The Mark Hamill Effect

Ever since they came out, it seems like one of the Lord of the Rings movies is on TV at least once a day. Return of the King was on the other day, and I started thinking about a conversation I saw on the internet a while ago about who will be the Mark Hamill of the LOTR trilogy.

As we all know, Mark Hamill (no relation), who was already riding high on the success of the original Star Wars movie in 1977, became an international box office sensation after the release of 1978's paean to teenage love, Corvette Summer. Okay, I made that up. But there is a thread on the imdb page for Corvette Summer called Annie Potts boobs.

Now it's not like the guy can't get work. In fact, he's everywhere. He's enjoyed a prolific voice acting career, most notably as the inimitable voice of the Joker for Batman the Animated Series. He was even in The Little Mermaid. So it's kind of a bum rap to start using him as a the poster boy for one-note actors. But still, his most visible role, the one that's going to be in the headline of his obituary is Luke Skywalker.

So who's going to be, for lack of a better term, the Mark Hamill of LOTR? You can count Elijah Wood out. He's been getting plenty of work since the films wrapped, including against-type roles as a creepy, underwear-stealing lab assistant in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and an even creepier mute cannibal in a Charlie Brown shirt in last year's Sin City. Not to mention he was a child actor long before he donned Frodo's hairy rubber feet. In fact, Elijah Wood can put out five movies a year for the rest of his life, but to me he'll alway's be the recipient of cherubic Macaulay Culkin's infamous "don't fuck with me" line in The Good Son.

Samwise has nothing to worry about, either. As a former child star himself, he'll be a Goonie for life. "Don't you die, Mr. Frodo. Goonies never say die."

John Rhys-Davies, who got two paychecks as Gimli the dwarf and the voice of Treebeard, has been in way too many things to ever be typecast. (My favorite being Sallah in the Indiana Jones movies. ) Personally, I'll always associate him with Quest for Glory IV, an old PC game where he got to dispense groan-inducing puns like, "You haven't URNED the right to do that" when you try to pick up some ash-filled pottery.

Cate Blanchett, who scared the bejesus out of me in these movies, was in that movie about a queen. I think she won an Oscar. She was nominated, anyway. And Bandits was a damn fine movie. Beavers and ducks!

Liv Tyler was in a bunch of stuff, too. Plus she's got that whole rock star's daughter thing going, which means even if she never acts again, she'll fall under the "famous for being famous" category. I don't know about that other girl that played the niece of that king guy that got all old and creepy. Was there only three women in these movies? Those female hobbits they tossed in at the end don't count.

Let's see, who else we got? Christopher Lee's been making movies since the '40s. Gandalf is another one with an extensive resume, one that includes Magneto from the X-Men movies (and who knows, he may end up being the new Dumbledore if this one keels over.) Elrond was Agent Smith, so he's got that going for him. Legolas has a series of Pirates of the Caribbean movies and the adoration of a salivating horde of teenage girls ahead of him. Aragorn? Maybe. That horse race in the desert movie may be Viggo Mortensen's Corvette Summer, but it's probably too early to tell.

That leaves Merry and Pippin. I don't know which is which, but one of them went on to find a new audience with Lost. He plays Charlie, America's favorite coke addict not named Whitney Houston. And the other hobbit was...um...Russell Crowe's sidekick in Master and Commander.

So I guess if the Lord of the Rings movies produced another Mark Hamill, it looks like it'd be either Viggo Mortensen, that blonde chick, or the hobbit that's not on Lost.