Tag: lotr trivia

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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

They tried to give the role to Nicolas Cage first, though.

Ooh ooh I’ve got some:

• Once nearly got arrested because he was walking down the street after rehearsal practicing sword moves and someone called the cops on him
• Broke his toe during filming and the result is onscreen because he just rolled with it 
• Spent the whole running montage at the beginning of TTT running with a broken toe
• Also broke a tooth off while filming Helm’s Deep and legit tried to just stick it back into his mouth and keep going but the crew dragged him to a dentist over lunch break. in costume. 
• liked to take photographs and put them around his mirror in his trailer, by the end of the shoot there was no mirror left
• insisted on filming the scene with Aragorn floating down the river in TTT himself, almost drowned doing it
• also, IIRC, bought a horse for another person (I think it was Liv Tyler’s riding double?) after filming because she got super attached to it too 
• takes the piss out of Orlando Bloom on the special features for going on about his broken rib too much and it’s completely glorious

• had much less training (sword and the rest) than the others because he was cast late (i think he came in and had just a few weeks of training instead of months) (for the cast thing, they had cast someone too young at first and then cast him)
• didn’t know LOTR, his son had read the book and told him to go for it