No Objectivity: Top Ten Miscastings in Fantasy Movies
Genevieve Valentine
Casting makes a movie. Sometimes, casting makes a movie fall apart. Whether the producers owed a college friend a favor, the actor lost the bet, or ill-fated stars aligned, a lot of movies end up with an albatross of an actor who ruined the whole party for everyone. Below are ten of the worst, wildest, and weirdest miscastings in recent fantasy history, ranked by level of damage done.
10. Scarlett Johansson in The Prestige
The Prestige was a dark, twisting story of revenge. Christopher Nolan beautifully adapted the air of dark and gritty magic from the novel. Unfortunately, he must have been busy on script revisions when Scarlett Johansson was cast as Olivia Wenscombe, the fetching assistant who becomes the key link between Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale’s warring magicians. While she’s not as offensive here as she has been in…almost everything else she’s done, it’s hard to convince us you’re the apex of a love triangle if you look like the only thing you’re assisting is the laudanum trade.
Suggested replacement: Christina Hendricks. She’s got the turn-of-the-century hourglass that looks good on a corset, and could have brought a welcome intelligence to the role.
9. Vincent Perez, The Crow 2: City of Angels
It was a questionable sequel to begin with; could a franchise be built on a series of heroes whose only goal was to die? On the other hand, weirder things have happened, so they hired Mia Kirshner as a grown-up Sarah to tie the Crows together – and then hired Swiss historical-drama veteran Vincent Perez as the reincarnation of everyone’s favorite Gothic ass-kicker. No one seems to understand why, Perez least of all; his classy, befuddled stare haunts you long after the movie is over.
Suggested replacement: Trent Reznor. He can do a baleful stare as well as anyone living, and we know the guy’s not afraid of a little melodrama
8. Every Woman in Sin City (except Carla Gugino)
Besides the “you-know-better” factor of signing up for a movie that requires little more than leather chaps, Wonderbras, and wooden dialogue, almost every actress who appeared in the Sin City movie managed to suck eggs. (Carla Gugino squeaks past quality censors in her cameo appearance.) The rest of the cast – Rosario Dawson, Brittany Murphy, the chick from Gilmore Girls, and a collection of various models-turned-”actresses” – are in the movie as a warning to those who favor style over substance; all the black-and-white pulp glory in the world can’t save a flat, crappy acting job (or six).
Suggested replacement: Doesn’t matter. They’re just women; they’re all interchangeable. Right, Frank?
7. Jeremy Irons, The Time Machine
Jeremy Irons, who used to be an actor, shows up in this H. G. Wells adaptation as the meanest Cardassian of them all. Did he lose a bet?
Suggested Replacement: None. That’s what happens when you lose a bet, Jeremy.
6. Claire Danes, Stardust
Because nothing presents the magnetism and radiance of a fallen star like…Angela Chase? Wait, what? Was every actress in England busy when they cast this part? Oh, well, no use pointing fingers; in committing Danes’s lethargic, where-exactly-are-you-from performance to film, the moviemakers have probably been punished enough.
Suggested Replacement: If you needed a North American headliner who could actually act, you could have hit up Rachel McAdams
1 • Navigator said:
April 2nd, 2009 at 4:34 am, permalink
Casting makes a movie?
NO!
It’s the script. Always the script. Only the script.
2 • Amal El-Mohtar said:
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:21 am, permalink
Yes. Just — yes. To Everything. Especially your number 1, and the suggested replacement. YES. Si, Oui, Na3am, Ya, Da, Ie, all the lot.
3 • M.K. Hobson said:
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:33 am, permalink
You didn’t even have to narrow it down to a single movie where Tom Cruise is concerned … he’s a disaster in any fantasy/sci-fi movie he’s ever appeared in. Lestat? REALLY?
4 • Clint said:
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:48 am, permalink
Sorry, I missed out on the rest of the list. I can’t get past staring at Christina Hendricks’ picture. If she had been in it, The Prestige would have reached critical mass of awesome. Bale, Jackman, Hendricks and BOWIE!
5 • Barth Anderson said:
April 2nd, 2009 at 3:44 pm, permalink
Damn. That picture of Liv Tyler says it all. She looks like someone’s in the middle of asking her a tricky word problem.
6 • Barth Anderson said:
April 2nd, 2009 at 4:10 pm, permalink
And about young Tom Cruise? I would only allow him to be replaced with himself, now, as he is, in all his Shatner-esque, scene-chewing bluster. I lay awake at night praying there’s enough money left in America to make Tom Cruise return to the Legend world and create more stinky cheese for me to roll around in.
Hm. Think I’ll go plug in Legend right now and have myself a teary laugh jag.
7 • Ide Cyan said:
April 3rd, 2009 at 3:23 am, permalink
I wish Liv Tyler & Jennifer Connelly had switched their appearances in the Hulk movies.
8 • Dave said:
April 4th, 2009 at 8:36 am, permalink
Great list! I would move the Star Wars prequels to the number 1 position though. Those movies were just a massive failure to anyone older than 12.
9 • Cat C. said:
April 4th, 2009 at 6:14 pm, permalink
@ Ide: Awesome call!
And I pretty much could have done without the Star Wars prequels entirely, no matter who was in them. Although CGI paper dolls would have been pretty funny.
Also, the fact that they waited 6 years between filming Neverending Story (which was awesome) and Neverending Story II (which was awful) was a bad move because they had to re-cast all of the roles. I wish they had done the first and second movies closer together, and left out the cheesy “afraid of heights” subplot in the second movie. The book still winds hands down
Has anyone seen the third movie? Does it have any basis on the book whatsoever?
