Eva Green
Robert Downey
Johnny Depp
…who else can single-handedly raise a lacklustre production to greatness?
I reckon if you point a camera at any one of these three, you hardly need to do anything else. Who else is in that league?
Maggie Smith, but I’d be worried about starting any long-term projects with her. Maybe Jonathan Pryce. Probably Wagner Moura. Definitely Christoph Waltz, Javier Bardem.
….? Asking maybe for the Malacca pirates thing. No I’m not actually serious (yet).
Tattered Remains of Tartary 
Ridgely just got the Richard E Grant thing this week and screamed. Not sure he’s instant gold but he guarantees one reroll.
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Jeremy Irons
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Not Jeremy Irons. The D&D movie was no better for his presence. Sadly.
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Willem Defoe
People should just let Ciaran Hinds do his thing more often.
Hugh Laurie and John Noble get honourable mentions for dragging their respective series around through several seasons of miserable writing.
I wish I could think of more women for this list.
Given how many evil uncles there are here, I’m beginning to think a gender-swapped Jeeves & Wooster could be a brilliant idea. Or some kind of tournament of spies thing where a dozen ingenue recruits are controlled by rival avuncular handlers.
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Abstract Machine hell yes. Good catch.
…oh how my list is aging. And we’ve all seen those 6 crusty old guys just acting movies, haven’t we?
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Gene Hackman. M Emmet Walsh.
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According to Roger Ebert’s Stanton-Walsh Rule, “no movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be altogether bad”. Ebert later conceded that this rule was broken by 1989’s Dream a Little Dream (Stanton) and 1999’s Wild Wild West (Walsh).
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Some of those have gotten into the category of “thrown into utterly awful movies in hopes they can do something and devoured alive”
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alashappily, Roger Giner-Sorolla, there is still no magic bullet that can save a DnD Movie or GigliLikeLike
I was going to say Richard E. Grant even before I saw that Scott Martin had beat me to it. The only character even close to as captivating on GoT is the damn dragon!
I wonder if David Tennant will get there.
Dennis Haysbert?
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Charles Dance?
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Boris Stremlin Dance is really good, but I’ve seen him fail to lift the weight a few times.
…he reminds me of Christopher Lee in the Star Wars prequels – when he’s on screen there’s magic, but it doesn’t transfer to anyone else.
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I think there are quite a number of actors who will be great or at least interesting no matter what you put them in. But make everyone around them great? I’m not sure.
I do keep thinking of Robin Williams, though.
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Handy Haversack I have to agree that GoT often makes mediocre use of the extraordinary acting talent available to it. Max von Sydow is capable of so much more. Even Sean Bean seemed a bit… like he knew how Alec Guinness felt about his lines in Star Wars.
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Gary Oldman?
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Oldman’s very good but I haven’t seen him rescue anything.
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I would pay to watch a whole series of Smaug films, though. Smaug the young murderhobo, Smaug the bitterly betrayed, Smaug Strikes Back.
He would be like a sardonic Godzilla.
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omg the dubbing
“watch out, smaug! electricity and acid attacks only make megabeorn stronger!”
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Smaugemon!
Sold. I’m on it
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THAT’s the ending I’ve been suffering through 6 seasons for.
Having destroyed all the characters in Game of Thrones he turns his attention to Victorian London where he is promptly eaten and subsumed by Eva Green (broodingly), bringing us full circle. Thereafter Miss Ives sometimes speaks with her own voice and sometimes with the voice of the dragon.
And just occasionally as Richard E Grant.
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Oh god I just realized. Smaug’s death is a metaphor for US foreign policy under Bush.
(seemingly invincible, irritated into leaving cave, brought down by arrow)
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it writes itself ka-ching
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The Smaug series sounds preferable to a Silmarililon trilogy. And did I hear Smaug say “Mission Accomplished” to Bard?
Gary Oldman – I’d certainly say he rescued Dracula from Wynona Rider and even more so Keanu Reeves.
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Oldman will be Smaug’s mentor in Worm Of The Well: Smaug Begins
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Definitely alive, I’m afraid – otherwise we’d have Richard Burton and Oliver Reed and Marlene Dietrich and Hedy Lamarr.
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It was in Flowers for Smaugernon that the wyrm first was known to speak.
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oh man, Flowers is great. Actually I like those early, lyrical films the best, before the character was fully defined, when there was more freedom to do unexpected stuff with him. The physical comedy in Crispin’ the Slayer and the tragic reversals of Tender is the Blight.
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The bittersweet racism of Sixteen Corpse Candles . . .
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there’s no way that would get made today. Likewise In the Furnace of the Senses, which cleared up all myquestions about Smaug’s sexuality (and in comparison with which, Queer As Smoke just seems cartoonish and lazily stereotyping).
You know the whole “gritty reimagining” thing seems so limiting. Where those earlier movies asked questions, the newer ones just want to hit you over the head with their answers.
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I guess the one where Smaug meets Ali McGraw at school and kills her with the boating accident is no longer canon? Maybe I am a sissy but I always liked that one, “uncover your heart” or whatever the tag line was.
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The original Last Lonely Mountain on the Left was grappling with a time when the only possible artistic response was sex-drenched violence. The remake just wanted to burn.
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omg the love theme from Smaug Story
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GfcmU2nTUY
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and the later disco version with Dionne Warwick! That was really the beginning of the end, I guess. The coke ad era.
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Didn’t he fight Woody Allen once or was that a TV spoof thing? Damn, someone needs to do a sourcebook or an update or something.
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VH1 Behind the Music?
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He didn’t fight Woody Allen – he was Woody Allen!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sjnn9grrHD4
The full feature-film version would have to be called “Cauterize This”.
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