The 411 Top 5 08.01.08: Week 124

Posted by Trevor Snyder on 08.01.2008

The Top 5 Worst Re-Castings

Today sees the long-awaited(?) release of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, the third film in the popular Universal series. You might have noticed that the film's numerous trailers and TV spots are focusing rather heavily on the characters of Rick O'Connell (Brendan Fraser) and his grown son Alex (Luke Ford), and not so much on Rick's wife, Evelyn. That's of course because they're trying not to remind people that Rachel Weisz decided not to return to the character that made her name. And while I'm not sure her absence will necessarily have a negative effect on the film's box office, there is some question about whether her replacement, Maria Bello, will be able to adequately fill her shoes.

Luckily, they do have some very recent history on their side. The film currently dominating the box office, The Dark Knight, has shown that a film can actually benefit from a bit of re-casting, as long as the new actress turns out to be the right person for the job, and is up to the challenge of recreating a role already started by another. I'm of course talking about Melinda McGraw, who in The Dark Knight stepped bravely into the role of Jim Gordon's wife, Barbara – a role so memorably portrayed by Ilyssa Fradin in Batman Begins.

Oh, yeah, and there was also Maggie Gyllenhaal taking over as Rachel Dawes, if you really want to nitpick.

Anyway, it's always a risk when a franchise decides to re-cast a particular character. As we showed in last week's column, sometimes that risk pays off. But then there are the instances where the opposite is true, and this week we'd like to re-visit some of those moments, with a look at:

THE TOP 5 WORST RE-CASTINGS



Trevor Snyder

HONORABLE MENTIONS

George Clooney as Batman in Batman & Robin - George Clooney is definitely a better actor than either Michael Keaton or Val Kilmer, and I have no doubt that he could probably be a pretty good Batman in an actual decent film. Oddly enough, though, it's the very fact that Clooney is a good actor that is probably the reason his performance here is so lame. Clooney almost certainly could tell this material was below him, and responded by practically sleepwalking through his scenes as Batman (his Bruce Wayne really wasn't that bad), which made the flick even worse than it already was. Don't get me wrong, this movie was doomed from the start. But imagine if, instead of Clooney, the lead had gone to a less-serious actor who might have been willing to play along with the cheesiness of it all...like, say, a Bruce Campbell. It wouldn't be a good film, but it would be infinitely more watchable.

John Shepard as Tommy Jarvis in Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning - True, the Friday the 13th series has never really seen a great performance anyway. And yeah, Shepard's version of the character was mentally damaged and not required to do much but stand there and look worried (I think he has about 10 lines in the whole film). And then there's the fact that role was originated by Corey freakin' Feldman, so it's not like Shepard had an amazing performance to try to live up to. Still, he was boring as hell in the part, and it was a great relief when the role was re-cast again – to the likable Thom Matthews – for the next film in the series.

THE TOP 5

5. Roger Moore as James Bond

Sure, I know that there are a lot of fans of Moore's Bond…most likely people who were first introduced to the character through his films. That's certainly understandable, but in my opinion Moore was a poor choice for the role from the beginning. True, he started off well enough, in Live and Let Die, but it was all downhill from there. With Moore in the role, you could never quite take the character seriously, and thus the series followed suit, eventually veering too far into "goofy comedy" territory. Plus, Moore looked a little old when he first came onboard. By the time we got to the travesty that was A View to a Kill, it felt like we were watching Bond's grandfather in action.

4. Ben Affleck as Jack Ryan in The Sum of All Fears

If Roger Moore was too old to play Bond, here we have the exact opposite problem with Affleck as Jack Ryan, America's attempt to have their own cool Bond-like character (at least until the Bourne series. Now I understand that this film was supposed to be a Casino Royale-like new beginning, showing Ryan's first big adventure. The question is, why? The series was fine as it was, with both Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford turning in very good performances as Ryan (I prefer Baldwin, if you're wondering). Now, I'm not gonna jump on the anti-Affleck bandwagon. I don't think he's nearly as bad as many often claim he is. In fact, I think he's a decent enough actor (with an unfortunate habit of choosing bad scripts), and he seems like a pretty cool guy, to boot. But he was definitely the wrong choice for this part. He seemed completely out of place in the role, and it's no surprise that the Jack Ryan franchise effectively came to an end here.

3. Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane in Superman Returns

Bryan Singer's Superman Returns was meant to serve as a new Superman III - a direct continuation of the first two Christopher Reeve films. With that in mind, Singer made sure he found an actor – Brandon Routh – who both looked like Reeve and was able to bring the same warmth and strength to the role. Likewise, with Kevin Spacey he found a worthy heir to Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor. So how on earth did he manage to botch the Lois Lane casting so badly? Yes, Bosworth is nice to look at (at least whenever she's not in one of her "human twig" phases), but she's also incredibly boring. She delivered none of the same humor of charisma that Margot Kidder originally brought to the role. It was Kidder's personality that helped you believe Supes could fall for this woman. I'm not sure why he would bother with a dead fish like Bosworth's Lane.

2. Sofia Coppola as Mary Corleone in The Godfather Part III

Winona Ryder was originally set to play this crucial part, but dropped out at the last minute. I'm not sure of the exact reasons – I've heard both that it was due to illness and that it was so she could go film Edward Scissorhands. Whatever the case, I do know that Francis Ford Coppola reacted in pretty much the worst possible way. Rather than look for a new capable actress to take over, he simply said "hey, my daughter is age appropriate…why don't we just use her?" What resulted is one of the most laughably bad performances in cinema history. Sofia is not the only problem with this gigantic letdown of a film, but she's definitely one of the big ones. I'm convinced that every great movie she directs nowadays is one more instance of her trying to apologize to movie fans the world over.

1. Charlie Schlatter as Ferris Bueller in Ferris Bueller (The TV Series)

It's one thing to re-cast roles like James Bond or Batman. These are iconic, literary characters that hold up to various interpretations. I'm not sure that's the case with a character like Ferris Bueller. Ferris Bueller's Day Off was very-much a product of its time, and I think we would all agree that Matthew Broderick is Ferris Bueller. So it's safe to say this series was just a bad idea from the start. To make matters worse, though, one of the charisma-free Schlatter's first onscreen acts as Bueller was to cut a cardboard cut-out of Broderick in half with a chainsaw, as if to say that Schlatter was the true Bueller now, and Broderick is old news. Guess how that one worked out? Broderick's Bueller might have taken a day off, but Schlatter's was soon gone for good (not one of my better jokes, I admit, but still a lot funnier than anything you would have seen on this crap show).



Bryan Kristopowitz

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Damon Evans as Lionel Jefferson in The Jeffersons: Damon Evans replaced Mike Evans (they're not related) when Mike left the show to work as a writer on Good Times. Damon was on the show for four years, and while he tried very hard, he just didn't really work on the show (I don't understand why he lasted as long as he did). He was no Mike Evans. He didn't have the same chemistry with Sherman Helmsley and Isabel Sanford. Mike Evans eventually returned to the role when Good Times was cancelled, but it was too late, the damage had already been done, and the Lionel character sort of just disappeared after a while.

Judy Ann Elder as Harriet Winslow in Family Matters: Elder, of course, took over for Jo Marie Payton in the last year of the show, when it moved from ABC to CBS. I don't remember exactly why Payton didn't make the trip to CBS with Reginal Vel Johnson and Jaleel White and the rest (I'm going to assume it was a money issue), but, in retrospect, CBS should have given her a million dollars an episode if she wanted it because Elder was just terrible. She was boring, she didn't really gel with Vel Johnson, and it was awkward seeing her as Harriet instead of Payton.

Sgt. Nick Lasard as Matt McCoy in Police Academy 5: Assignment: Miami Beach (1988): Now, technically, McCoy was playing a new character, Commandant Eric Lasard (George Gaynes)'s nephew Nick, but in reality he was replacing the recently departed Steve Guttenberg, who we all remember played the hip and edgy super confident laid back Carey Mahoney. Just go ahead and watch any of the previous four Police Academy movies and then watch part five and you'll see their similarities. They serve the same function in the group. And while I like McCoy, he's no Steve Guttenberg. The series lasted only one more movie after part five (I'm ignoring Mission to Moscow because, well, I'm just going to. It was awful).

