

Last week, HBO head Michael Lombardo discussed the possibility of the show extending to eight seasons instead of the planned seven. Game of Thrones season six is currently in production and Von Sydow is reportedly already on set. This character was briefly seen in the season 4 finale (played by a different actor.) Though he will have limited screen time, this character will still play a significant role in the larger story. While McShane’s role remains a mystery, Max Von Sydow has been confirmed to play the Three-Eyed Raven, a mystical figure who will tutor Bran Stark on his new-found magical abilities. This casting news comes almost right after Ian McShane was reported to have joined the epic fantasy series. He has been nominated for an Academy Award twice for his work in Pelle the Conquerorand Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Von Sydow is a renowned veteran actor whose illustrious career includes roles in numerous iconic films including The Exorcist, Never Say Never Again, Hannah and Her Sisters, and Minority Report. Someone such as Randall Park could be perfect, especially given Waititi’s fondness for the creatively absurd – this is the film-maker who triumphantly recast Marvel’s stony-faced monster Korg as as a squeaky-voiced Kiwi in Thor: Ragnarok.Award-winning Swedish-French actor Max von Sydow has joined the cast of Game of Thrones‘ highly-anticipated sixth season, according to an exclusive report by Entertainment Weekly. On the other hand, a live-action approach would allow the hiring of an ethnically appropriate actor. Animation, with its ability to create convincing imaginary worlds, is a far safer option, and who could argue with a shift that would allow stalwarts of the 1980 film (such as Brian Blessed) to reprise their roles? Live-action fantasy movies can easily become a source of ridicule, as Andrew Stanton’s criminally underrated John Carter discovered to its cost ( around $200m of it) in 2012.

Thanks to the wonders of animation (and a complicated plot about alternate universes) the studio didn’t have to worry about choosing between Peter Parker or Miles Morales – it just included both.Īs an approach, it makes sense, even if it’s essentially a cop out. With it, Sony was able to make the first decent Spider-Man film in more than a decade.

Photograph: Snap Stills/Rex/Shutterstockįox/Disney’s great plan to reimagine Flash Gordon seems to boil down to this: animation! As the makers of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse know well, animation can be a great problem solver.
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Of course Max von Sydow’s towering performance in the campy 1980 film really doesn’t help here, even if those costumes and makeup on a Swedish actor now seems pretty repugnant.Įric Johnson and Karen Cliche in the 2007 TV adaptation. Ridding the villain of his unwieldy east Asian inspiration, as the awful 2007 TV adaptation attempted, makes his inclusion pointless. Removing him would be like deleting Darth Vader from Star Wars, or Voldemort from Harry Potter.
Max von sydow harry potter movie#
The problem for Taika Waititi, who has reportedly been hired to direct a new Flash Gordon movie for the newly assembled Fox/Disney studio, is that Ming is also the most interesting thing about the property. He played the Three-Eyed Raven on Game of Thrones season 6, for which he. Ming, along with Fu Manchu and the later Mandarin comic book supervillain, are classic examples of “ yellow peril” xenophobia, then at its height in the US and large parts of western Europe. On Sunday, legendary screen and television actor Max von Sydow passed away at the age of 90, his family has announced. When the scariest thing you can imagine invading the Earth is an ornately dressed gentleman of apparent east Asian extraction, it’s clear you’re not really frightened of aliens at all. It is not hard to pinpoint the mindset that inspired the creation of Flash Gordon’s extraterrestrial nemesis, Ming the Merciless, back in 1934.
