The actor who refused to cameo in ‘The Hobbit’
It never felt for a second as though Peter Jackson was anywhere near as invested in The Hobbit trilogy as he was on The Lord of the Rings, which is probably because he wasn’t even planning on directing until very late in the day.
Guillermo del Toro had been tapped to helm the two-part adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel, but when constant delays created scheduling conflicts, the filmmaker dropped out. On such short notice, there wasn’t anyone even remotely qualified to step into the breach and take over such a mammoth production, forcing Jackson to roll up his sleeves and return to Middle-Earth from behind the camera.
It would be an understatement to say An Unexpected Journey, The Desolation of Smaug, and The Battle of the Five Armies were a noticeable step down in quality from The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King, matters which weren’t helped by the studio deciding over a year into shooting that it actually wanted three films instead of two.
The only returning characters who get more than a cameo’s worth of screentime in The Hobbit triptych are Ian McKellen’s Gandalf and Orlando Bloom’s Legolas, and the latter wasn’t even part of the source material. Beyond that, many familiar faces drop by for a guest appearance to tie the prequels even deeper into the fabric of their formidable cinematic predecessors.
Ian Holm’s Bilbo Baggins, Elijah Wood’s Frodo, Cate Blanchett’s Galadriel, Hugo Weaving’s Elrond, Christopher Lee’s Saruman, and Andy Serkis’ Gollum are all present and accounted for, while Billy Boyd recorded the song ‘The Last Goodbye’ for the soundtrack of The Battle of the Five Armies.
One person who declined the opportunity was Viggo Mortensen, though, who responded to a line of inquiry gauging his interest in reprising the role of Aragorn by asking a straightforward question that immediately negated his potential involvement.
“Before they started shooting, one of the producers did ask if I would be interested,” he told The Guardian. “I said, ‘You do know, don’t you, that Aragorn isn’t in The Hobbit? That there is a 60-year gap between the books?'” Just like that, any hopes of having him make a comeback were instantly dashed.
Aragorn was referenced towards the end of The Hobbit‘s final chapter, with Lee Pace’s Thranduil mentioning to Legolas that he should go and find himself in the company of a wanderer known as Strider setting Mortensen up as some kind of Marvel Cinematic Universe-style teaser for what’s to come, but that was as far as it went.
The actor didn’t feel the need to reprise such a memorable part that had brought him success the likes of which he’d never experienced before during his career, so he simply opted not to.
