Twitter bands together to fancast the Muppets into Lord Of The Rings
There are many deeply, deeply shitty things about social media, but when it’s good, it’s good. And when Gail Simone is involved, it’s usually good. This circumstance is no exception.
One potential downside of this most delightful thought exercise is that the hashtag in question, which did indeed start trending, could lead one to believe there was some sort of announcement of a Muppets/Tolkein adaptation in the works, and that is not the case (so far as we know—though if a streaming service is looking for an epic set in a richly textured world starring puppets, they could just save The Dark Crystal: Age Of Resistance.)
But this isn’t a real project, this is a thought exercise. Despite the grim reality of everything, including social media, the denizens of the internet came together as one and rose to the occasion. We could not possibly include every good tweet in response to Simone’s thread, because they go on forever (insert Statler and Waldorf: “Much like The Desolation of Smaug! Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho!”) But here, dear readers, are a few really excellent proposals. (Our own suggestion can be found in the header image for this article. We feel pretty good about it.)
First, a brilliant option for Legolas.
There was lots of love for the idea of Animal as Gollum, but this conversation also proves that Animal has the range, as he was suggested for quite a few roles. He also wasn’t the only popular choice for poor old Smeagol.
Janice as Galadriel was a popular choice. Several members of The Electric Mayhem kept turning up, in fact:
Gandalf obviously drew many suggestions. While there were quite a few notions of “Gonzo the Grey,” we think we’re partial to the following (especially since Rizzo is Pippin, which makes Gonzo Merry, but we digress). The first, in particular, is brilliant:
There was also some support for the idea of Ian McKellan as the human member of the cast; we assume he’d operate in the Michael-Caine-as-Scrooge mold and never phone it in, not for a single second:
Plus, if McKellan returns to play Gandalf, then we could stick The Swedish Chef here:
All in all, a very fun exercise. And we even got to see some really fun art as a result.
In conclusion, this obvious but welcome rejection of the premise of the question:
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