Category: Actors

Aragorn- A Terrible, Dark Lord

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Q: “Why did Legolas and Gimli elude to the fact that Aragorn may have become a terrible lord had he gotten the ring in the Return of the King? Because isn’t he still just a mortal man?”

A: Being immortal or mortal is a detail of little value in itself to decide the power of individuals. Aragorn was more powerful than most Elves; that doesn’t mean much.”

Of course, being immortal or indefinitely long-lived is essential to achieving experience and memory, and if wise of enough wisdom, But in terms of power, not much, for the Tolkien universe follows a reverse scaling; everything is more powerful in the past.

In Aragorn’s case, he was not just a physically powerful Man; he also had great strength of will (and possibly of character as well).

The weakness of the one Ring, besides the possibility of its destruction (but that would have the same effect on Sauron), was that if someone was heroic and powerful enough, that person could challenge Sauron. Of course, challenging the Dark Lord doesn’t necessarily mean fighting the Dark Lord personally using the ring, which even the High Elves could not do. Gandalf could, but the outcome would still be uncertain.

However, the Ring conferred power over minds — the chief reason for its making. If someone used the Ring for this purpose, and Aragorn was strong enough in body and mind to do so, he could I) Build arms and engines of war and possibly II) Control Sauron’s servants and works and use them to usurp his place or even throw him down.

This would be the strategy of the High Elves, the same one Sauron adopted himself.

In any case, Elrond or Galadriel would have proceeded in the policy now adopted by Sauron: they would have built up an empire with great and subservient generals and armies and engines of war until they could challenge Sauron and destroy him by force.

Using the ring for this purpose required more than power; it also needed charisma and oratory skills, the art of influencing people, and the Ring empowered any natural skill to the point where it became magic.

Aragorn was already a commanding figure, so Legolas and Gimli figured he would be a terrible Dark Lord. He was able to command the Army of the Dead without the One Ring, with the power of his figure and the help of the Oath.

In the uplands of Lamedon, they overtook our horses and swept around us. They would have passed us by if Aragorn had not forbidden them. ‘At his command, they fell back. “Even the shades of Men are obedient to his will,” I thought. “They may serve his needs yet!”

That was great willpower, and with the Ring, Aragorn would be an immensely more persuasive and terrifying commanding figure. And if mortality is an issue no more, as the Ring technically guarantees “immortality” in addition to increasing Aragorn’s powers so that he would have become a kind of wraith-lord — exceedingly scary and possibly more terrifying then the Witch King of Angmar, see Frodo near Sammath Naur as a small example than Aragorn would have become.

“Strange indeed,” said Legolas. “In that hour, I looked on Aragorn and thought how great and terrible a Lord he might have become in the strength of his will had he taken the Ring to himself. Not for naught does Mordor fear him. But nobler is his spirit than the understanding of Sauron, for is he not of the children of Lúthien? Never shall that line fail, though the years may lengthen beyond count.”

Tears in rain

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I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off (the) shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) — Blade Runner

Ruter didn’t like the original version of the monologue that director Ridley Scott wrote

I’ve known adventures, seen places you people will never see, I’ve been Offworld and back… frontiers! I’ve stood on the back deck of a blinker bound for the Plutition Camps with sweat in my eyes watching stars fight on the shoulder of Orion… I’ve felt wind in my hair, riding test boats off the black galaxies and seen an attack fleet burn like a match and disappear. I’ve seen it, felt it…!

Early David Peoples Draft

I’ve seen things… seen things you little people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion bright as magnesium… I rode on the back decks of a blinker and watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments… they’ll be gone.

Ridley Scott’s final draft before Hauer’s changes

Mad Dog Killer

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Why did Private Pyle kill himself in Full Metal Jacket?

In what’s probably the most misunderstood in the film, Pvt. Pyle kills himself and Gunnery Sergeant because he’s a slow, dimwitted, and unstable man who has fully internalized all of his training and indoctrination.

