Why the Lord of the Rings Fired Aragorn

this is stuart townsend in 1999 he was cast to play aragorn in peter jackson's lord of the rings trilogy and once those films blew up and became a huge success he was catapulted to global stardom his face was everywhere from posters and tv press tours to tabletop miniatures and a surprisingly decent video game on the playstation 2. he became a household name known for playing one of the most iconic on-screen heroes of all time okay so if that bad photoshop work wasn't enough to tip you off and you're panicking right now thinking the mandela effect has just activated this was not what actually happened or at least the last part wasn't you see stuart townsend was cast as aragon he even flew out to new zealand and spent two months preparing to play the part we came very close to living in this reality where the image of a cultural icon was completely different where the quotes that people use so often came from a different voice where viggo mortensen breaking his toes kicking that helmet never became immune today we're going to explore the story of how we ended up in our current timeline by looking at how things went wrong with this version of aragon and how that eventually led to things going very right for the lord of the rings films adapting the character of aragon for a film series wasn't a straightforward task in the books he comes across as an archetype the stoic warrior he needed a character arc and the writers came up with the idea of him starting his journey unsure of himself and progressing from there that led jackson to choose stuart townsend he'd liked his previous work and he saw a natural intensity in townsend's acting that he thought would work well for the role but there was a problem he was young too young according to newline cinema and as much as we all usually like to support bold creative decisions against the meddling studio executives it's easy to see where they were coming from here aragorn's new character arc was about him becoming a king a leader who commands the respect of everyone around him townsend was 27 years old at the time but looked even younger than that and it's much harder to present someone with such a youthful appearance as a convincing leader it's kind of irrational but age does lend someone a sense of gravitas imagine a much younger aragorn doing things like convincing ferdin to send aid to gondor getting the ghosts to fight for him or rallying his men by shouting about the fear that would take the heart of him the studio was so concerned about this that they demanded a screen test so they flew him out to new zealand put him in a makeshift costume and added bits of grey to his hair in a futile attempt to disguise his age they also built temporary sets and since none of the other actors had even arrived yet hired local standards to play all the other parts this would end up being the only footage he ever shot for these films and it's never been seen by anyone outside of the production although it definitely still exists because peter jackson is kind of a compulsive hoarder who keeps everything during the months of preparation before filming started townsend came across as being miserable to the point where ian mckellen once saw his expression and asked him if he even wanted to be in this film he had somehow gotten wind of the fact that people thought he was too young for the role perhaps from that screen test that nobody else had to do and it affected his behavior as though he was starting to believe it himself self-doubt can lead people towards self-sabotage and according to peter jackson that's what happened to townsend he just decided that he wasn't going to train or rehearse with everyone else and the training that these actors were supposed to be doing was serious business for films like this they needed to be capable of horse riding canoeing archery axe tossing and sword fighting they even had this sword trainer that was a legend in the film industry he trained actors in films like star wars and highlander but rather than take advantage of that opportunity townsend was like nah i'll just wing it on the day of the shoot for him the day of the shoot would never arrive it was the second day of filming when peter jackson made his decision as he shot close-ups of the hobbits hiding from a ring reef under the roots of a tree jackson turned away from the monitor frozen on the image of a spider on mary's shoulder and said i don't think i can work with stuart and that was that now this was pretty horrible for townsend this wasn't like being fired from another film because out there in new zealand it was like its own little world this was the kind of job that takes over your entire life these actors were out there a long time and they developed significant friendships with each other celebrating birthdays together and going out to pubs and dinners all the time he understandably was not at all happy with the production team for their decision but he saw these friendships that he built with the other actors as the main positive thing to come out of the experience once he was gone they needed a replacement fast within days because they were already shooting the scene in the prancing pony when sam says to frodo that fellow has done nothing but stare at you since we've arrived sean astin was actually looking at an empty corner of the room where a mysterious hooded figure was supposed to be sitting well he was actually even more mysterious at the time they were filming it because nobody had any idea who it would be three people were considered russell crowe jason patrick and viggo mortensen russell crowe had just filmed gladiator and he didn't want to take on a project that he saw as too similar immediately afterwards it quickly got narrowed down to viggo mortensen who was a uniquely perfect choice for the character because he was an outdoorsman in real life who like to ride horses fish sleep beneath the stars and generally stay apart from civilization and from hollywood for months at a time he was also very familiar with the folklore that inspired the lord of the rings in the first place while discussing the character over the phone he started talking about the icelandic saga fallen dark fifa some people thought there would be an issue with the age gap between him and liv tyler the actress set to play arwen since she was initially cast to match town's end in age though they quickly came to the obvious conclusion that in universe it was no problem at all he is a numenorean with a very long lifespan and she is an elf who is thousands of years old vigo got off the plane got thrown into stewart's costume and got straight to work with very little time to prepare first was the scene in the prancing pony where jackson says he hadn't gotten aragorn down yet try re-watching that scene with this context and you'll probably see what he means by that but then they filmed the fight against the ring waves at weathertop and this time vigo was wielding his sword like a natural throwing fire into the camera lens and completely embodying the character at that time everyone knew they'd got this vigo had gotten into the role to an extreme extent going on to do things like using actual metal swords instead of the light of prop blades and charging off on his horse into a field full of live explosives used for military testing because he had lost himself completely in the character this dedication really paid off making the films even more special this story just really shows the lightning-in-a-bottle nature of the lord of the rings and of creativity in general whenever you're doing something that requires multiple moving parts to come together at some point you just have to throw the dice in the air making mistakes along the way and as we see here sometimes those mistakes can lead to something even better than what you originally intended

Channel: Legend Loop

Views: 503,493

Rating: 4.870739 out of 5

Keywords: Aragorn, Lord of the rings, the lord of the rings, Aragron fired, why they fired aragorn, first aragorn actor, peter jackson, stuart townsend, lord of the rings films, making of the lord of the rings, making of lord of the rings, Viggo Mortensen

Id: DHvTT2TrR1M

Length: 8min 32sec (512 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 12 2021