21 replies to this topic

[AHF]

I just saw that Tom Cruise is being cast as Jack Reacher in an upcoming movie bring the Reacher novels to the big screen for the first time.  That naturally inspired a WTF!!! and then this thread.

Here is the issue:

Tom Cruise
5'7''
Roughly 170 pounds
Dark Hair
Brown Eyes
Very handsome
HIgh intensity, high visibility actor.

Jack Reacher
6'5''
250 pounds
Blond hair
Blue eyes
Not that good looking
Varies between being non-descript enough to be invisible in his off-the-grid lifestyle to a menacing tower of former military police/brute strength.

Here is an excerpt from the book that screams this is Tom Cruise! or maybe not.

Quote

The four guys were each a useful size. The shortest was probably an inch under six feet and the lightest was maybe an ounce over two hundred pounds. They all had walnut knuckles and thick wrists and knotted forearms….
…The guy standing at the head of the table was the biggest of the four, by maybe an inch and ten pounds. He said, “You’re not going to eat at all…”
“…We don’t like strangers.”
“Me either,” Reacher said. “But I need to eat somewhere. Otherwise I’ll get all wasted and skinny like you four.”
“Funny man.”
“Just calling it like it is,” Reacher said. He put his forearms on the table. He had thirty pounds and three inches on the big guy, and more than that on the other three. And he was willing to bet he had a little more experience and a little less inhibition than any one of them. Or than all of them put together. But ultimately, if it came to it, it was going to be his two hundred and fifty pounds against their cumulative nine hundred. Not great odds. But Reacher hated turning back.

Does Tom Cruise do non-descript?  No.

The author describes Reacher's size as being the metaphor for an unstoppable force and it is the single thing about the character that is most emphasized in his description.  Does Cruise in any way reflect this?  No.

Talk about a casting fail.

I hate to see a very entertaining series of books dead on arrival at the theater due to this type of blatant miscast.

What are some other terrible casting decisions that stand out to you?

Edited by AHF, 28 September 2011 - 09:18 PM.

[frosgrim]

Well Cruise in Interview with a Vampire. That was awful.

[MaceCase]

Wow that is a kick in the groin.  I literally Just downloaded the entirety of the Reacher novels into my Kindle and now I'm going to be picturing Tom Fricking Cruise all throughout.  Definitely doesn't fit the image one conjures up of Reacher from the descriptions.

The most glaring miscast nightmare I can think of from recent memory was Shia LeBeouf in the last Indiana Jones movie....
Terrible movie all around but his character would of made sense if it was more James Dean than.....Shia LeBeouf. Worst part is that he's slated to take over the franchise as the new Indy, ugh!

There's actually a whole medley of recent movies (as in barely two decades) that Hollywood is remaking with I'm sure what will be tons of questionable casting choices. Hell that even reminds me, Hollywood went the opposite of the Reacher movie when they decided to have James Marsden (Better known as Cyclops from XMen) reprise Dustin Hoffman's role from Straw Dogs

[coachx]

Any movie with Keanu Reeves except for the Bill and Ted flicks and Point Break  must be on this list.

[AHF]

coachx, on 04 October 2011 - 03:53 PM, said:

Any movie with Keanu Reeves except for the Bill and Ted flicks and Point Break  must be on this list.

I am not the world's biggest Keanu Reeves fan but he has done fine with roles like the Matrix and Speed.  Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure was definitely his perfect match of actor and role.

In the last Indy movie, I didn't mind the casting of Shia LeBeouf.  What I minded was the terrible, terrible script and plot.  That was the best you could come up with in 20 years of development time?  Really?

[DrReality]

How about Stallone.  Guess he did alright in the Rocky movies but beyond that  . . . . . . .?

[niremetal]

1) Keanu Reeves was perfect for the Matrix because his role required zero actual acting.
2) I didn't think Indiana Jones 4 was bad because I thought it was quite obviously poking fun at the original trilogy.  The "nuking the fridge" scene had me rolling, and I think it was "laughing with" not "laughing at."  If you go in viewing it as much as a parody as an action film, I think it's pretty awesome.
3) As for worst casting ever, I nominate (in no particular order):

• Ben Affleck as Jack Ryan in The Sum of All Fears
  
• Colin Farrell as Alexander the Great in Alexander
  
• Shaq as John Henry Irons in Steel
  
• Kevin Costner as Robin Hood in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
  
• George Clooney as Bruce Wayne/Batman in Batman & Robin
  
• ...come to think of it, pretty much everyone in Batman & Robin and Spiderman III

Edited by niremetal, 05 November 2011 - 09:05 PM.