10 • Cat C. said:
April 4th, 2009 at 6:18 pm, permalink
And by “winds” I meant “wins” :0)
11 • James said:
April 5th, 2009 at 6:07 pm, permalink
The bottom half of this list makes me nod and go ‘Ok, good choice’ – the top half makes me role my eyes at pretension in it.
Claire Danes was excellent in Stardust as perfectly vapid and vacant. Most of the women in Sin City lived to the expectations of their book counterparts and surpassed them.
Vincent Perez wasn’t the problem with Crow 2. Crow 2 was the problem with Crow 2. How that piece of filmed garbage, meant to cash in on a successful cult hit, even makes a list with some of these films is questionable at best.
Lastly, none of the actors can truly be blamed for Star Wars Ep. 1. Given a script that wasn’t filled with sappiness and cgi over substance, maybe those actors might have shown a little more heart. Ewan MacGregor and Natalie Portman have the ability to act their asses off – so we can only assume that maybe there was a problem with WHAT they were given to act out.
12 • davien said:
April 6th, 2009 at 10:21 pm, permalink
Connelly? Seriously? And you want to complain about Claire Danes’s wooden vacancy?
And Trent Reznor? Are you serious?
More tragic to me is the utter interchangeability of Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan in LoTR. Really, they could have cast identical twins and I doubt most people would have noticed.
What about all of the Batman movies prior to Begins? Jim Carey? Arnold Schwartzenegger? Val Kilmer? GEORGE CLOONEY?
Or Ben Affleck as Daredevil? Nicholas Cage as Ghostrider (or anyone, really)?
Clearly I watch too many superhero movies. Heh.
13 • Barth Anderson said:
April 7th, 2009 at 9:52 am, permalink
James, you’re right about Star Wars (I-III). It’s hard to imagine any actor reviving that DOA, CG-suffocated corpse of series.
On the other hand? Imagine Episode IV (and V) without Harrison Ford.
14 • Rachel said:
April 7th, 2009 at 4:42 pm, permalink
@Cat C
I have seen the third Neverending Story movie, and I beg of you not to see it. Sebastian gets a stepsister, deals with a gang of bullies named the Nasties and some of the people from Narnia end up in the real world. It was just…~shudder~
15 • Rachel said:
April 7th, 2009 at 4:43 pm, permalink
I forgot to mention that it was based on the characters, and not on the book at all.
16 • Cat C. said:
April 7th, 2009 at 6:25 pm, permalink
@ Rachel:
Thank you for the warning! That sounds horrendous. I figured it would be pretty awful but I had this misplaced sense of incompleteness…”Well, I’ve seen the first and the second one so…” I’ll be sure to avoid it, “trilogy” be darned.
(Does it count as a trilogy if you run out of source material for the third and have to make the whole thing up? Let’s ask George Lucas…)
17 • Erin said:
April 8th, 2009 at 2:43 am, permalink
Jennifer Connelly would have been so much better as Arwen that I almost don’t want to even think about it or I’ll depress myself.
18 • Genevieve Valentine » Top Ten Miscastings in Fantasy Movies said:
April 8th, 2009 at 9:49 am, permalink
[...] latest column, Top Ten Miscastings in Fantasy Movies, is up at Fantasy [...]
19 • Rae Bryant said:
April 8th, 2009 at 5:37 pm, permalink
OMG! I could never quite put a finger on my problem with Liv as Arwen, and that pic cinches it. Jennifer Connelly is definitely the Elven Princess. I’ll forever see her face in that role now.
Was it Requiem for a Dream where Connelly got down and dirty? Ever since that role, I’ve been in total awe of her. Of course, I was always jealous of her in Labyrinth. She got screen time with Bowie and that package of his. What was it about Bowie in that movie? I can’t tell you how many adolescent dreams I had about him in that film. *Hee*
20 • The Great Geek Manual » Geek Media Round-Up: April 21, 2009 said:
April 21st, 2009 at 9:00 am, permalink
[...] Magazine share a list of the Top Ten Miscastings in Fantasy Movies. My favorite is number four: “Everyone in the Star Wars [...]
21 • RGombert said:
May 18th, 2009 at 8:52 am, permalink
Well this shows why you are not a casting director. You are dead wrong 6 out of 10 times (Prestige, Crow 2, Sin City, Stardust, Star Wars and LoTR).
Don’t quit your day job.
22 • Elihu said:
July 24th, 2009 at 4:41 pm, permalink
Trent Reznor doesn’t know the first thing about acting. The women of Sin City did what was expected of them – as you clearly realize from your parting shot at Frank Miller – and Alexis Bledel did it well. The wooden acting of the original Star Wars Trilogy didn’t prevent them from being seen as classics, so that tired and blanketing opinion is meaningless at best. And I’m not even sure what you were expecting for the Olivia Wenscombe role – besides a nice(?) physical feature and a characteristic irrelevant to role.
What’s really interesting about this is the bitter (and resentful?) voice of the writing that undermines any pretext of legitimacy in the arbitrary accusations.
Good show.
23 • K.L. Graham said:
September 7th, 2009 at 3:30 pm, permalink
Bravo Valentine, you have done it yet once again.
I agree with all of them, suprisingly, but since I never have watched at least five of these movies I have to say that my most favorite “miscasting” of all is the Lord of the Rings. Liv Tyler CANNOT act, and neither can Tom Cruise for that matter. Plus both of them are suited for more minor roles. Well, Lions and Lambs was pretty good for Cruise, but Liv Tyler should have been in a more, shall we say, nicer movie? You know, a date movie. Her face is too sweet for an elf’s.
And against what a lot of the comments are on this article, the cast DOES in fact make the movie. The plot, tone, scenery and the dialogue make the foundation, but the actors make the mountain come to Mohammed.
24 • onmars said:
January 3rd, 2010 at 11:59 am, permalink
I love Liv Tyler, but you’re too damn right for words.