He has taken Hartman’s demands that he become a killer with a hard heart and a pure killer instinct and acts on them. The first time we meet Pyle, it’s evident that he is slow and dimwitted. Rather than seeing him as trainable, Hartman immediately switches to violence to force him into obedience and compliance.

Unlike the other Marine recruits in his platoon, he’s too slow to know better and too simple to deal with the indoctrination. Pvt. Leonard Lawrence, a/k/a Gomer Pyle, or Private Pyle, is profoundly disturbed and of subnormal intelligence even when he arrives. He believes everything he is told, absolutely literally, including the Marine Rifle Creed (see below), unfortunately. Pyle is then massively traumatized by everything that has happened to him, becomes severely depressed, and eventually becomes dangerously suicidal. Pyle’s instability leads him to murder his superior and kill himself.

By the way, the subtext of the novel ‘Short-Timers’ and the film ‘Full Metal Jacket,’ based on that novel, is the genuine “Project 100,000.” This was a 1960s policy in which those with developmental disabilities, subnormal intelligence, severe personality disorders, etc., who would have previously been deemed unfit to serve, were drafted into service.

(Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, the architect of Project 100,000. This project was a massive failure. The men who went through it had great difficulty following even the most straightforward orders, got themselves and their fellow sailors, soldiers, airmen, and Marines killed, and ended up living worse lives after the military than they had before – and despite veterans sometimes suffering effects from combat, the overwhelming majority live far better lives as a result of their time in the military.

Pyle is a classic case of a Project 100,000 recruit. He has an IQ south of 80; for context, an IQ of 80 is borderline deficient/low average. In the day, he would have been labeled ‘retarded’; today, we might have labeled him as having Asperger’s. He’s clearly on the spectrum and has a touch of the ’tism. Given his situation and the timeframe in which the story takes place, this has also made him very unstable. Pyle finds his match in a violent and sadistic Senior Drill Instructor (SDI), Gunnery Sergeant Hartman.

Hartman is incapable of training Pyle and never really tries that hard. He beats, mocks, and abuses Pyle relentlessly—these continued attempts to torment Pyle into compliance drives Pyle into a deeply suggestible state.

Hartman is beating a puppy, not realizing that beaten puppies grow up to be vicious dogs.

It should go without saying, but getting smacked around is not training. And taking this kind of abuse is not suitable for anyone, let alone someone like Pyle. No wonder then that he turns into a mad dog killer. Pyle, in the face of this unrelenting abuse and quite literally believing everything he is being told by his peers and by Hartman, becomes increasingly dangerous.

While this harsh training might be perfectly acceptable for regular Marines expected to face combat in relatively short order, one needs to understand that regular Marines have normal intellects. Some are even above average. This bar of average or above-average IQ is basically a necessity. Dumb Marines wouldn’t last long in combat, and the Marine Corps is exceptional about weeding out people of low intelligence and serious mental issues, no matter what sailors, soldiers, and even some Marines might say.

However, during Project 100,000, the Marines were stuck with men like Pyle, and this harsh training ratchets Pyle and other low-IQ soldiers up and makes them increasingly unstable. He begins to show genuine signs of severe mental instability, including talking to his rifle.

Unfortunately, these warning signs are also ignored because training during Vietnam wasn’t just harsh; it was also rushed. They needed men on the line fast, so corners were cut, and problem cases were ignored.
The USMC’s low standards during Prohect 100,000 is how Hartman gets away with all the violence against his men. Neither before nor after Vietnam was this tolerated – in fact, it’s a crime for a DI to assault his men. But it was put up with during Vietnam because, again, even the worst DI was better than no DI when you’re rushing civilians into combat.

Finally, Hartman decides using the memory of a Presidential assassin and a mass murderer is an excellent way to motivate men at the shooting range.

This would never have been an acceptable teaching method. Ever.

R. Lee Ermey, himself a Marine SDI in the mid-1960s, described Hartman as “a complete psycho” for many reasons. He hated the character and admitted he was made physically ill by delivering this dialogue about the assassination of JFK and the mass murder committed by Charles Whitman as good things done by former Marines.

