Sean Astin has starred in many of my favorite movies over the years. He played Mikey in The Goonies back in 1985, a film that inspired in me dreams of pirate ships and booby trapped caves, of lost treasure and adventure waiting just around the corner.
That movie was one of the most influential of my childhood, along with Star Wars and books like The Chronicles of Narnia and The Prydain Chronicles. Of course, it was The Lord Of The Rings, which I first read in 4th grade, that had the most profound impact. The books were adapted into a trilogy of films by Peter Jackson beginning with 2001’s Fellowship Of The Ring. All these stories helped form the bedrock of my imagination and a sense of what truly matters in life: Friendship, loyalty, courage in the face of daunting odds, and the capacity for normal people, even children and Hobbits, to overcome the machinations of the wicked.
Astin also starred in Jackson’s trilogy as the stalwart Hobbit, Samwise Gamgee, Frodo’s most loyal friend and one of the most heroic, yet humble, figures in modern literature and cinema. I had the great pleasure of speaking with the actor recently about his involvement with LEGO’s impressive new Shire-themed set, which recreates the 111th birthday party of Mr. Bilbo Baggins.
The set boasts a whopping 2,017 blocks as well as a bevy of Lord Of The Rings characters such as Gandalf, Bilbo and Samwise Gamgee himself. It also features Gandalf’s cart, the dragon fireworks, Party Tree and Bilbo’s book, which can be displayed open or closed. This is the third LEGO set from The Lord Of The Rings, and by far the coziest. The other two include Sauron’s stronghold, Barad-dûr, and the elven sanctuary, Rivendell.
“You kind of forget, in this day and age,” Astin tells me, “sometimes you need permission to have fun and let your imagination run wild.”
Astin narrates the new LEGO mini-film that accompanies the Shire set’s reveal. The commercial features animated LEGO Lord of the Rings characters re-enacting some scenes from the Jackson movies with a dash of the classic LEGO humor we’ve come to expect from the toymaker’s films. “When I was driving home from the commercial shoot, I was just sort of thinking, why was that so much fun? Why was it so much fun to play?” Astin says.
Astin spent the day shooting the commercial and playing with LEGO toys. (LEGO, Astin informs me, prefers the phrase “LEGO toys” to the plural “LEGOs” though Mordor will freeze over before I stop using LEGOs in day-to-day speech). Astin has been building LEGO sets his entire life, first as a kid and then later with own children. “Let’s just put it this way,” he tells me. “Last New Year’s, like between Christmas and New Year’s, while other people are out playing pickleball, I was inside trying to, you know, build a LEGO.”
Of course, pairing Astin with a brand new Lord Of The Rings LEGO set just makes sense, and the result is charming, with lots of little call-backs to the movies.
The shoot was a lot of fun, Astin says. They toyed around with lines of dialogue from the films all while having fun building and playing with the LEGO figures. “I have three daughters,” he says. “They’re all grown now, but they can find creativity and imagination in anything. You know, you can pick up a pebble and you can make the pebble represent anything. And I think the fact that LEGO has figured out how to embrace this world of literature and kind of bring it down into something that lets you manipulate it . . . I mean, at first it was just silly fun, you know, just making the Proudfeet walk around, you know, trying to decide if Sam and Rosie should be standing anywhere near me and Pippin. And you just, all of a sudden, you realize, it just gives you permission to enjoy your imagination. And that’s what happened to me, even though I was the actor who’s presenting the bricks, you know . . . I was susceptible to its charm.”
“What I always liked about the bricks was that they’re, even though they’re little, they’re kind of solid,” he says. “You sense that you’re really building something. And, you know, once you get it to a certain height, then it’s time to knock it down and start–”
“The Scouring of the Shire?” I interject.
“Exactly. Oh my gosh, we should have depicted that.”
I asked Astin if he’d read the books prior to filming the Jackson trilogy.
“Not at all,” Astin says. “I didn’t know anything about Tolkien. I didn’t know about the world of Middle-earth or The Hobbit or anything. It’s not that I wasn’t interested in it. It was that I absolutely just had never heard of it. And I was graduating from UCLA with a degree in literature and history, and I was like, I want my money back!”
Astin says that he did read the books several times while shooting the films in New Zealand, since he had plenty of time on his hands, but his approach differed from most fans. “I didn’t really go into the world in the way that a lot of people who love Middle-earth love Middle-earth,” he tells me. “They they just fall into it, you know, and it manifests later in their lives as cosplay or whatever. But to me, I was looking through it like a miner going through a cave, trying to chip away and see what was working. It’s a different part of the brain that’s very analytical. I appreciated, obviously, the wonder of it all and the scope of it and everything else but I look at some of the the pop culture figures who are huge fans, the rock bands and Colbert and people like that, and I kind of just envied that experience.
“The books are this engine for imagery and and character and story,” he tells me. “I just think back to what it must have been like for Tolkien to to live a life that would allow him to have the imagination that he had and the the level of discipline that he had.”
