Can a New LOTR Spin-off Reclaim the Magic? Dornan Becomes Aragorn
Can a New LOTR Spin-off Reclaim the Magic? Dornan Becomes Aragorn
Jamie Dornan steps into Aragorn as The Hunt for Gollum gears up, fueling debate over recapturing the original LOTR magic.
What made the Lord of the Rings trilogy so good? A quarter of a century after The Fellowship of the Ring hit cinemas, it often feels as if everyone’s still puzzling this out, like one of those Einstein theories that took decades for scientists to be able to prove correct. Peter Jackson’s JRR Tolkien adaptations seemed to do the impossible, transforming nerdish high fantasy into blockbuster fare that was both critically acclaimed and widely popular. Most every subsequent attempt to do the same – barring, perhaps, the front-loaded Game of Thrones phenomenon – has failed to bottle that same lightning. This is the big problem facing The Hunt for Gollum, a new film set in Jackson’s version of Middle Earth. Neither prequel nor sequel, the film squeezes itself into an ellipses in the original Fellowship, and focuses on the search for ring-obsessed wretch Gollum (Andy Serkis). Alongside Serkis, Sir Ian McKellen and Elijah Wood reprise the roles of Gandalf and Frodo respectively, while Lee Pace returns as his Hobbit trilogy character, Thranduil. The big news, though, is in those not returning: Aragorn, played definingly by Viggo Mortensen in the original trilogy, will now be portrayed by Fifty Shades of Grey’s Jamie Dornan. Responses to the news among the Lord of the Rings fandom have been, generally speaking, downbeat – less an indictment of Dornan’s talents than a reflection of just how much Mortensen brought to the role initially. To some extent, recasting a role like this is a doomed enterprise: just look at, say, Alden Ehrenreich, whose perfectly decent turn as Han Solo nonetheless sent droves of Star Wars fans at his throat for the crime of simply not being Harrison Ford. But in this case specifically, it’s a sign that The Hunt for Gollum’s makers (including Serkis, as director, and Jackson, as producer) have lost sight of what made the original Lord of the Rings trilogy tick. open image in gallery Aragorn but not forgotten: Viggo Mortensen
