Karl Urban's resume shouldn't be real.
Lord of the Rings. Star Trek. Star Wars. Marvel. He's the only living actor who's appeared in all four of the biggest sci-fi franchises in cinema history. Combined box office north of $5 billion.
In Ragnarok he shaved his head, gained 20 pounds of bulk, and played a coward who dies holding twin assault rifles named "Des" and "Troy." In The Boys he spent five seasons as the most compelling antihero on television, and the final episode aired six days ago.
In between those two roles he starred in Dredd. The entire film. Never removed the helmet. The audience never saw his eyes. Most actors at his level would have demanded the reveal. Urban kept it on because that's what the character required.
He started on Xena: Warrior Princess in New Zealand. Taika Waititi called him for Ragnarok and said he'd be working with Cate Blanchett. Urban's response: "Sign me up. I don't need to read anything."
$20 million net worth across a career where he's never been the lead franchise face. Always the second or third name on the poster. Always in a different body. The Kiwi character actor who quietly assembled the most impossible filmography in Hollywood and nobody talks about it because he disappears into every role.
That's the whole trick. You can't recognize him because he's actually acting.
In 1926, a 16-year-old in Queensland tried to club a cassowary to death. It didn't work. He fell. The bird kicked him in the neck with its 5-inch inner claw. Only one other person has been killed by a cassowary since.
That second death happened in Florida in 2019. A 75-year-old man who raised one as a pet fell inside its pen. The bird reached him before he could get back up. Ostriches kill 2 to 3 people every year in South Africa.
The reputation comes from the anatomy. The inner claw is 5 inches long, made of keratin (the same material as your fingernails), and kept sharp by the forest floor. The bird weighs as much as a grown man. It can outrun Usain Bolt and jump 5 feet straight up without taking a step.
It also looks like one of the closest things we have to a living dinosaur. In 2013, scientists in southern China were digging under a train station and pulled out a nearly complete dinosaur skeleton. The bony helmet on its head was almost exactly the same shape as the bony helmet on top of a cassowary. Same air pockets inside, same keratin shell on the outside. That dinosaur died 72 million years ago. The bird still wears the same helmet.
A 1999 Australian study in the Journal of Zoology looked at 221 cassowary attacks in Queensland. 150 of those were on humans. 75 percent of the birds had been hand-fed by tourists beforehand. Only 1 of those 150 attacks killed the person. The rest were mostly birds walking up to demand food after losing their fear of people.
The cassowary is endangered. Fewer than 5,000 southern cassowaries are left in the wild. Cars kill 55 percent of them. Dogs kill another 18 percent.
And the rainforest needs them alive. A cassowary swallows fruit whole and walks for miles, passing the seeds out in its droppings along the way. One rare Australian tree has seeds that sprout only 4 percent of the time when planted normally. Run those same seeds through a cassowary's gut first, and 92 percent of them sprout. Scientists have been trying to copy the effect in a lab for years. Nobody can figure out what the bird is doing.
The claw is for the chicks. Cassowary fathers raise their babies alone for 9 months, and the rainforest is full of things that want to eat them.
atención a esta masterclass:
quiere mandar el balón a la afición, primero le da con la derecha y se le va hacia atrás, luego le pega un voleón con la izquierda y revienta a un notas que estaba por ahí y finalmente la saca del estadio JAJAJAJAJAJAAJAJJA