[AHF]

niremetal, on 05 November 2011 - 09:04 PM, said:

1) Keanu Reeves was perfect for the Matrix because his role required zero actual acting.
2) I didn't think Indiana Jones 4 was bad because I thought it was quite obviously poking fun at the original trilogy.  The "nuking the fridge" scene had me rolling, and I think it was "laughing with" not "laughing at."  If you go in viewing it as much as a parody as an action film, I think it's pretty awesome.
3) As for worst casting ever, I nominate (in no particular order):

• Ben Affleck as Jack Ryan in The Sum of All Fears
  
• Colin Farrell as Alexander the Great in Alexander
  
• Shaq as John Henry Irons in Steel
  
• Kevin Costner as Robin Hood in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
  
• George Clooney as Bruce Wayne/Batman in Batman & Robin
  
• ...come to think of it, pretty much everyone in Batman & Robin and Spiderman III

Batman & Robin was easily one of the worst movies I have ever seen.  Just brutally bad with all the high $$ "talent."  I do think Tobey Macguire was  a fantastic casting choice (the third movie was, however, a dreadful script).  Shaq can't act at all so I see him as a terrible choice for any role, I think Ben Affleck is a sucky actor and that Colin is vastly overrated but haven't subjected myself to those three movies so I will refrain from further comment.  It is always good to see people like Brad Pitt and Colin Farrell tackling accents, period pieces, etc. for which they are utterly unequipped, though.

On the latest Indiana Jones, I did not view it as a spoof at all which led to me being seriously disappointed.  Viewing it as a spoof would explain a lot - like the nuke fridge scene, the swinging with the monkies scene, etc.  I'll see if it is better viewed from that angle sometime when it comes on TNT or something.  In either case, I am saddened that they couldn't pull off a "real" Indy movie.

[niremetal]

AHF, on 07 November 2011 - 04:24 PM, said:

On the latest Indiana Jones, I did not view it as a spoof at all which led to me being seriously disappointed.  Viewing it as a spoof would explain a lot - like the nuke fridge scene, the swinging with the monkies scene, etc.  I'll see if it is better viewed from that angle sometime when it comes on TNT or something.  In either case, I am saddened that they couldn't pull off a "real" Indy movie.

No film directed by Spielberg has unintended consequences.  Look at the way the "nuking the fridge" scene was shot.  The "great, don't wait for me!" yell at the fleeing soldiers.  The cheesy mannequins watching the Howdy Doody Show.  The shot of the fake dog getting torn to shreds...and then Indy, having been tossed miles through the air in a fridge that hit the ground at high speed multiple times, rolls out of the fridge with nary a scratch to find a groundhog standing up and chirping in front of him.  Everything about that scene screams "satire," both of the ultra-tough image Indy has and of the cheesy way nuclear bomb effects have been portrayed in film.

Now watch the plane crash scene from Temple of Doom.  You'll be amazed at how similar the tone is.  In both cases, how did Indiana Jones survive?  The answer: because he's Indiana Jones, dammit!

How people thought that Spielberg was even being slightly serious with the "Nuketown" scene baffles me.  Is it possible for a person to survive a plane crash in the Himalayas by jumping out of a plane in a small inflatable raft (Temple of Doom)?  Is it possible for dinosaurs to come back to life and eat a lawyer while he's dropping a deuce (Jurassic Park)?  No.  But people seriously seemed to treat Indiana Jones 4 like it should have been more like Saving Private Ryan than Jurassic Park or even the original Indiana Jones trilogy - a serious action film, not a fun and campy one.

What really happened was this.  People who saw the original trilogy as kids or college students forgot all the absurd elements of the original trilogy and just remembered the cool action sequences and witty one-liners.  They went into Indiana Jones 4 as adults, generally without having rewatched - much less thought through - the original trilogy in years.  So their expectations were based on their youthful memories of the Indiana Jones trilogy.

