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Viggo Mortensen's most iconic role was the one of Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings, but the actor hasn't appeared in any big franchises since. However, the actor has an explanation for why he has never starred in another big franchise.

Speaking to Vanity Fair, Mortensen explained that he doesn't mind joining a franchise, as long as the story is good. The actor has starred in many successful films, including 2009's The Road and 2018's Green Book, however, his role as Aragorn is what brought him worldwide fame. He loved the role so much that he didn't rule out a return to Middle Earth.

Related Viggo Mortensen Came Dangerously Close to Turning Down The Lord of the Rings

Lord of the Rings actor Viggo Mortensen was close to turning down the role of Aragorn, but a stroke of luck made him reluctantly accept the project.

"I dont really...

Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (he goes by “Sayo”) has distinguished himself over the last two decades as the cherished cinematographer of directors Luca Guadagnino and Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Cannes Palme d’Or winner “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives”).

And though the works by those filmmakers are renowned for their many gorgeous evocations of nature, whether sun-dappled countryside or dense foggy jungle, Mukdeeprom faced one of the biggest challenges of his career with “Thirteen Lives,” his first collaborations with Oscar-winner Ron Howard.

Dramatizing the implausible 2018 story of 12 boys and their soccer coach who became trapped deep in a flooded cave, “Thirteen Lives” is set entirely in Mukdeeprom’s native Thailand — though the movie was actually filmed, apart from a few establishing shots, in sets created on the Gold Coast of Australia.

“Actually the whole thing was all a set that had been built for us,” Mukdeeprom told TheWrap. “Which was an amazing thing to see.

Watching “Thirteen Lives, Ron Howard’s new docudrama, is a lot like having deja vu all over again — all over again. It’s the third film in four years based on the seemingly impossible rescue of 12 trapped children and their soccer coach from a flooded cave system in Thailand in 2018, and although it’s extremely competent, it fails to add a new perspective to the story or a distinctive approach to its telling.

Hot on the heels of Tom Waller’s 2019 drama “The Cave” and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s award-winning 2021 documentary “The Rescue,” Howard’s film stars Viggo Mortensen and Colin Farrell as Richard Stanton and John Volanthen, two highly experienced cave divers who traveled to the Tham Luang Nang Non cave after an unexpectedly early start to monsoon season trapped 13 people deep in its recesses, behind incredibly long, narrow, dangerous underwater caverns.

The Thai government had...

(L to R) Colin Farrell as John Volanthen, Viggo Mortensen as Rick Stanton and Sahajak ‘Poo’ Boonthanakit as Governor Naronsak in Thirteen Lives, directed by Ron Howard, a Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures film. Credit: Vince Valitutti / Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures © 2022 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc. All Rights Reserved.

When a Thai boys soccer team was trapped in a cave by flash flooding in 2018, the world was riveted as divers attempted to locate and rescue the teenage boys and their coach in the flooded cave, ultimately calling in volunteers who specialized in cave diving. Viggo Mortensen and Colin Farrell play two of those cave divers, middle-aged hobbyists who travel from their homes in the U.K. to volunteer to help save the boys and their coach. As the days dragged on, hope faded and it seemed only a miracle could save them. Thirteen Lives dramatizes that 2018 rescue mission, and demonstrates exactly how miraculous it was.

The movie "Thirteen Lives" is about a group of 12 boys and their soccer coach who find themselves trapped deep in a network of caves after flooding blocks their way out. The group is eventually rescued by a team of divers who undertake the dangerous journey to find and rescue them.

The film's plot is based on a real event that happened not too long ago. On June 23, 2018, 12 boys between the ages of 11 and 16 and their assistant coach, Ekapol Chanthawong, went missing while exploring Tham Luang Nang Non, a complex of caves stretching between Thailand and Myanmar. They planned to celebrate a player's birthday in the caves, which they often explored, but the team found themselves stranded instead when a torrential rainstorm led to a flood that blocked their exit.

During their time in the cave, the team survived by drinking the water dripping down the walls and by digging a...

Let's be honest - there's a certain scepticism surrounding Marvel Studios' next movie, Ant-Man, that seems to have left fans less excited than they are for most McU films.

Guardians of the Galaxy managed to dispel similar feelings with a perfectly pitched trailer, but for Ant-Man the feeling has continued to hang around in the build up to its release.

It's not hard to guess why. When it comes to powers, shrinking and talking to ants sounds pretty lame, no matter how much they try to style it out by adding that he has "superhuman strength... like a bullet".

But Ant-Man isn't the lamest superhero out there - not by a long shot. A glimpse at this linep of superlosers will quickly make Ant-Man seem pretty decent by comparison:

Arm-Fall-Off-Boy

The Legion of Super-Heroes comic explicitly acknowledges the existence of crummy powers with its Legion tryouts and the Legion...