5. Jennifer Beals in The Bride
This cult favorite suffers from a terminal case of The 80s, specifically in the casting of Jennifer Beals as the Bride of Frankenstein. Clancy Brown’s Viktor is a unique, humanizing and humorous take on the lovestruck-monster archetype, and Sting, though never an Oscar contender, does at least know how to look psychotic and aristocratic at the same time. Beals, however, is a hot mess; from her too-precocious innocence at the beginning to her laugh-out-loud protestations of independence at the movie’s climax, she looks like a refugee from a high school acting camp, and singlehandedly brings this B-movie down to the C-list.
Suggested replacement: Bridget Fonda. She’s got a soft spot for B-movies, she can fake a better accent, and when she hits you I bet it actually hurts.
4. Everyone in the Star Wars prequels
Oh, you know it, and they know it, too.
Suggested replacement: A bunch of CGI paper dolls. No one will notice.
3. Tom Cruise, Legend
This dark fairy tale eschewed computer effects for more realistic smoke-and-mirrors, and has stood the test of time in every respect except one; its hero, played by the chiseled (and wooden) Tom Cruise. His mid-80s surfer-corporate dialogue manages to yank the viewer out of the magic, no matter how hard everyone else is trying.
Suggested replacement: Daniel Day-Lewis has the same aristocratic profile and lanky build. Bonus: Daniel Day-Lewis can act.
2. Keanu Reeves, Constantine
Casting Keanu Reeves as England’s grumpiest underworld private eye singlehandedly turned this demon-choked, angel-riddled redemption story into The Matrix: Revelations.
Suggested replacement: I understand not wanting to cast Sting in a big-budget actioner (he’s still recovering from all that thespianism in The Bride), but why not bring in Sean Bean? He’s appropriately grizzled. Plus, actually English!
1. Liv Tyler in The Lord of the Rings
So Peter Jackson hired half a dozen people to make mithril by hand, but figured that the girl from the Aerosmith videos was the best choice to play the most beautiful elf maiden in the world. Can’t win ‘em all, I guess. The gormless elf-maiden blanded through her scenes in the first film; thankfully, after backlash, Jackson cut Arwen out of Helm’s Deep (!) and gave her a subplot about feeling dizzy that we could all skip on our Special Edition DVDs. It’s a bizarre casting error from the guy who had the foresight to pick unknowns for several key roles (Orlando Whom?); seriously, was every other actress in the world busy?
Suggested replacement: Jennifer Connelly. She has a handle on subdued, mature pathos, and her bone structure is disgusting. Elf-queen, indeed.
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Casting makes a movie?
NO!
It’s the script. Always the script. Only the script.
Yes. Just — yes. To Everything. Especially your number 1, and the suggested replacement. YES. Si, Oui, Na3am, Ya, Da, Ie, all the lot.
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?
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!
Damn. That picture of Liv Tyler says it all. She looks like someone’s in the middle of asking her a tricky word problem.
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.
I wish Liv Tyler & Jennifer Connelly had switched their appearances in the Hulk movies.
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.
@ 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?
And by “winds” I meant “wins” :0)
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.
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.
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.
@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~
I forgot to mention that it was based on the characters, and not on the book at all.
@ 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…)
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.
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*
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.
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.
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.
I love Liv Tyler, but you’re too damn right for words.
A few comments:
-I thought Liv Tyler did alright as Arwen, but I agree that Jennifer Connelly would have been better.
-Claire Danes did a fantastic job in Stardust!
-I kind of liked Tom Cruise in Legend, but I suspect that’s because I thought he was so pretty.
Everything else I either agree with or haven’t seen.