20 Things You Didn't Know About The Lord Of The Rings

18. The Mountains On Saturn€™s Moon Are Named After Tolkien€™s Work

Titan is Saturn€™s largest moon, and is very planet-like in its features: it has a seasonal climate that creates surface features similar to Earth€™s, including rivers, lakes, and, of course, mountains. Maybe because it€™s so Earth-like that astronomers can fulfill our fancy of a fantastical world by naming many of Titan€™s features after mythological and fantasy beings, such as craters after deities of wisdom and labyrinthi after planets from Dune. Most notably, its mountain ranges are named after mountains in Middle-earth, following a convention by the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature. Notable ones include the Erebor Mons, the Misty Montes, the Mithrim Montes, the Mindolluin Montes and, of course, the Doom Mons €“ appropriately suspected to be the highest peak on the vast moon.

17. Sean Connery Refused The Role Of Gandalf

There is no doubt in anyone€™s mind that Sir Ian McKellen was born to play the genial but powerful wizard Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films €“ but, bizarre as it seems now, he wasn€™t the first choice. No, the role of Gandalf was first offered to former James Bond Sean Connery, who turned it down after an initial offer of $30 million. Then, he was offered 15% of the films total profits, but he still turned it down. Even though there was no promise that these films would become as successful as they have back before 2001, this turned out to be a monumentally unfortunate choice, as that means that the trilogy would have earned Connery about 450 million dollars €“ more than any actor has ever been paid for one role. One might be wondering why on Earth Connery would refuse the brilliant role of the eccentric wizard: simply put, Connery has said that he didn€™t understand the part or the plot of the script. Even after reading the book, the script, and then watching the films. Fair enough?