There was a time when Anthony Hopkins was making daring movies, classy movies or even weird movies, be it the iconic Hannibal Lecter or 2007's bizarre passion project Slipstream-- and hey, he's still got a Woody Allen movie coming out this summer. But at the age of 73, Hopkins seems to content to spend most of his time taking roles in big-budget genre films that seem to use him to add legitimacy to what they're doing.
The last decade has brought us Hopkins as Wise Old Men in Alexander, Beowulf, The Wolfman and the upcoming Thor, and now he's moving on to Arabian Nights, the Prince of Persia knockoff starring Liam Hemsworth as a young commander rescuing Ali Baba's fabled magic lamp. THR reports that Hopkins will play the evil sorcerer Pharotu, who is "looking to amass more magic for himself" and probably has his eye on that lamp as well.
I can get behind the wild-eyed crazy Hopkins brought to the completely nonsensical Wolfman, but otherwise it really seems like these big movies are wasting his talents. Is he just in it for the paycheck? Or, given that he's with Chris Hemsworth in Thor and now Liam Hemsworth here, is he just on a mission to collect all the blond up-and-coming Australian actors?
