing him home to his ranch.
knitting in the dark 