Highlights
- Fans of Lord of the Rings will be excited to see a familiar sword make an appearance in Viggo Mortensen’s new project.
- Mortensen, known for his role as Aragorn, used the iconic Anduril sword in a fantasy scene in his independent western film.
- The enduring popularity of the sword showcases the potential for new Lord of the Rings projects on the horizon.
While there’s a lot of Lord of the Rings content coming from multiple sources, fans of the franchise can see one iconic item from the highly celebrated Lord of the Rings trilogy in an upcoming project that might surprise some.
The Lord of the Rings franchise is the Dragonball of the fantasy genre, with the original Lord of the Rings trilogy of books and other related works by the venerable J.R.R. Tolkien earning worldwide acclaim from literary critics and fans alike. This prestige would make its way to the mainstream when film director Peter Jackson adapted the mainline Lord of the Rings book into an equally well-acclaimed trilogy of films, followed almost a decade later by another trilogy adapting The Hobbit. In addition to directing, Jackson would also write and produce all six films in the trilogy, cementing himself as a legendary filmmaker, with the only notable criticism of his LOTR adaptations coming from Tolkien’s son Christopher. The franchise’s praise was equally directed at the cast, all of whom put on sterling performances.
One of the most notable members of that ensemble is Viggo Mortensen, who played Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and shone in the role that is now synonymous with him. Now, a recent move by the actor has taken this a step further. In an interview with GQ concerning his independent western The Dead Don’t Hurt, a passion project that Mortensen wrote, directed, produced, and starred in, the Lord of the Rings star revealed that he had brought a small piece of Middle Earth into the wild west in the form of Anduril, the iconic sword Aragorn wielded in the films that represented the lineage of the Kings of Gondor. The actual sword seen in the original trilogy, a gift Jackson gave to the actor at the end of filming his LOTR trilogy, makes an appearance in a fantasy scene within The Dead Don’t Hurt. The move is one that Mortensen says came about as an accident but with full endorsement from Jackson himself.
We had everything for this sequence with a knight. We had found this great, spirited horse, the right kind of saddle, and we made a medieval kind of blanket, and we had the costume for the knight. Everything was right, and then I said, well, we should have a sword. And I did look and there were some good ones and I thought, well, it might be kind of good to use this one that I had because it’s really good. But I knew I would have to ask permission because I’m sure somebody would notice it, even if you only see it for a few seconds, it’s not really essential to the scene and certainly not to the movie, it’s just something in passing that you either see or you don’t.
So I did ask Peter Jackson if he’d be all right with it, and he said, “Well, is it very important in the story?” I said, no, it’s not, actually. You hardly notice it, but somebody will, probably. He said it was okay with him but that I should ask the movie company. So I contacted them and they were fine with it. They realized it wasn’t essential, it wasn’t going to draw a lot of attention to itself. And they were very nice about it, and they gave us permission. That’s why we did it, just because it seemed right. It was kind of a last-minute accident.
The staying power of the prop from the original film is a testament to the powder keg of interest still waiting to be fully unleashed by the right Lord of the Rings project, and Warner Bros. seems to be ready to take up that offer. The company greenlit two new projects in collaboration with New Line, with Jackson and other franchise returnees set to oversee and produce the new films. The inclusion of Jackson, who was ghosted by the producers of Lord of the Rings:The Rings of Power during the show’s initial production, has lent the project a large amount of legitimacy in the eyes of fans, and could be the difference between capturing the same magic he did on his original LOTR adaptations and the divisive experimentation seen in Amazon’s show.
All in all, this was a nice easter egg for fans, as the sword and its master have retained a shocking amount of popularity over the years, Aragorn is possibly the most prominent of the characters fans want to see in Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, a prospect that Mortensen hasn’t said no to just yet. Whether or not the star joins in and fans get to see Anudril in its rightful franchise still remains to be seen.
The Lord of the Rings franchise is available to stream on Max and Amazon Prime Video.
Source: GQ
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