While Middle Earth is home to countless creatures with extended lifespans, humans here on regular Earth are still subject to the normal passage of time. This includes the cast members of The Lord of the Rings, who are unfortunately not gifted with elven immortality. But just how long ago did the movies come out, and how old should you feel about it? The answer is very, very old. Just look at this viral tweet about Viggo Mortensen, a.k.a Aragorn (son of Arathorn, heir of Isildur, et cetera, et cetera).
Media personality and host of the Culturally Relevant podcast David Chen recently tweeted a rather alarming piece of information regarding the cast of The Lord of the Rings. If you want to feel absolutely prehistoric, take a peek at his post below:
Viggo Mortensen is now older than Ian McKellan was when he made the first Lord of the Rings movie.November 29, 2021
This is, tragically, one hundred percent true. For context: Sir Ian McKellen is currently 82 years old. He was 61 when he was cast in The Lord of the Rings in 1999. If that fact alone doesn’t make you feel positively ancient, Viggo Mortensen was 42 in 1999, and he turned 63 last October. So David Chen is correct: Viggo Mortensen is indeed older than Gandalf was in The Fellowship of the Ring.
Naturally, fans had to weigh in on this terrifying statistic. If you look carefully, you can actually see Twitter go through the seven stages of grief. First up: shock (there was a lot of this one):
This information made me get out of bed go into the other room and tell my girlfriend. – @JJTheCrass
After LOTR fans picked themselves up off the ground, they moved on to stage two: denial. It’s not just a river in Gondor.
I rebuke, refute and deny this. Fie! Fie upon it! – @Wordslingeuse
Next up, of course, was anger. Maybe not Sauron post-War-of-the-Last-Alliance-level anger – more like ‘Gandalf yelling at Pippin after he messes with the palantír’ levels of rage.
….This tweet makes me want to kick a helmet and break my toe. – @IsidoresDragon
Some fans skipped straight to the bargaining portion. Sure, maybe you’re old, but can you at least get a sequel out of the deal?
You know what that means?? It’s time for a legacy-quel, babyyyy! – @davis_wally
Now, truth be told, there wasn’t a lot of guilt to go around. Depression, however, was available in spades.
What kind of monster puts this out into the world on a dark winter Sunday afternoon. – @sorrykb
And, to conclude the thrilling saga, we have acceptance and hope. Just like the eagles will rescue you from drowning in Mount Doom lava, so will a LOTR fan remind you of one of the series’ main themes:
“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” — Gandalf – @RabidBadger
Just like Frodo could not control whether or not he found the Ring, we cannot control how old we all felt when we found out that The Fellowship of the Ring celebrated its twentieth anniversary this year. All we can do is choose how to spend the rest of our time. And if you’re me, that means choosing to rewatch all of The Lord of the Rings movies on HBO Max – including the newly remastered extended edition of The Return of the King).