The Lord of the Rings movies turn 25 this year, which has meant looking back at the franchise’s past. Those first three movies by Peter Jackson remain a towering achievement, one of the greatest feats of franchise filmmaking we’re ever likely to see. Even as technology has progressed, they haven’t aged a day, and hold up far better than many movies – including their own prequels – that have been released since and cost more to make.
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This is all important, because it’s the past that is informing the franchise’s future. Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens, the key creatives behind the movies, are returning to Middle-earth for The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, which will be directed by none other than Andy Serkis, who’ll also star. The story charts Gandalf and Aragorn’s search to find him before the dark forces of Sauron can do so, and was previously made into a fan film in 2009.
Alongside Serkis, it’s expected that Ian McKellen will be back as Gandalf, and that Elijah Wood will return as Frodo Baggins. One actor not expected to be back is Viggo Mortensen, with rumors that Leo Woodall is set to be cast as Aragorn instead, and that’s just one of several issues facing the movie.
Recasting Aragorn Will Probably Backfire
To be clear, Woodall is a very good actor. With his roles in the likes of The White Lotus, One Day, and Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy, he’s proved himself to be extremely charismatic and charming. There’s not much I’ve seen that screams Aragorn, but he’s an ascendent star and clearly has a lot of talent, so I don’t doubt he could do a good job in the role.
Will that matter? Probably not. Solo: A Star Wars Story is probably the closest parallel – a spinoff prequel focused away from the main character/story that fleshes them out in a way no one was really asking for – and while there were many reasons that bombed at the box office, recasting Han Solo was among them. Alden Ehrenreich was actually pretty great, and certainly deserved better, but wasn’t given a fair shake of things, and the movie had long seemed doomed to failure before it even released. The Hunt for Gollum feels rather similar.
Mortensen, of course, brought Aragorn, aka Strider, to life perfectly. It’s impossible to imagine anyone doing a better job (also, did you know he really broke his toe kicking a helmet in The Two Towers?). And while it’s more than fair if he doesn’t want to return – and, given the timeline, even that wouldn’t be a perfect fit – it does present several challenges.
This movie will be trying to recapture the magic of the original movies, without one of the stars who made it happen. And in doing that, it’s immediately setting itself up for failure, because it’s very easy to imagine the reaction to a recasting, should it be made official, being very negative.
The Hunt For Gollum Is A Muddled Nostalgia Play
The recasting of Aragorn also serves to make The Hunt for Gollum a whole lot weirder as a project. One of its selling points so far is the idea that it’s getting the band back together, both in front of and behind the camera. But to continue with the Solo comparison, it’s like recasting Han Solo, but then still having Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher as Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa, with George Lucas as a producer. It just doesn’t really make sense.
The alternative to that would be to recast everyone but, again, that seems unlikely to play well (and, given McKellen and Wood have all but confirmed their involvement, we’re beyond that point now anyway). And thus, the movie feels somewhat caught in a worst of both worlds scenario, where it’s difficult to see the appeal to a new generation, but the nostalgic, fan service sell is also undercooked, making it unclear who, exactly, this is for (other than a Warner Bros. that needs its biggest franchises to keep on going).
The Lord Of The Rings Franchise Has Seen Diminishing Returns
It is, admittedly, rather difficult to outdo one of the greatest movie trilogies ever made (again, see: Star Wars), but The Lord of the Rings franchise hasn’t even come close to those heights. The follow-up movies, The Hobbit trilogy, were commercially very successful, but received mostly middling reviews, and haven’t aged well.
The Rings of Power took the saga to TV, and through two seasons has proved divisive with viewers, and while it’s pulled in solid viewership, it hasn’t exactly taken the world by storm. On the big screen, the animated War of the Rohirrim was a box office bomb, making just over $20 million on a $30m budget, and getting the worst reviews in the franchise, with 49% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Where this once felt truly like event cinema, it’s now been reduced to feeling like just another franchise. And perhaps even worse, Middle-earth has been made to feel small, when it once felt so staggeringly vast and sweeping. Even The Rings of Power, despite being thousands of years earlier, is focused on some familiar characters and core franchise elements. The Hunt for Gollum only compounds that, because it’s a story-within-a-story, that brings several characters back. On the surface, it all looks rather thin.
It also, as it stands, faces a rather difficult life at the box office. The current plan has it coming out on December 17th, 2027, the same day as Avengers: Secret Wars. While that pre-Christmas window is tradition for the franchise, and worked for the original trilogy and The Hobbit, it’s certainly a risk to be going up such a major Marvel event (though its own performance will at least partially depend on how good Avengers: Doomsday is). That’s lessened if there’s a lot of confidence in the movie – e.g. Dune: Part Three opening against Doomsday – but if The Hunt for Gollum doesn’t make itself feel essential, it’s going to struggle.
Still, there are reasons to be optimistic. The creative team made magic once, so perhaps they can pull it off again. Serkis is phenomenal as Gollum, and there’s no reason that should change in terms of performance (though his track record as a director is less reassuring).
Likewise, it’s not as though McKellen and Wood are suddenly bad at their jobs. The addition of Kate Winslet to the cast adds even more acting prowess to the stacked cast. There’s no doubting that a lot of talent is involved, but sometimes, when it’s the wrong story, and/or made for the wrong reasons, that isn’t enough. Hopefully, The Hunt for Gollum is the return to Middle-earth that the franchise deserves, but it’s hard to be excited about it right now.
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