During a recent interview with The Playlist to promote the release of The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, on which she is a producer, Boyens reveals new details about The Hunt for Gollum. According to Boyens, Aragorn plays a part in the story, and conversations have been had with Mortensen about reprising his role. Whether he does, however, will depend on the script. Check out her comments below:
Honestly, that’s entirely going to be up to Viggo, collaboratively and we are at a very early stage. I’ve spoken to Viggo, Andy [Serkis] has spoken to him, Peter [Jackson] has spoken to him, we’ve all spoken to each other and honestly, I cannot imagine anyone else playing Aragorn, but it will be completely and entirely up to Viggo.I know Andy wants to work with him, but also, we don’t see this as like, using A.I. [technology], this is about a digital make-up, and whether Viggo does it or will entirely depends on how good the script is . And he doesn’t have a script yet. So to be fair to Viggo, let’s see if we write a good enough role and that he can find enough in it to see that it’s a performance he wants to take on. After that, it’ll be between Viggo and Andy of how that is achieved.
If Mortensen ultimately decides that he doesn’t want to return as Aragorn, Boyens stresses that they would still want him creatively on board in terms of choosing the next actor for that character:
I suspect if he decides he doesn’t want to do it we would still want him to be heavily involved , like how do we hand this character off. But literally that decision is several, several months away. He’s got to read the script first and that’s exactly what I’m going to be working on when I get out of this interview [laughs].
Yes, it’s deliberately the bridging film and the story we wanted to tell. It does center on Gollum/Smeagol, so it’s a little bit of an origin story going on, but when you delve into it, as you do with anything Professor Tolkien wrote, you see the layers and layers of story that’s underneath there and how interconnected they all are.
It is a tricky story, because the fate of several of the characters we already know, but you kind of then have to use that to your advantage as a storyteller.
What Mortensen’s Return Would Mean For The Hunt For Gollum
Serkis’ Lord Of The Rings Movie Faces Some Unique Challenges
Mortensen remains best known for his role as Aragorn, and he was a fan-favorite member of the Lord of the Rings cast. The last time he played the character, however, was more than 20 years ago, and he’s now 66 years old. It has long been uncertain exactly how Boyens, Jackson, Walsh, and Serkis would pull off telling a story set during The Fellowship of the Ring, and Boyens’ comment confirms that digitally de-aging actors is seemingly the plan, should they decide to return.
The Hunt for Gollum takes place just before Frodo leaves the Shire for Rivendell with a story seemingly following Aragorn and Gandalf as they track the titular creature down.
Ian McKellen, John Rhys-Davies, and Orlando Bloom have shared that they would be willing to reprise their roles as Gandalf, Gimli, and Legolas, respectively, for The Hunt for Gollum, but using older actors to play younger characters has had mixed results historically. In The Irishman, for example, Robert De Niro played a character in his 30s with the magic of CGI, but De Niro still moved and had the gait of a man in his 70s. The same issue was present in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny where an almost 80-year-old Harrison Ford played a 40ish-year-old Indy.
Mortensen isn’t as old as De Niro or Ford were when they were de-aged using CGI, but The Hunt for Gollum‘s “digital make-up” still has the potential to be distracting and immersion-breaking. These technological concerns are in addition to Boyens’ admission above regarding the inherent problem with prequels and the fact that most character fates are already known.
Our Take On Mortensen’s Potential Return As Aragorn In The Hunt For Gollum
Is Recasting The Better Option?
The Hunt for Gollum is, in many ways, an odd choice for a film given the challenges it faces due to its place in the Lord of the Rings timeline. Serkis has the impossible task of recreating and working within Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, which is widely considered one of the best fantasy adventures of all time.
While it would certainly be exciting to see Mortensen back as Aragorn, wonky de-aging has the potential to be disastrous. Recasting, too, comes with big challenges. Whether Mortensen returns or not, it certainly looks like The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum will be attempting to recapture the magic of the original trilogy, which is a massively high bar.
