Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly bookish meme created by Rukky @ Eternity Books and co-hosted by Aria @ Book Nook Bits and Dini @ Dinipandareads! Every Friday they have a different topic for participants to write about and discuss, e.g. like this post.

This week’s theme is about casting in (movie?) adaptations of books:

Casting in book-to-film adaptations is always a big topic, and recently, the Wuthering Heights movie starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi has been the source of a lot of controversy. Other 2026 high-profile adaptations include Project Hail Mary, out March 20th, and the new Hunger Games movie, set to release in the fall, both for which the casting has been received more positively. What is most important to you with casting for book-to-film adaptations? Is the perfect hair color, or right height or eyes always a must, or is personality more important? When are book-accurate looks in casting most important? What are your favorite—and least favorite—book-to-film adaptations when it comes to casting?

I must admit I don’t have a lot of skin in the game (again) because I don’t really watch movies very often — nor TV, to be fair. I have surprisingly seen Knives Out and Glass Onion, because I got curious enough about the classic mystery type setups they had going on, but otherwise I’m hard pressed to name anything particularly recent that I’ve seen. I still name Pacific Rim as a recent-ish movie I’ve seen and, uh, well…

It also doesn’t help that I don’t have a visual imagination at all: I’m completely aphantasic, right on the “5” end of the apple test scale, so I don’t really imagine characters in the way described. Instead I get more of a sense of them: you know how birdwatchers get the “jizz” of a bird? Something like that, I think.

I do love the old BBC adaptations of Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, so let’s turn to those for an idea of what I think about casting. The main players here are Ian Carmichael (in the black-and-white era) and Edward Petherbridge (in 1987) — I don’t know of any other adaptations, and I don’t know if I want to, because between them Carmichael and Petherbridge set a pretty high bar. Neither of them is quite the right physical type, but they each manage to capture different aspects of Peter’s manner perfectly. I can see Peter right away when I look at Petherbridge, but for Carmichael it takes seeing him in motion and hearing his voice.

The same is pretty much true of the way they speak, to be fair, but reversed: Carmichael needs only speak and immediately he sounds like Peter, while for Petherbridge it’s more the combination… But really, both of them are wonderful Lord Peters, and I delight in their performances.

Ian Carmichael also voices Lord Peter in the BBC radio adaptations, and they’re really good. The BBC often hits it out of the park on radio adaptations, or they did a few decades ago: The Lord of the Rings had a glorious adaptation, and even Andy Serkis (who did a great job as Gollum) can’t quite dislodge my conviction that the radio adaptation’s Gollum is the Gollum. On the other hand, the radio adaptation voice of Aragorn strikes me as wrong every time, though I do get into it as the adaptation rolls along. When it comes to the movie, by contrast, Viggo Mortensen was instantly Aragorn to me: manner, voice, clothes, the way he held himself… Perfect.

(That said, I was disappointed by the movie version of Faramir and never really reconciled with that portrayal, particularly with the changes made to the character for the sake of screen adaptation. Something too “soft” about him, and no, I can’t explain that statement any further.)

There are also times when I’m very sceptical of casting, like casting David Tennant as Crowley and Michael Sheen as Aziraphale in the Good Omens series, but makeup, costuming and pure skill from the actors make it fit like they were perfect all along. I’ve heard the same about the adaptation of Martha Wells’ Murderbot, where Alexander Skarsgård has been able to win over people who were deeply sceptical; I’m definitely curious what I’ll think when I get round to it, if I ever do.

(NB: I’m aware of the allegations against Neil Gaiman. Good Omens was also Terry Pratchett’s — some say the majority of it was Terry Pratchett’s — and I think the TV show was also so much more than Gaiman, though I acknowledge his heavy involvement. I’m not sure if I’ll watch the remainder or rewatch the first two series, and at the moment I don’t expect to. All the same, David Tennant’s Crowley was perfect to me, and I don’t want Gaiman’s misdeeds to take that achievement away from Tennant. Still, I think making this acknowledgement is important.)

