There was something I meant to add to the last bit I wrote about the mistake with this Rings of Powers series, and all bad big budget fantasy, in not having recognisable actors with gravitas. I thought about the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings films, why they were such a big deal at the time, why they worked.
I thought about the actors - McKellen, Mortensen, Serkis, Bean, Blanchett, Holm etc etc they knew what they were doing with casting. But. I really thought, you know, Elijah Wood didn't/doesn't get enough praise for that.
He never won or was nominated for any major acting awards, and the whole thing hangs on him. As the Rings of Power show with these Harfoots, you can go really wrong. The other Hobbit actors - Sean Astin, Dominic Monaghan, Billy Boyd - they're all basically light relief. Elijah Wood needs to play a real film hero who audiences massively invest it in from the start, for adults, for kids, for diehard Tolkien fans.
The whole thing could have fallen at the first hurdle, for all the stunning visuals and grandeur, if they'd miscast Frodo. He's really really good in it. In a nine hour film, most of the way through. Has to display a lot more complicated emotions than anybody else in the films.
Anyway, that's all. It got me thinking about other great undersung performances of our time. Jack Black in School of Rock. Should have won all the Oscars. Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand in Burn After Reading. Steve Coogan in Philomena. Bob Hoskins in TLGFriday (not sure that's so undersung or "of our time", but still, one of the greatest acting perforances of all time ...
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