No Marine Drill Instructor, even at the height of Vietnam, would have ever done so.

Filming this scene made R Lee Ermey want to vomit. I’m not joking. He insisted simply delivering these lines made him physically ill. After Hartman essentially condones a criminal conspiracy within his ranks to assault Pyle (blanket parties, though they do happen, are HIGHLY illegal; see Code Red and A Few Good Men for another example), Pyle finally changes his behavior and begins to comply, but by then, the total damage has been done, Pyle has already totally committed to his path of murder and suicide.

Ultimately, Pyle murders Hartman and kills himself.

“THIS IS MY RIFLE.
THERE ARE MANY LIKE IT BUT THIS ONE’S MINE.
MY RIFLE IS MY BEST FRIEND.
IT IS MY LIFE.
I MUST MASTER IT AS I MUST MASTER MY LIFE.
WITHOUT ME, MY RIFLE IS USELESS.
WITHOUT MY RIFLE, I AM USELESS.
I MUST FIRE MY RIFLE TRUE.
I MUST SHOOT STRAIGHTER THAN MY ENEMY WHO IS TRYING TO KILL ME.
I MUST SHOOT HIM BEFORE HE SHOOTS ME.
I WILL!
BEFORE GOD, I SWEAR THIS CREED.
MY RIFLE AND MYSELF ARE DEFENDERS OF MY COUNTRY.
WE ARE THE MASTERS OF OUR ENEMY.
WE ARE THE SURVIVORS OF MY LIFE.
SO BE IT, UNTIL THERE IS NO ENEMY, BUT PEACE.
AMEN!”

— USMC Rifleman’s Creed, Maj. Gen. William H Rupertus. 1907–1910 (National Guard), 1913–1945 (USMC 4th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division).

It’s all in Tommy’s head.

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What is the most expansive fictional universe ever created?

The Tommy Westphall Universe. A long time ago, in a fabled era known as the ’80s, there was a TV show called St. Elsewhere. It was about a run-down teaching hospital named St. Eligius in Boston and the doctors who worked there. Dr. Donald Westphall was the director of medicine, a widower who raised his two children by himself. One of those children was his autistic son Tommy. Tommy only appeared in fifteen episodes of the series. St. Elsewhere ran for six seasons and won eleven Emmys, but all anyone cares about today is its final episode. In the final scene of the final episode, Tommy Westphall holds a snow globe that reveals the building of St. Eligius inside it. And his father, who is not a doctor, comes in and says the following:

I don’t understand this autism thing, Pop. Here’s my son; I talk to him; I don’t even know if he can hear me. He sits in his world all day long, staring at that toy. What’s he thinking about?

The entire six seasons of St. Elsewhere were, in fact, a child’s daydream while looking at a snow globe.

Here’s where things get a little complicated. The character Dr. Roxanne Turner from St. Elsewhere appeared in an episode of Homicide: Life on the Street, where authorities accused her of murder. But if Dr. Turner was just a creation of Tommy, how could she possibly be on Homicide? Unless Homicide was also Tommy’s daydream. There is an episode of St. Elsewhere where the doctors of St. Eligius decide to go out for a few drinks at a local Boston bar. That bar is Cheers, the titular bar from the sitcom Cheers. So, Cheers, and Frasier are again products of Tommy’s imagination.

Detective John Munch was a character played by Richard Belzer, who starred in Homicide: Life on the Street, which we know never existed. After the cancellation of Homicide, the character was moved to Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. Detective Munch also appears in The Wire, The X-Files, and Arrested Development. So, Tommy Westphall had to create all those shows.

Cheers spun off Frasier, who crossed over with Caroline in the City, with Friends, who shared a character with Mad About You, who crossed over with Seinfeld. In a few centuries, the world of Buffy the Vampire Slayer will be Star Trek, but its distant past (sorry, spoilers) is the reboot of Battlestar Galactica. Doctor Who is canonically taking place in the same universe as I Love Lucy, Hannah Montana, Grey’s Anatomy, and All My Children.

