Hello world. Hmm, a bit presumptive maybe? Perhaps I should tailor my introduction to be more realistic, based on who my likely audience will be? Hello mum.
For whomever ends up reading this, thank you, and welcome to A Rob Blog. I’m a Rob, and I’ve recently been placed on furlough leave. Given the extra time this will afford me, I thought I’d do a bit of writing to keep myself sane. Having said that, I do have a 20-month old daughter, so she’ll be keeping me busy. But I’m hoping to be able to post about once a week. I’ll be covering a number of topics and hopefully these will help stave off the boredom (for you and for me) during this lockdown. This week’s topic: Sir Ian McKellen.
If you’ve read on this far, many thanks. However, I should warn you, if you were hoping for an Ian McKellen biography, this ain’t that. Leave now while you can! Or, to put it another way, “Fly, you fools!”. This post will be focussing on Sir Ian McKellen’s late foray into mainstream Hollywood.
In the late 90s, Ian McKellen was a well respected stage actor, but hadn’t really featured heavily in Hollywood movies. This may well have been through choice on McKellen’s part. It is also possible (read: probable) that being an openly gay man limited the number of roles he would have been offered. Whatever the reasons, this would all soon change. Within about a year, Sir Ian McKellen took on two roles in two of the biggest blockbusters, in two (eventual) huge franchises: X-Men and The Lord of the Rings.
Quick sidebar: the title of this post is actually a clever play on words, as Gambit is an X-Men character. Although interestingly (?), Gambit didn’t feature in any of the first three X-Men films and when he finally popped up in the fourth, Sir Ian McKellen wasn’t even in it.
It’s difficult to overstate just how important X-Men was to cinema. After the disaster that was 1997’s Batman & Robin (yes, the one with the Bat-nipples), studios didn’t want to touch comic book characters. The one exception being Blade, a far cry from a traditional superhero story. So X-Men really was “make or break” for the genre. The success of this in 2000 (and the also excellent Spider-Man in 2002) propelled comic book characters back to the forefront of people’s minds and paved the way for Christian Bale’s Batman and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Ian McKellen was perfectly cast as Magneto and – alongside fellow knight of the realm Sir Patrick Stewart – added an element of class in what otherwise may have been a bit of a mess of a film. The chemistry between the two knights is actually my favourite element of the film. The film was a critical and commercial success. Without the X-Men, we probably don’t get The Avengers years later.
The Lord of the Rings was just a phenomenon that I don’t think too many people could have predicted would be as big as it was before its release. It was just as much of a risk – if not more so, due to the money it cost to make – as X-Men. Kudos to McKellen (and his agent) for taking two risks and having them both pay off so spectacularly. Without the success of The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones doesn’t get made years later.
So what does this all mean? Are these two films some of the best of all time? In a word, no. Neither of these will be challenging Citizen Kane or The Godfather for that particular title. But they both are, by modern standards, very important films. Sometimes, the right film comes along at just the right time and captures the imagination of a generation. The ripple effects are felt throughout the entertainment industry for years. It just so happens that Sir Ian McKellen was at the centre of two such films within the space of 16 months.
Thanks for reading. I’ll be back next week. Stay safe and take care.
A Rob Blog 
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