It wasn’t until toys started coming out that he really felt that sense of joy many fans feel. “The first time I saw myself as a figure it was just so cool,” he says. “You know, you just couldn’t believe it. But then, in a sense, well, if they can make a figure of me, basically you can make a figure of anybody. We’re all special. I’m a very special person, I know, but I’m not Han Solo or one of those guys. But then, in a weird way, seeing the cards that people play with, and seeing just all the different iterations of it . . . it actually brings me into the wonderment. It’s just sort of pure enjoyment, instead of work satisfaction.”
I mention that I sometimes just watch the beginning of Fellowship Of The Ring because there’s something comforting about the Shire. “Of course,” Astin says. “It’s the place worth dying to save.”
I ask Astin what he thinks made the Jackson films such great adaptations. After all, there are lots of adaptations of beloved stories that fall flat. Astin says that when he first arrived in New Zealand “I watched everything and read everything and the Bakshi version, the animated version from the 70s, I remember thinking that what they did with the Ringwraiths was so cool, so innovative. But then the Hobbits were terrible.” He mimics the bumpkin way they spoke in the film. “And I remember saying, Peter, I really hope that’s not like . . . we don’t have to do that do we? And he sort of laughed, and he was like ‘No’.”
Astin says the filmmakers “had a sense of what feels heroic, what danger feels like, what the orcs and Uruk Hai” should be like and “the stakes of the world, the nature of good versus evil.” They also were able to convey the scope of Tolkien’s lore and convey a sense of history and grandeur.
“You know, one of the coolest moments that I loved was watching when the Fellowship started arriving in Rivendell,” Astin tells me, “and they were looking at the mural on the wall which depicts a history of the Ring. And you just get this feeling that it’s real, that the history is history, like these things happened, and the weight of what happened carries forth into this time, and what you’re doing now is going to affect what happens in the future, for good or ill. You know, in a way, it’s kind of like where we are right now, in our on planet Earth. Every decision every human being makes, when you zoom out, if lots of us are making those kinds of decisions, ultimately we’re going to end up in a better place, or we’re going to end up in a worse place. And if you don’t pay attention, if you live in your Shire, and you never come out of the Shire, you know, big decisions are happening around the world right now that will eventually impact you.”
Of course, the movies have affected people’s lives in profound ways, Astin notes. “I’ve had 25 years of people coming up to me telling me that Lord of the Rings helped them through a very traumatic time in their life, a loss of a loved one, a depression. The care that the filmmakers and the performers and everyone associated with the films, the level of intention and pride and work, craftsmanship and everything that goes into it is worthy of those people’s emotional connection to it. You make a promise to people: Come with us on this journey, and it’s going to be worth any part of yourself that you want to invest in it.”
Astin jokes that he’ll no doubt start seeing LEGO Lord of the Rings tattoos, especially when he visits Denmark later this year. “I’m kidding, but I’m not kidding,” he says. So many things in pop culture become part of our identities now. But there’s just something classic about Lord of the Rings. It’s why mythology exists. Mythology exists for us to be able to share stories with each other that can maybe frame things in ways that touch us and they feel like they’re connected to our lives.”
Astin says fans come up to him and say “that’s exactly what my life was, that’s exactly what my experience was, and I’m like, ‘Really? You had foam feet on and fake hair and, like, you know, you had a Styrofoam bat to use?’” he jokes. “But it doesn’t matter. Kids are so pure. When they play with these toys, or when grown ups play with their kids, with their LEGOs, their imagination is as meaningful to them in that moment as anything else that’s going on.”
One possible use parents might find with this new LEGO set is introducing their children to Middle-earth. “You want to talk about Lord of the Rings with your kid, sit there while your kid is putting these things together and read the book to them, you know, or have the movie on in the background.”
LEGOs weren’t the only toys the actor played with as a kid. When Astin was young, he loved Star Wars action figures. He’d use his dad’s Super Eight camera to make movies with the toys. “Cut to 20 years later, going down to New Zealand and you walk into a warehouse and see Minas Tirith three stories tall, and you could climb the ladder three stories. It’s scary when you get up to two stories on a ladder. Or the Mines of Moria,” he adds somewhat wistfully.
Astin says he’d like to be the ambassador for all future Lord of the Rings LEGO sets, but he’s not sure that’s going to happen. “You know, for my money, LEGO, now that they have the merchandising agreement and they can do Lord Of The Rings, they’re going to probably want some dumb elf to do a commercial for the next one.”
“A little Hobbit versus elf resentment here?” I joke.
“Yes, that crazy, tall, blond, gorgeous man,” Astin replies.
I mention that a Goonies pirate ship LEGO set would be cool, and maybe he could do the commercial for that. “Eventually,” he says, “I want every movie I’ve ever been in to be a LEGO set.”
A Hobbit can dream, after all.
The Lord of the Rings: The Shire LEGO set will be available for LEGO Insiders beginning April 2nd, and to everyone beginning April 5th. Anyone who purchases the set from LEGO Stores or LEGO.com between April 2nd – 8th will receive a free Sméagol & Déagol minibuild. The set costs $269.99/€269.99/£229.99.
I’ll be building The Shire while I rewatch The Lord Of The Rings trilogy for the umpteenth time. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll order the Rivendell set to go along with it. That one has elves, you know. “Wonderful folk, Elves, sir! Wonderful!”