All in all, I think I can forgive a lot of infidelity to details like hair colour, eye colour, skin colour, etc, as long as the actors can capture something fundamental about the character. Some can do both, like Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn or Essie Davis as Phryne Fisher, while some can carry the day with voice and mannerisms like Ian Carmichael as Peter Wimsey.

Sorry, though, David Wenham. You just aren’t Faramir. I’m sure you’re perfectly nice, but you’re not Faramir.

It’s Monday, so time for more of the Fantasy With Friends discussion meme (hosted at Pages Unbound). This week’s discussion theme iiiis:

“The Chosen One” is an often-mocked trope in fantasy literature. Do you frequently run across this trope in the books you read, or has it been a while since you encountered it? Do you dislike it, or do you think it can be done well? Are there any interesting twists on the Chosen One you’ve seen?

I think the “Chosen One” trope can be a lot of fun whether it’s played straight, subverted, or dissected. I’m actually having trouble thinking up examples right now where it’s played straight, because that was more common in a different era of my reading, and it also depends on how literal you want to be. To hark back to Tolkien, since we were talking about it last week, was Frodo chosen, as Gandalf suggests? Or did he just put his hand up and take it on because he was a good person? Is it kinda both? I know a lot of people read it as Frodo being Chosen, but does that mean he doesn’t have a choice…?

Playing it straight but digging into what it might mean to be Chosen, Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children books try to examine the impact on the the type of Chosen Ones who travel to another world (like the Pevensie kids in the Narnia books, and other portal fantasies), and what happens once their part in the stories is done. What happens if they stop fitting the role, or falter, or slip out of their world?

In more recent reading, I liked the way that Caitlin Rozakis’ The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association handled it. There’s a prophecy, there’s a constant stream of large and small disasters, and the protagonist’s kid is being whispered about as a bringer of calamity (while others are being positioned as potentially Chosen Ones to act in opposition to her). But (spoilers ahead) the prophecy isn’t like that at all, the kids are all just kids, and someone’s benefiting from pretending things might be otherwise.

Another way to play with the Chosen One trope is the accidentally Chosen One. I’m thinking of The Other World’s Books Depend on the Bean Counter, where the magical kingdom of Romany use magic to snatch a girl from modern Japan. She’s their Chosen One, but they inadvertently bring along Seiichirou Kondou as well because he sees her being dragged into a magical portal and begging for help, and goes to rescue her. In the end, he’s as instrumental as she is to solving the problem they needed a Chosen One for, if not more — and he makes sure they will never need to do so again, fixes the kingdom’s finances, and pushes along massive technological advances.

Along the way, Seiichirou also warns the girl who is the Chosen One not to blindly help the kingdom without examining what they’re asking of her, which… she doesn’t take well, but is actually a good point. What if you’re chosen for something awful? I think “the Chosen One doesn’t want to be a Chosen One” (for whatever reason) is probably a bit overplayed itself by now in simple forms, but I can think of a bunch of fun ways to play with it still…

On another tangent, I love that in Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint, Huiwon gets sponsored by a righteous “constellation”, and gets a skill called “Time of Judgement”, which allows her to fight and destroy evildoers. It’s not quite the same as the Chosen One trope, but she’s chosen by the constellation and essentially becomes his incarnation, so it’s close. The problem is, “Time of Judgement” will only activate when approved by her sponsor and constellations aligned with him, and Huiwon’s definition of evil and evildoers is different from theirs. Early in the story, she frequently tries to call on “Time of Judgement” and is declined, even when she sees things she feels are deeply wrong. So what if you’re a Chosen One, but your intentions don’t fully align with those of whoever is doing the choosing?

So… I think there are reasons to mock or avoid the trope, because it can be really overused and under-examined. For me, though, there are so many ways to put a fun spin on it, or dig into what it might actually mean for the characters, and otherwise do surprising and interesting things with it. I won’t say I’d never read stuff with a Chosen One trope, but I do prefer it when people are consciously playing with it and teasing out the implications!