Who's playing theoden, Eomer, Eowyn, Grima and Denethor?

[bropous]

Well, I found a link that lists the casting for The Two Towers and the Return of the King, and here are the main "mystery cast members":

Grima Wormtongue: Brad Dourif [Billy Babbitt from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", Piter DeVries from Dino DeLaurentis' "Dune"]

Theoden: Bernard Hill [Captain from "Titanic"]

Eomer: Karl Urban [some character from "Xena" *shudder*]

Eowyn: Miranda Otto [Emma Grange from "Emma's War *never saw it nor heard of it]

Denethor: John Noble [Mr. Morris from "The Monkeys Mask *never heard of ANY of his credits either*]

Faramir: David Wenham [Brett Sprague in "The Boys" *never heard of his credits either*]

Well, never heard of most of these folks, except for Brad Dourif and Bernard Hill, but I am sure they will do a fine job. I think Brad Dourif is a GREAT piece of casting for Grima Wormtongue, and Bernard Hill should bring a lot of dignity to the role of Theoden.

Admittedly, I'd never heard of Billy Boyd, Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen, Dominic Monaghan, Orlando Bloom, oif Hugo Weaving either, and thought they ALL did just wonderful work in Fellowship, so I'm looking forward to being introduced to these other actors next Christmas.

BTW, interesting that the fellow who played Sauron ALSO played Lurtz....also interesting that the fellow who played Gil-Galad is listed, yet Gil-Galad never appeared in the film...Also, the Hobbit splitting wood who tells the Nazgul the Bagginses are "all up at Hobbiton" is listed as Farmer Maggot....but the fat fellow who played Odo Proudfoot [ProudFEET!!!] is not listed....

All info from http://www.theonering.net/movie/cast.html

[Gerbil]

Drat.
Brad Dourif - trouble is I have just finished re-reading the Dunes books, and just bought Dune on DVD (it's got extra footage over the VHS version - I think the VHS was cut down for some reason).

I actually like PJ using unknown actors, cos it gives me no pre-conceptions.

Problem is, now whenever I see Grima I'll be expecting Baron Harkonnen to float up from the background :(

[bropous]

fortunately I'll be able to mentally divorce myself from the memory of that Dino DeLaurentis abomination. Talk about despicable butchering of a book in film format....

LOL, I'd rather think of Nurse Ratchett popping up at Isengard after the Ent attack than Baron Harkonnen...

[Gerbil]

Originally posted by bropous
fortunately I'll be able to mentally divorce myself from the memory of that Dino DeLaurentis abomination. Talk about despicable butchering of a book in film format....
You should read the DVD inlay. Actually I'll quote a bit cos it's quite funny:

'it was viewed as a cinematic disaster. Viewed now, it is a failure still'

:)

Actually I thought that as a film in it's own right it wasn't too bad. But as an adaptation of the book it sucked big time. Let's be glad that's not how LotR turned out!

And as for Dune, when are they going to release the 7th book, the one after Chapterhouse Dune? Apparently he'd nearly finished it before he died. I want to find out about the Face Dancer threat from beyond the scattering!

[mirrille]

For the Dune sequels, it looks like they are going to finish up these prequel things (House Atreides etc) before releasing the follow-up to Chapterhouse Dune. I'm really looking forward to that too. Things were getting really strange by around God Emperor of Dune, but by Chapterhouse, I was liking it again. and then it stopped.

[Gerbil]

Eh?
The prequels have been out for ages. I think the last one, House Corrino has been out about a year or so now.

Either that or I've read 3 extremely coincidental books!

They are OK, but not a patch on FH's style. Especially since FH so visibly grew as a story-teller throughout the series.

A few good things coming out of the prequels though is you get the odd glimpse of things refered to in Chapterhouse. Not much though.

All in all I think the prequels were a mistake. Too much is in them that is never referenced again in FH's stories. The whole IX thing is rubbish, and most of the prequels revolve around it! And again, no mention of it in the proper Dune books.

I hate it when people think they can improve on someone else's work like that...

[bropous]

Well, Gerbil, I imagine Brian Herbert is as much an expert on hsi father's works as Christopher Tolkien is on his. I actually enjoyed the Dune "prequels", although I've not read "House Corrino" so far, and actually enjoyed the whole Ixian storyline.

[Gerbil]

Somehow I doubt Brian to FRank was like Christopher to JRR.
I've read many times of C's helping with JRR, but never heard any mention of Brian helping Daddy Franky. And his name is only really on the books to sell 'cos of the name, you can bet the other guy did most of the writing.

As for whether they are good or bad, that's obviously personal opinion. I thought the prequels were OK, but that was about it. And they just don't fit into the main Dune saga. Same people (mostly) but it's as if come Dune, all previous history was wiped clean. It doesn't integrate, so might as well have been set in a seperate fiction universe. It's just not Dune.

[mirrille]

Gee sorry..
I'm so slow. :pI'm just a poor student on a budget. I have to read the prequels as the paperbacks come out, so I only knew about the first 2 books. Anyways, that's good, because it means that the sequel is probably in the works now.
They're good, but a really different style to the real Dune stuff. For one thing, they are more...um...:rolleyes: ...normal. They just don't have the overwhelming weirdness of the originals. When people do things, it actually makes sense. So Gerbil is right: it's just not Dune.

[luinilwen]

another site i find useful for other movies is the internet movie database (http://www.imdb.com/). it's also got boards set up for each movie (ie. there's a fotr board).