"Eowyn - it should have been her" Topic

AS much as I love the LotR movie, I didn't like some of the actor choices. Specifically for Eowyn. After watching the Vikings, the Lagertha character would have been a way better choice.

So what do you say?
Kathryn Winnick (Lagertha) or
Miranda Otto (Eowyn)

Otto

oTTO

Otto

I like them both – Miranda portrayed Eowyn very well, but Katheryn would have been a good choice too. I like her background in martial arts.

I do not know this "Kathryn" of whom you speak. But Miranda Otto did a superb job of playing Eowyn. P. Jackson's strongest suit was character casting, imho….

Jackson wanted Russell Crowe to be Aragorn, but he was busy with something he couldn't get out of.

let's thank whatever that was that he couldn't get out of :)

This discussion is about thirteen years too late, is it not?

Are you nuts?
To me the iconic scene in LOTR is Eowyn (Miranda Otto) facing the Witch King. She is terrified. Yet she stands, because it is her duty to her King.
That, Sir, is acting. None of this whispering and shouting nonsense. The look in her eyes says it all.

Otto was awesome. I am glad that efforts to have her and Arwen go buck wild in the glittering caves against the Uruks got ditched from the films. The curious one for me was, having blonds for Faramir and Boromir?

her and Arwen go buck wild in the glittering cave

Well, that's gonna trigger some bad fanfic hits…

I was surprised by the choice of Otto, but her fight with the witch king is a classic that I do not think could be bettered. One of the great fight sequences of our time. Perhaps you are right and it could have been bettered, but I cannot find it in my heart to complain about it…

The fight with the Witch King reminded me of the line "Despair thy charm, MacBeth, for I was from my mother's womb untimely ripped". Somewhat similar to Eowyn saying, "I am no man". But still pretty cool.
Bob

Bobspruster: The scene is practically straight from the novel, and it's quite clear that Tolkien deliberately echoed the idea of the "misunderstood prophecy" from Macbeth. That's not the only allusion to the play, either. The Ents and the Hourns in their assault on Isengard and the relief of Helm's Deep were directly inspired by the Birnam Wood sequence in Macbeth. (The Merton Professor of English Literature and Language at Oxford knew his Shakespeare.)

Miranda Otto

Lagertha is an awesome character.

I like them both, but it would have been awful hard for P Jackson to cast Kathryn Winnick as Eowyn since Winnick had only started acting in 1999. Prior to the release of LotR:Fellowship, she had only appeared in a few single TV episodes, and two movies that are so obscure they don't even warrant a wiki entry. :)

I seriously doubt we should criticize Peter Jackson for not choosing a young woman who (though quite ambitious having started her own line of martial arts studios) had only been acting for a couple years.

Remember, at the time, Miranda Otto was a relative unknown in the US and perhaps world market, though she had been in several Austrailian movies.

In my opinion, I'd be happy to entertain either lady.

I thought she was perfect.

Second guessing casting is a quicksand discussion.

One of the reasons is that characters are outlined in scripts and fleshed out by actors and directors.

So who who could have done a better Hannibal Lector, or Eowyn, or Colour Seargent Bourne?

If someone other than Anthony Hopkins, Miranda Otto, or Nigel Green had played those characters or if the directors been different, the characters would have been played differently. Could they have been played better or worse by by someone else--perhaps. What is certain, however, is that they would have been different.

It's actually a tribute to these directors and actors that we, as movie viewers, tend to think of actors in terms of their characters rather that the other way around.

Should the question in this thread be whether the character of Eowyn should have been more Lagertha like? Could be that, regardless of who the actor was who played Eowyn, because the director remains unchanged, the the character portrayal would have been much the same, albeit with a different face?

The movie business is a lot more complicated and subtle than the viewing public realizes for the most part. Of course, that is how it should be. If the viewer is thinking about the actor rather than the character and the plot, then something has gone terribly wrong. And there are certainly plenty of terrible actors, directors and examples of that.

Just my two centavos as a movie buff.

XRayVision +1