When you see Liam Neeson‘s name attached to a project, there’s a 90% chance that it’s going to be an action thriller of some description, where the actor plays a character on either side of the law who ends up being forced to dust off their skills to combat a threat to his life, or he gets lured out of retirement to pull off one last job.
Indeed, the veteran action hero can currently be seen in The Marksman, the number one movie in America, where he portrays a Marine who needs to dust off his skills to combat a threat when a young boy on the run from a vicious drug cartel stumbles onto his path. However, when it comes to mega budget effects-heavy blockbusters, you can almost guarantee that the 68 year-old will be cast as a wizened mentor of some sort.
We’ve seen it in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, Kingdom of Heaven, Batman Begins, The Chronicles of Narnia trilogy, The A-Team, Battleship, Men in Black: International and the Titans duology to name just a few. In the latter, the actor was clearly having a whale of a time suiting up in Zeus’ armor, complete with huge fake beard, to chew on the scenery and get the best line in the first installment when he ordered the release of the Kraken.
The historical fantasy epics were big hits at the box office, too, with Clash and Wrath combining to earn almost $800 million, and in a recent interview, Liam Neeson somewhat surprisingly revealed that Zeus was the one character from his back catalogue that he’d love to reprise the most. Whether it ends up happening or not is up for debate, but there’ve been rumblings that he’s being eyed for a different Zeus in Wonder Woman 3, so maybe he’s subtly hinting at what’s to come.