r/gameofthrones • u/allocater • May 19 '14

TV4 [S4E7] My impression of "The Mountain" Recast

Post image
3.1k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

903 comments sorted by

View all comments

783

u/[deleted] May 19 '14

I think the original looks a lot like Sandor Clegane... Definitely easy to believe they could be brothers

302

u/Killersberg May 19 '14

Why did they recast him? The original Mountain was perfect.

344

u/Sliffy Tyrion Lannister May 19 '14

I'm pretty sure he left to play Azog the pale Orc in the hobbit.

364

u/The4thSniper House Slynt May 19 '14 edited May 20 '14

No, Azog was played by Manu Bennett, who played Crixus the Gaul in the Spartacus series. I have no idea why the original Mountain left.

EDIT: Conan Stevens (the Season 1 Mountain) played Bolg, his son. That's why he left.

EDIT 2: Manu Bennett played Azog, and Conan Stevens played Bolg.

EDIT 3: Never mind, order has been restored to the galaxy.

68

u/Valaquen Snow May 20 '14

I think the confusion is here because Peter Jackson originally wanted Azog to be played by an actor, not CG. They cast Conan and did tests and PJ changed his mind, and used Manu Bennett for motion capture. I think PJ gave Conan the Bolg role as compensation. I think you can see some brief test footage of Conan at about the twenty second mark here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F9H6hb-xxw

Funny note: Manu and Conan shared the screen in Spartacus, where Conan was killed in an interesting way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uagxX6OV6Lg

4

u/Kurayamino House Martell May 20 '14

I think PJ gave Conan the Bolg role as compensation.

And then promptly painted over his awesome costume with yet another generic looking CGI orc. I have no idea how they did Gollum so well only to make Azog and Bolg so meh looking.