The Greatest Miscasting Mishaps In History - Page 2

Giving an Oscar-winning performance in CAPOTE, according to my calculations.

 

Stumbled across a movie called FADE TO BLACK where Danny Huston plays Orson Welles in a fictional adventure. He'd have been good.

 

Quote:

 

To begin with, it's not a very good movie.  This fact is exacerbated by the fact that its lead (Freddy hasn't yet stepped to the foreground in the second installment) is, in my opinion, hugely unlikeable.  The film's saving grace--the thing that still makes it watchable (besides exploding parakeets, I mean)--is the homosexual (un)subtext.  While, as you note, the film itself pushes that subtext into the realm of flat-out text, Patton's performance as a closeted gay man (which I don't necessarily believe was a deliberate acting choice) is a huge factor in bringing the watchability.

 

I'm not sure if that makes any more sense, but that was the idea I was trying to convey.  Patton is simultaneously miscast AND hugely entertaining.

 

 

Sophie Okonedo! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD SOPHIE OKONEDO!
 

 

 

 

Also known as the 'Tara Reid playing a curator' Paradigm.

 

I'll go on record that I liked her in Spider-Man 3, but then, the fact that I like that film altogether is an abberation for most.

 

The DC fixes it a lot, actually.

And frankly, i actually rather like him in Elizabethtown as well. It's a slight part, but he has a good handle on it, and it's the warmest I've seen him be ever.

 

Angela Bassett

Sanaa Lathan

Vanessa Williams

Rosario Dawson

Salli Richardson

Aaliyah

 

Off the top of my head.

 

The problem's not Berry, though. They eventually got her look right and nixed the accent. The problem's that they gave her NOTHING to do.

 

 

Black was bad in KING KONG, but I can see why he seemed good on paper. He just can't actually act. Just one of many bad decisions that Peter Jackson made on Kong. That's what happens when you go from zero to sixty in the Lucas lane.

Yeah, I will never understand the complete internet hate for Kirsten Dunst in the Spider-Man films. Like at all. I thought she was great in all three movies, but just had very little to do.

keeping somewhat with the spirit of the original Guzman/Count of Monte Cristo post:

 

 

 

 

and

 

 

 

THISH DIALECT ISH MY BITCH

I love me some Kevin Spacey, but I hope there's still someone who's been hired to slap him across the mouth once a month in perpetuity for casting himself as Bobby Darin.

 

 

But, respectfully, when they did give her something to do in, X-3, she was awful, right?

But everyone was awful in X3, even Patrick Stewart seemed lost in that movie. The only people who seemed to give a damn in X3 were Jackman (who would probably give 110% at his own execution) and McKellan (which is actually kind of tragic).

This is the best suggestion I've heard yet. That would have been great. My problem was Black never really sold that Speilbergian awe at the sight of dinos, but I think Hoffman could have pulled it off
 

 

Honestly all that time on the docks and the VENTURE were what I enjoyed best. I love films that build up the anticipation and mystery of a journey into the unknown. The stuff with the vaudeville act did feel like needless padding though, at least from my perspective.
 

 

Whats tragic about that? Magneto and Mystique are the constants in this series: The two characters they have never fucked up.

Because McKellan is giving it his all in a film that has some really ugly politics. McKellan was really actively interested in the subtext of mutants as homosexuality and worked really closely with Singer on the first two films. The third film is essentially a movie about a weaponised cure for mutation and our heroes fighting for the government to cure their populace. The mutant cure is essentially Jesus Camp in a syringe.

 

Godfather 3 has a plethora of WTF casting. George Hamilton? Father Guido Sarducci??? Even Mantegna's villain was incredibly weak.
 

 

Recently, TNT has been playing Valkryie, the Bryan Singer Nazi thriller, on a loop. It may be the only film about Nazis that doesn't feature any Germans. Tom Cruise is so incapable of a German accent that he simply doesn't use one, and the rest of the Nazi high command falls under the old-school Hollywood casting edict of "every person in Europe has a British accent."

Not to bash Keanu, since I often enjoy the guy, but his Dracula performance is matched, and perhaps exceeded, by his hopelessness in Much Ado About Nothing.

 

And, of course, even though he turned in a good performance in a decently entertaining film, he should never have been cast as John Constantine.

Hayden Christensen in the prequels.  Granted, there's too much wrong with the films to put it on him.  It's just that the guy does not have the presence or the voice (that naturally whiny and petulant voice) to play the lead in anything.

 

Which is why he works so well in Shattered Glass.

Does Will Smith belong for Wild Wild West? I mean, it's mostly a case of the whole thing being misbegotten in the first place, but I wonder if a better movie might have emerged if they hadn't been making "A Will Smith Blockbuster."