THE TOP 5

5. Ethan Embry and Marisol Nichols as Rusty and Audrey Griswold in Vegas Vacation (1997)

Now, as we all know, it was standard practice for each new Griswold adventure, the Griswold kids, Rusty and Audrey, would be played by different actors. So, it was obvious that Johnny Galecki and Juliette Lewis would not be returning as Rusty and Audrey from Christmas Vacation (both probably would have been too old to play teen kids by that time anyway). And so in walk Ethan Embry and Marisol Nichols as the new Rusty and Audrey. And they, like the rest of the movie, bomb. They're both incredibly annoying. And neither one works well with Chevy Chase or Beverly D'Angelo (I never once believed they were ever a family). That's what always happened with the other "kids," you believed they were all a family. What the heck was director Stephen Kessler thinking?

4. George Clooney as Batman/Bruce Wayne in Batman & Robin (1997)

Clooney was brought in for the fourth flick in the Batman franchise Tim Burton helped start way back in 1989 by then current director Joel Schumacher, replacing Val Kilmer who did the Batman/Bruce Wayne thing in Batman Forever just two years previous. Kilmer was an okay Batman but an absolutely terrible Bruce Wayne, and Clooney was the exact opposite. He was a good Bruce Wayne but a terrible Batman. Neither Kilmer or Clooney could ever find that extra ooh ah that made both Wayne and Batman compelling, like their predecessor Michael Keaton managed to do in both Batman and Batman Returns. What makes Clooney's performance even more awful is that it appears in arguably the worst Batman movie ever made. It makes a bad performance that much worse. It actually makes you long for Kilmer, and that's just sad.

3. Gaspard Ulliel as Hannibal Lecter in Hannibal Rising (2007)

Obviously, Anthony Hopkins couldn't be brought in to play Hannibal for a fourth time in Hannibal Rising because they story focuses on Hannibal's days as a child and young man in post-WWII Europe. So the producers were going to have to find a young actor who sort of resembled Hopkins, who could riff off what he accomplished in Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, and Red Dragon, and yet make Hannibal his own character. And so they found Gaspard Ulliel. And it was a disaster. Just an absolute disaster. Ulliel is completely out of his league, both as a successor to Hopkins and as a lead actor in a major Hollywood thriller in general (as is the director, Peter Webber, but that's a story for another Top 5). He has no real screen presence, he doesn't work well with the rest of the cast, and he's just out of place here. They probably should have used that "makes them look younger" special effect Brett Ratner used on Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen at the beginning of X3 on Hopkins for this movie. Sure, it probably would have looked weird, but I bet it would have been infinitely better than Ulliel.

2. Sue Price as Alex Rain in Nemesis 2: Nebula (1995)

I've talked about this casting change several times here in the Top 5. I have no idea why writer-director Albert Pyun decided to change the main character, Alex Rain, from an ultra cool pseudo cybernetic kung fu cop as played by the great Olivier Gruner, to a super lesbian female bodybuilder with a giant knife that has a laser sight on it for some reason. It just doesn't make any sense. I am yet to figure it out. She can't act, she can't move, she can't speak. Sue Price can't do much of anything. So, again, why did Pyun use her instead of Gruner?

1. Zette Sullivan as Jo Deth/Jack Deth in Trancers 6 (2002)

Tim Thomerson is Jack Deth. He originated the "Future Cop" Trancer hunting role back in 1985 with Trancers, then played him four more times, ending with Trancers 5: Sudden Deth in 1994. When director Jay Woelfel and company decided to do a sixth Trancers movie, they couldn't afford to bring Thomerson back, and so they decided to go in a different direction and make the Deth character a young woman. To say it was a disaster would be an understatement (lots of casting disasters in this Top 5). She doesn't have the same presence as Thomerson, she doesn't have the same menace, and she's never once "cool." She's basically a hot young woman wearing a trenchcoat, walking around trying to act tough. Maybe it would have worked if Thomerson actually appeared in the movie to sort of pass the torch "down the genetic bridge" to Sullivan (and, no, those poorly edited together snippets from the previous movies don't count). I doubt it, but, hey, at least we would have had one last glimpse of the real Trooper Deth before the franchise was completely destroyed.