All of it is the creation of one child, which probably explains the continuity errors. For example, no one acknowledges the zombie outbreak in Georgia in The Walking Dead, which is happening at the exact same time as It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Arrow.

If you map everything out, there are at least 419 shows that are in the same continuity with each other and canonically the creation of Tommy Westphall.

The first person to propose the Tommy Westphall Universe was legendary writer Dwayne McDuffie in a blog post criticizing comic book continuity. It was about just how silly it was to try to fit vast and mutually incoherent works all into the same rigid continuity. But he was kind of onto something with that whole Tommy Westphall stuff. They did all crossover with each other.

By the way, the Collector in Guardians of the Galaxy has Tobias Fünke on his ship, which means Tommy Westphall is responsible for the MCU.

Cmdr Annorax – The Krenim Imperium

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Which villain’s backstory was the most understandable for them to become a villain in Star Trek?
I’ll nominate Annorax from Voyager’s two-part “Year of Hell.”

Annorax was a temporal scientist working for the declining Krenim Imperium. He developed a ship with a temporal weapon that, when fired, completely removed an object from the timeline, changing history so that it had never existed. Only ships with temporal shields like his would even remember the old timeline.

The Krenim fired this weapon against a rival species, erasing them from the timeline and briefly restoring the Krenim Imperium to its former glory.

Interbreeding with that species turned out to have made the Krenim immune to a deadly plague that began to run rampant throughout the empire. To correct the error, he fired again and restored almost the entire empire—except for his home colony and his beloved wife.

Annorax, never aging inside his shielded ship, spent the next two centuries rewriting the timeline to restore his wife. Each time he fired that terrible weapon, his species’ fortunes would rise and fall, but the fate of Annorax’s home and wife was never restored.

Through a large portion of the two-parter, Annorax is barely aware of Voyager; the restored Krenim Imperium is simply battering our heroes. Eventually, Voyager develops temporal shields like Annorax’s to protect themselves from Krenim torpedoes, and these shields disastrously disrupt Annorax’s subsequent firing. Annorax sets out to track down Voyager and remove it from the equation; although the ship escapes, he manages to abduct Chakotay and Paris. But he’s impressed by Chakotay, and together, they devise a way to alter history—without additional deaths—so that Voyager never encounters the Krenim in the first place.

With Chakotay’s approval, Paris provokes a mutiny that drops the temporal shields, allowing Voyager to attack and trigger a weapon overload that erases the ship from history. Commander Annorax is finally restored to his home with his wife, and he never decides to build the ship. Following the advice of a less aggressive Krenim patrol ship, Voyager slightly alters its course, unaware of the timeline it had averted.

Annorax stands out as a villain with very relatable motivations. He was not trying to exterminate all life or take over the galaxy; all he wanted to do was restore what he and his species had lost. He was the hero of his own story—always the mark of a great villain.

Flash Gordon (1980)

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In what Hollywood movie does the headliner get upstaged by another actor? How so?

Flash Gordon – (1980) is a film that featured Sam J. Jones as the main star of the film. While every actor pretty much mugged and winked their way through this one, creating one of the most overacted films ever (Gordon’s ALIVE?!), Jones, as Flash, definitely tried his best to give a straight and serious performance. Only to be given a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actor for his trouble.

Ming The Merciless was played by the reliably excellent Max Von Sydow, known for playing Jesus Christ in the film The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), as well as starring in The Exorcist (1973) and Three Days of the Condor (1975).

Behind the scenes, Jones and the movie producer, Dino De Laurentiis, clashed over what Gordon’s personality should be. De Laurentiis wanted him to be Ham Fest central and humorous, while Jones wanted to play the character much like how Adam West played Batman in the 1960s — seriously. It was an authentic tug of war and power struggle between the two. Things got so bad that Jones took his ball and went home just before post-production, which would result in much of his dialogue for the film being dubbed over by professional voice and dramatic actor Peter Marinker, whose identity was unknown, even to the main draw of the film Jones.