 

I literal LOL'd when Tom Wilkenson made Cruise "HEIL HITLER!" with his nub. 

 

But yeah, you're spot on. Loved how they tried to do a jedi mind trick by having Cruise narrate in German for some seconds; only for it to gradually segue into English. 

And since we're talking Bryan Singer Nazi movies, Brad Renfro was out of his depth in Apt Pupil, I think.

Having never read a Hellblazer comic, and not knowing anything about John Constantine, I can say that I unabashedly love that movie. It's one of my favorite Keanu roles.

And while I like but don't love "The Town", I really really REALLY loathe Blake Lively in that flick. It's a movie filled with some pretty good performances, and she just sinks it for me every time she pops up. The squinty eyes, pursed lips, and forced Boston accent.....ugh. 

 

This was terrible...

 

 

And yet, I'm not up in arms over...

 

 

Maybe there's power in that mullet.

Yeah, that's the funny bit: it's probably one of the most "successful" bits of miscasting I've seen. More than anything else, it's like High Fidelity: they did an amazing job of Americanizing source material whose setting and characterization would seem inseparable from their British roots, and both films actually came out pretty well.

 

 

To be fair to Costner, who is no beefcake, he's a tick up that ladder from Gere, whose character should be more physically imposing than Robin Hood in the first place.  He should be big and square-jawed and handsome, but for some reason they went for pretty and soft-spoken.  If they were similarly miscasting a remake of First Knight today, they'd be shoving Orlando Bloom into that Chris Hemsworth-shaped hole
 

 

But even Bloom would work better than Gere IMO. Bloom plays a Brit just fine because well... duh. But I also think it's Gere's baggage as well. Not to mention his age and terrible dye job. And as much as I love all things Connery, I think he's too old to play Arthur here (will have to research some lore to confirm), but it also forces an older Lancelot. Gere as Lancelot comes across as some sort of manufactured casting to appeal to women ("Chicks dig Pretty Woman!") and I think it fails as a result (course I probably was not the main demographic then). Who else was on their wishlist... Swayze (Dirty Dancing!)? Kevin Bacon (Footloose!)? Nic Cage (Moonstruck!)?

 

It's just so... weird. But your're onto something here with the "pretty and soft-spoken" thing. Maybe as a fan of Arthurian legend and the fact that I'm a man finds something about that threatening. Being cuckolded by "Gerbil Guy" comes across as super-insulting. I must be projecting. ;)
 

 

I haven't seen the entire movie, but I've seen enough clips to know that casting John Travolta and Lily Tomlin as lovers in Moment By Moment was a bad idea:

 

 

 

 

The director's cut of Kingdom of Heaven makes it into something of a flawed classic, but yeah I don't like Bloom much in the movie at all. Balian's supposed to be a guy who's dealing with a lot of internal issues and somehow eventually comes into his own as somebody who can functionally be a leader of men, and Bloom just can't sell that at all. He doesn't seem like somebody wrestling with demons, or choices that could end in tragedy, or a guy who could lead people to resist some horrific siege. He seems like a kid constantly out of his depth who nobody could really have much respect for. And it makes moments where Ghassan Massoud or Alexander Siddig look at him as some worthy rival come off a little weaker as a result.

 

Admittedly I don't think Paul Bettany would have been much better in that role. And at the risk of coming across as boring? I'm totally willing to state that Russell Crowe would have been my logical pick. They'd have had to make Balian older*, but Crowe at least when he's on is capable of giving a performance that's subtle AND makes you think a bunch of battle-hardened knights would say "Yeah, I think this guy should be the boss."

 

 

Or maybe I'm just desperately wishing Hollywood would make my "Sam Peckinpah in Medieval times" movie.

 

 

*This would also probably require that the blacksmith backstory, and Liam Nesson as his father be taken out. I'm cool with that. Because even the Director's Cut doesn't sell me on how Balian can kick ass so well, and I'm way more interested in the knight stuff than how one goes about becoming one in the first place. Even more so when it starts up like a Robert Jordon novel.

I actually found Guzman to be pretty darn (intentionally) funny in COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO

"I go to Paris, bam bam bam, back before weeks end!"

I've been looking over the prequels of late and while, yes, he just can't handle it, I have to wonder if even Lawrence Olivier could have delivered "From MY point of view the JEDI are evil!" Someone needed to Harrison Ford that line. Jesus Christ!

 

I'm not one of those "close the thread" types, but Jesus tapdancing christ...

 

I've always thought it would have helped if they hadn't so obviously hung the "bad guy" sign on the priest and the "good guys" signs on the Muslim characters. Or at least painted them in less vibrant colors.

