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Notes -
It was a weird moment when I realized that the cancelled 1970s Boorman script was truer to Galadriel's character than RoP...
Ralph Bakshi, God bless him, and his 1978 rotoscoped first projected film in a trilogy (which never got made) was way truer to canon than the Bad Robot rejects' mess. He may have put Boromir in a horned helmet and Gondor Has No Pants, Gondor Needs No Pants, but at least the characters were still recognisably the originals, and we didn't get One Expression And That's Bitchface Midget I Demand To Speak To The Manager Girlboss.
The casting of Morfydd Clark is just - I don't know the actress, maybe she can act when not in this kind of horror, but she's tiny and this is who they picked for "should be at least 6 feet tall and maybe more, think Gwendoline Christie" part?
Gwendoline Christie - 6 feet 3 inches (191 cm)
Morfydd Clark - 5ft 3 ¾ (161.9 cm)
So they cast an actress who is an entire foot shorter than the character. Well, that's diversity for you, I guess!
In a masochistic way, I sort of want to see the second season, just to see if they can go even worse than the first one. What horrible mangling of the characters and the plot will they come up with? What new original BIPOC roles? Will Celebrimbor get to do anything this time round? Can they find an even worse granny bathrobe to dress him in?
I mean, Elendil's actor is also significantly shorter than the character, but in his case, that would have significantly limited the pool of options.
Still wish they'd done something with the occasional perspective trick as at least a nod to "Elendil the Tall".
If they cast a black ex-basketball player now broadening his options by going into acting, I think "Well we needed a guy to be seven foot tall like in canon" would have been acceptable to book nerds, as well as inclusively diversifying the cast, and the hypothetical actor couldn't have been much worse than the poor devil who is currently playing Elendil, being told to "stand in the corner while Galadriel and Miriel duke it out, oh and we're giving you a drippy useless son and an original daughter whose sole purpose is to have a weak sort of maybe-romance with Pharazon's original son".
Oh, and cry over horsie. I think even our basketball player could manage that. It's a pity, because he gives indications that he could do a good job if he was let do so, with some decent lines and not having to stand there and take it while both Galadriel and Miriel are bitchy to him.
I had a look for "tall male actors" and this is one list.
You need someone not too young and not too old and who can act at least a little bit. I think Skarsgard is a good option here, even if he's only 6 foot 4.
The problem is, the ones I have seen are probably too old or not suitable (I love Liam Neeson but he's past the age) and the ones I haven't seen, I have no idea if they're any good at all:
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Not in the least because he's been dead 20 years.
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