Jeremy Thomas

HONORABLE MENTIONS

George Clooney as Bruce Wayne/Batman in Batman & Robin (1997) – There were a lot of things in this movie that were worse than George Clooney, from the sacrilegious characterization of Bane to the ridiculous Dr. Freeze one-liners to Robin…period. But there's little doubt that George Clooney, while certainly not a bad actor on his own, has given the worst performance under the cowl. Like Bryan said, his Bruce Wayne wasn't bad at all, but his Batman was moronic. Luckily, he found a career beyond this. Chris O'Donnell…not so lucky.

Roger Moore as James Bond in Live and Let Die (1973) – A lot of people just love Roger Moore's portrayal of James Bond, spanning from Let Die in '73 to A View to a Kill in 1985. I'm not one of them. Frankly, I could never stand Moore's smarmy, light-hearted playboy of a secret agent. Even today, I rank most of Moore's Bond films as the worst of the series, just because I hate him so much.

Chris Klein as Jonathon Cross in Rollerball (2002) – The original Rollerball was a fun, violent B-movie that featured James Caan as Jonathan E, the man fighting in a violent roller derby for his freedom while making some strong social and political statements. The remake starred Chris Klein in a mindless, idiotic update that showed exactly how limited of an actor the American Pie alumni was. I was happy to see this one fail.

THE TOP 5

5. Mark Addy as Fred Flintstone in The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas (2000)

This is not to say I particularly liked the first Flintstones. Live-action films based on cartoons are usually abominations that deserve to fail, and that film was no exception. It at least featured John Goodman having fun with the role. This one, which was met with complete hatred from critics and bombed in theaters, had Mark Addy stepping into the cave-shoes and sucking far worse than probably anyone possibly could. This was one of those performances that was so bad, it killed a franchise…and that at least gets it SOME gratitude from me.

4. Shannyn Sossamon as Beth Raymond in One Missed Call (2008)

While the original character in Ichi the Killer director Takashi Miike's J-horror film was originally named Yuki, this really is the same character, so it's very much a recasting. Sossamon is one of the blandest actresses in Hollywood today, and how she manages to get lead acting roles still mystifies me. The only reason her performance as Beth in this horrendous remake was had more life to it then the dead people she kept coming across was because she was moving, as she read her lines with about as much emotion as a wet cardboard box. She didn't ruin the film necessarily, but that's only because the film was already ruined by a half-hearted effort from all involved.

3. Derek Richardson and Eric Christian Olsen as Harry Dunne and Lloyd Christmas in Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd (1994)

The king of the stupid prequels, in every sense of the phrase, is Dumb and Dumberer, an 85-minute waste of film that makes one's brain hurt by its sheer idiocy. This is not to say that the original was a smart film by any stretch of the imagination, but at least Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels are gifted comic actors. Richardson and Olsen had no comic skills to speak of and little to work with, and the result was something that made Dumb and Dumber look like a MENSA member of a film…and that's pretty damn bad.

2. Jake Lloyd as Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999)

Some people might consider Hayden Christenson's turn as the man who would become Vader to be a worse choice, but for my money there's nothing worse than an annoying kid actor, and Jake Lloyd was the king of them. It doesn't help that "Ani" was the first portrayal of the future Sith Lord we saw after Vader, and so the "What the HELL is this?" shock factor makes this portrayal that much more jarring. Lloyd was completely out of his depth in this film, and was unable to portray anything that made the character sympathetic. His wooden performance is torturous to watch, and it made The Phantom Menace a much worse film then it could have been.

1. Nicholas Cage as Edward Malus in The Wicker Man (2006)

I love the original Wicker Man. It's an unrepentant B-horror movie of the seventies, and yet carries such a charm to it that you can't help but enjoy it. Fast-forward thirty-three years, and Warner Bros. decided this would be a good cult classic to mine for some more money. There are so many things wrong with this film that it would take an entire essay just to list them all out, but one of the worst things about it was Nicholas Cage's over-the-top portrayal of the protagonist, renamed Edward Malus from the original's Neil Howie. Cage is a talented actor who's done well in many films, but here he's just painfully bad to watch as he overacts his way through the entire thing. I remember watching this with friends and nearly dying with laughter when he goes off on a group of the islands inhabitants in an inn, or when he punches out one of the cultists while wearing a ridiculously tacky bear suit. You can't find comedy like that anymore, I'm telling you. For a good actor and a fun piece of source material to come up with something this bad, it's undoubtedly the worst recasting of all time.



