Viggo Mortensen has a bone to pick with “The Lord of the Rings” franchise. The actor, who played Aragorn in the three films, had a lot to say about the trilogy when interviewed by The Telegraph.
The actor said making the films was chaotic. “Anybody who says they knew it was going to be a success it was, I dont’ think it’s really true,” he said. “They didn’t have an inkling until they showed 20 minutes in Cannes, in May of 2001. They were in a lot of trouble and Peter had spent a lot.”
Mortensen went on to discuss some more about the making of the film. “Officially, he could say that he was finished in December 2000–he’d shot all three films in the trilogy–but really the second and third ones were a mess,” he said. “It was very sloppy–it just wasn’t done at all. It needed massive reshoots, which we did, year after year. But he would have nver been given the extra money to do those if they first one hadn’t been a success. The second and third ones would have been straight to video.”
The part of the interview that everyone is talking about, though is the part where Mortensen discusses director Peter Jackson’s use of technology (green screens, CGI and the like) in the films after the first “Lord of the Rings.”
“…Peter was always a geek in terms of technology but, once he had the means to do it, and the evolution of the technology really took off, he never looked back,” said Mortensen. “In the first movie, yes, there’s Rivendell and Mordor, but there’s sort of an organic quality to it, the actors acting with each other and with real landscpaes; it’s gritter. The second movie had already started ballooning for my taste, and then by the third one, there were a lot of special effects. It was grandiose[.]” Mortensen also said that whatever subtlety that was in the first film was erased in the second and third films. “Now with ‘The Hobbit,’ one and two, it’s like that to the power of 10,” he said.
You can read the full interview at The Telegraph. What do you think about Mortensen’s comments? Talk about it in the comments section below.