Edited by Jeb - 9/13/11 at 3:29pm

 

She's a psycho stalker to Bloom, yes. But as you said, that's not on her but Crowe's script. Ditto Spider-Man 3 where they needlessly made MJ a pain-in-the-ass retconning everything she said (and did) at the end of the second film just for the sake of more B and C plots to fill the run-time. She was perfectly fine in the first two films.

So...I am confused on the focus of this thread:

 

1)This thread is for monumental, hyperbole spewing miscasts of which the likes of mankind shall never recover  (Paul Reubens as Gandalf, for example)

 

OR

 

2)This thread is for complaining that actors were 'meh' and XXX would have been better?  (The Avengers with Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman. Uma is no Diana Riggs, but neither should the filmakers suffer eternal damnation of viewing of Queen Latifah's Taxi)

 

We seem to be doing a bit of  both and before I throw some ideas out, I wanted to be sure. 

 

1) I say whatever makes for interesting discussion. As a great man once said, "Don't cost nuthin'."

 

2) You're evidently a most charitable and forgiving soul.

Congratulations.   You win the thread.

 

I would also say DiCaprio as Howard Hughes if I never saw the movie.   But I did and he acted his ass out of a miscasting and got to inspired casting.

 

Agree, I always found The Aviator to be quite underrated.

 

I went through a long phase where I felt DiCaprio was miscast in everything, but the guy's good. I find him similar to Brad Pitt, a one-time "pretty boy" whose transformed into someone I'm eager to see because of the scripts he chooses.

 

Back on topic, Mickey Rooney as an Asian in Breakfast in Tiffany's is so embarrassing that it destroys the rewatchability of that film for me. This topic has gotten somewhat nebulous, but if the role kills the film completely, surely that counts, right?
 

 

Somewhere for a reason she cannot explain, Angela Bassett feels a single tear slowly roll down her face.

If you haven't already Laura, head over to the KoH:DC chewer discussion. A chewer by the name of Xion makes a spirited defense of Blooms performance within the context of the themes and underpinnings of the story that actually made me reassess his performance somewhat and made for a more enjoyable film for me.

 

I have no idea if this is true, but I always loved the story that the Coen Brothers hired Josh Brolin thinking he was his father James Brolin and just rolled with it.

 

http://www.wildbluffmedia.com/2007/10/17/coen-brothers-cast-wrong-brolin-in-no-country-for-old-men/

 

 

 

I've heard this a bunch of times, but considering that Llwellyn Moss is 30 in the original book I've always taken it with a grain of salt.

I seem to remember that hiring Angela Basset in the role was almost as a no brainer as casting Patrick Stewart as Prof. X.    Berry was just never right for the part..

 

It sounds like classic Coen bullshit to me, they love fucking with people like that. Bless 'em.
 

 

Jeb, I would like to point out the existence of the war mongering Muslim leader who tries to bully Saladin into declaring war on Christendom. The one that Ghassan Massoud tells off by twice cutting him short with the phrase "thank you for your visit". A great acting moment, I might add

The film spends less time with the Muslims and therefore I think it would have been difficult to create a Muslim character that could act as a fully formed counter point to the cowardly priest, but I feel like Scott did manage to do a solid job of showing that the same forces of bigotry and greed were there on both sides as a constant threat to peace

 

 

 

I like the opinion, I really do, but I dunno if I totally agree with it.

 

That could be my hang-up though. Most everything with Balian is internalized, from his religious turmoil, to his thoughts on the kingdom. So I get the parts of the performance that are supposed to be pensive, or thoughtful, or reactions to somebody else. But at a certain point in the movie he's also got to be able to get an entire city rallied behind him to battle a giant Arab army led by a guy who everybody knows is a confirmed badass and is also very much in the whole "fire and revenge" state of mind at the time. And he just doesn't sell that part of the character to me. And it's why I feel that they really needed an actor who could nail the thoughtful aspect to the character and the eventual man of action part of the character.

 

 

Good post though!

 

 

nevermind

Sophia Coppola as Mary Corleone in The Godfather 3.  She was just awkward and not very believable.  It needed someone who could create some sexual chemistry.  I think she kinda ruined the film.

George Lazenby as James Bond.

I was about to post a rebuttal about this, but then I realised that everything I adore about On Her Majesty's Secret Service has nothing to do with Lazenby. You could have a plank of wood in that film and all the teritary elements would make it amazing.

Regarding Valkyrie, and not intending to defend Cruise in any way ever, but the German accent point is a non-starter.  The characters are diagetically presumed to be speaking their native language, so it wouldn't make any sense for them to be speaking with imperfect accents.  If it were a movie about German people speaking English, then they would logically be expected to speak with German accents, but it's a movie about German people speaking German, which happened to be filmed in English, and thus the characters should naturally speak in accents native to some part of the English-speaking world.