Owain J. Brimfield

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Sly Stallone as Jack Carter in Get Carter (2000) - mainly for turning a classic antihero into a bore, but also for featuring the worst goatee in movie history.

Chloe Anett as Christine Kochanski in Red Dwarf season 7 - Anett is certainly a lot easier on the eye than Claire Grogan was, but I have too many fond memories of season 2 to accept her in the role.

THE TOP 5

5. Steve Martin as Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther (2006)

Why even attempt to redo a comedic icon? What was running through Steve Martin's head as he contemplated taking on one of the most famous funnyman roles in cinema history, as played to perfection by Peter Sellers (one of cinema's most respected comedic actors), and turning the whole thing into completely the wrong kind of farce? The lack of Burt Kwouk is unforgivable, but Martin's horrendously unfunny performance turns this remake into something that needs to be scoured from the viewer's brain after watching. Martin should stick to writing, as that seems to be the one area in which his comedy is still successful these days.

4. Roger Moore as James Bond in Live and Let Die (1973)

I'm with Jeremy here, although I don't hate the Moore movies as much as he seems to (A View to a Kill and The Spy Who Loved Me are up there with my favorite Bonds). Moore just wasn't a fit for the character, particularly after Connery had made the role his own, and his constant air of "I know this is all a bit silly, but I'll play along anyway" drags his performance down. Bond just isn't meant to be played tongue-in-cheek, and as a result a lot of the Moore-era movies were only redeemed by memorable villains (Jaws, Scaramanga, Samedi). That's not to say that they weren't enjoyable spy thrillers of course, but it would have been hugely interesting to see another actor in the role, as Moore just wasn't in the spirit of the character.

3. Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates in Psycho (1998)

If ever a movie defined the word "redundant", Gus van Sant's remake of the Hitchcock classic would be it. I suppose Vaughn's actual performance isn't all that bad, but when you look at it in light of the whole project, it becomes clear that everything was just a gigantic mistake. Why on earth would you feel the need to recast Norman Bates, unless you were really interested in experiencing bankruptcy? Fortunately for Vaughn, and for Van Sant, the film was pretty much laughed off by the industry and their lives were unaffected, but this is the kind of recasting that kills careers.

2. Sean Bean as John Ryder in The Hitcher (2007)

Of course, even attempting to redo the original John Ryder, as portrayed by Rutger Hauer, is folly in itself. When you add in the fact that the movie in which you're attempting said redux is, by and large, one of the worst remakes ever committed to celluloid, the odds are pretty much stacked against you. In all fairness, Sean Bean is a decent actor, and the performance he turns in here could generously be called serviceable, but weighed against the original's reputation and coupled with the utterly flaccid screenplay Ryder '07 finds himself hamstrung by, there really was no hope at all for this one.

1. Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker in the DVD release of Return of the Jedi

As a Star Wars nerd, I should find myself aggrieved by the Special Editions of the classic trilogy, but I'm not. Hell, they even made some improvements with those late-90s releases. I should also be cursing George Lucas' name for the changes made to the DVD releases of the original trilogy to keep them in line with the prequels, but for the most part I can happily live with that - while changes such as dubbing over Clive Revill and Jeremy Bulloch with Ian McDiarmid and Temeura Morrison are ultimately unnecessary, at least they were done with continuity in mind. Even the dance routine in Jabba's palace is bearable. The one thing that gets me every time, though, is why the hell Christensen turns up in place of Sebastian Shaw in Jedi's final scene. It just makes no sense, and creates a jarring disconnect at the worst possible time. Christensen portrayed Anakin when he was at his worst, right? His impetuous teenage years and his eventual fall to the Dark Side? Whereas Shaw was the man under Vader's mask when Darth finally redeemed himself and made the ultimate sacrifice for his son. So why on earth is it Hayden appearing alongside Ben and Yoda right at the end? It's only for two or three seconds, but it's unbearably frustrating. I'm sure someone will have an argument to the contrary, but I defy anyone to actually justify this casting change as opposed to simply making sense of it retroactively.

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