But Von Sydow, the master of actor gravitas and versatility, a man who played both Jesus and Satan, helped carry more than his part of the load in this film with his over-the-top evil performance. He was the epitome of the 1980s cheesy bad guy. With a stereotypical line such as, while referring to his nemesis:

“‘Ahhh…now my victory is complete. With Flash Gordon dead, nothing can stop me from conquering the universe!’

But somehow, the guy made the line and the character work. Von Sydow’s contribution was the best and most exciting performance in a movie filled with most of the characters hamming it up.

What was also cool about this movie is that Queen did the entire soundtrack. It was the rock band’s first of two soundtracks that they ever recorded.

Who’s got a clue!

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What well-known movies were “stolen” by a great performance from a supporting actor?

The Butler did it!

Anybody who has ever seen the movie Clue knows that the producers paid big dollars to assemble an A-grade ensemble of the finest comedic actors of the time.

Look at that cast! Michael McKean, Martin Mull, Lesley Ann Warren, Christopher Lloyd, Eileen Brennan, and Madeline Kahn. Some of the best ensemble comedic performers of the 1980s. Christopher Lloyd was at his Back to the Future peak. Michael McKean had just come off of Spinal Tap. And Madeline Kahn was still killing it in every Mel Brooks movie.

Yet, who stole every scene he was in from every one of these comic stars? Some little-known character actor, best known for vamping in a corset in a midnight cult film, The Rocky Horror Picture Show:

Tim Curry plays Wadsworth, the Butler. This was the first major film in which he showcased his comedic side, and he just killed it!

If you have ever seen Clue, try not to chuckle in recalling:

  • Colonel Mustard: Is this place for you?
  • Wadsworth: Indeed, no, sir. I’m merely a humble butler.
  • Colonel Mustard: What exactly do you do?
  • Wadsworth: I buttle, sir.
  • Wadsworth: I suggest we take the cook’s body into the study.
  • Colonel Mustard: Why?
  • Wadsworth: I’m the Butler; I like to keep the kitchen tidy.
  • Wadsworth: Professor Plum, you were once a professor of psychiatry specializing in helping paranoid and homicidal lunatics suffering from delusions of grandeur.
  • Professor Plum: Yes, but now I work for the United Nations.
  • Wadsworth: So your work has not changed.

…and of course:

If you have not seen the movie, go watch it now. You will see the OTHER movie that made Tim Curry a star.

Curry is one of the few actors who can be funny and terrifying in turn. His IMDB entry lists over 200 roles, including Pennywise the Clown in Stephen King’s It, Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island, Cardinal Richelieu in The Three Musketeers, Rooster in Annie, and the Lord of Darkness in Legend. In his later years, he continued doing voice acting for cartoons like The Wild Thornberrys and Peter Pan and the Pirates.

If you don’t know why Tim Curry is a star, then you haven’t got a Clue!

Jack Nicholson’s Joker

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Was Jack Nicholson really terrible as Joker?

No. And a little history is important here as context. Prior to Nicholson, the only live action Joker we had was this guy:

A yukity yuk slapstick clown played by Cesar Romero who wouldn’t shave his mustache for the role in a campy, tongue in cheek tv show.

Then along came the Batman movie:

Everything changed. Batman was much darker, more serious and way more violent and he was pitted against a completely new interpretation of a character that no one had ever given much thought to.

Nicholson turned a jokey, sad villain into THE most popular bad guy in the superhero genre. He utterly redefined the modern Joker and everyone who has played the part since has built on his work. The Joker you know today is because of him.

This guy is scary.

Gone was the slapstick, the goofiness, the over the top hamming it up and cartoonishness of Romero’s character. In its place was a sense of menace and casual cruelty where over the top antics were deliberate and deadly.

Nicholson was the first actor to capture the essence of the Joker and cement the character in the mind of the audience. Everyone who has played the character since then has worked off of this template. Without Nicholson’s Joker, no one who has followed him would have even had the opportunity.

Those who see his performance for the first time decades later might be forgiven for not understanding how amazing it was at the time, but make no mistake, your favorite Joker owes everything to Jack Nicholson.