Spielberg and Lucas, on the other hand, made the trilogy in the primes of their lives and remembered it well.  This was a trilogy that had always had elements of comedy and TONS of campiness.  They also realized that they had really played out the pure action/adventure plots of the original trilogy about as far as they could go, particularly given that their star was now in his mid-60s (remember, Ford is actually older than both Lucas and Spielberg!).  If they tried to do a film that was essentially a mere extension of the originals, it would have been viewed as absurd anyway because 66 year old men can't do the things that Indiana Jones did in the original trilogy.  So they figured, "let's just have some fun with this one."  It still was an action/adventure film, but definitely more tongue-in-cheek than the original trilogy - and the original trilogy was itself pretty tongue-in-cheek to begin with.

So there was a disconnect - Spielberg was making a film that was even less serious than the original trilogy was, and the "fan base" was expecting a film that was even more serious than the original trilogy ever had been.  Critics tended to like the film better than the "fan base" did precisely for that reason, I think - they knew what to expect much more than the fans did, because their view of the film was not through the lens of kids who grew up worshipping Indiana Jones.

Go in with those thoughts.  I'm confident you'll enjoy it!

Edited by niremetal, 07 November 2011 - 10:20 PM.

[AHF]

I'll go but not with any real confidence.  Even accepting it as a satire, it still pales compared to the original movies because they were entertaining action/adventure flicks.  There were campy lines and things that are objectively unbelievable but the campiness wasn't a bad thing (often it ended up as some of the best comedy in the movies like the Hitler autograph or the whole coat hanger routine with Marion and Toht) and the adventure scenes were ones that were genuinely exciting for the audience.  Scenes like Shia LaBeouf swinging with the monkeys or the nuke fridge make for good spoofs on the genre if dissected but don't serve the narrative or the audience very well because the audience's natural reaction is not tension and release like Indy being dragged behind a truck or tank or dropping out of a plane on a raft but is eye rolling. It is much the same way that we are willing to accept ridiculous car chases in the Dark Knight (and many other movies) but not willing to accept any action sequence involving the words "Joel Schoemacher" and "Batman"  (except for unintentional comedic value).

[niremetal]

AHF, on 08 November 2011 - 07:08 PM, said:

I'll go but not with any real confidence.  Even accepting it as a satire, it still pales compared to the original movies because they were entertaining action/adventure flicks.  There were campy lines and things that are objectively unbelievable but the campiness wasn't a bad thing (often it ended up as some of the best comedy in the movies like the Hitler autograph or the whole coat hanger routine with Marion and Toht) and the adventure scenes were ones that were genuinely exciting for the audience.  Scenes like Shia LaBeouf swinging with the monkeys or the nuke fridge make for good spoofs on the genre if dissected but don't serve the narrative or the audience very well because the audience's natural reaction is not tension and release like Indy being dragged behind a truck or tank or dropping out of a plane on a raft but is eye rolling. It is much the same way that we are willing to accept ridiculous car chases in the Dark Knight (and many other movies) but not willing to accept any action sequence involving the words "Joel Schoemacher" and "Batman"  (except for unintentional comedic value).

I honestly think that your perception of it is skewed by memories formed when you were younger about how fresh and cool the Indy trilogy seemed.  Put another way, if Kingdom of the Crystal Skull had been made first and Temple of Doom last, I think you would have had roughly the same reaction to Temple of Doom.  But c'est la vie.

[AHF]

niremetal, on 08 November 2011 - 07:16 PM, said:

I honestly think that your perception of it is skewed by memories formed when you were younger about how fresh and cool the Indy trilogy seemed.  Put another way, if Kingdom of the Crystal Skull had been made first and Temple of Doom last, I think you would have had roughly the same reaction to Temple of Doom.  But c'est la vie.

I definitely view Temple of Doom as several cuts below the first and third movies so I get where you are coming from on that.  The first and third Indy movies were WAY, WAY better than the other two.  Raiders is a classic and the Last Crusade is a quality entertaining flick.  I remember the Temple of Doom much more fondly than the Crystal Skull but I'll leave room for saying that one is colored by memory but I defy anyone to say that Crystal Skull was anywhere vaguely close to the other two movies.

[niremetal]

AHF, on 08 November 2011 - 07:26 PM, said:

I definitely view Temple of Doom as several cuts below the first and third movies so I get where you are coming from on that.  The first and third Indy movies were WAY, WAY better than the other two.  Raiders is a classic and the Last Crusade is a quality entertaining flick.  I remember the Temple of Doom much more fondly than the Crystal Skull but I'll leave room for saying that one is colored by memory but I defy anyone to say that Crystal Skull was anywhere vaguely close to the other two movies.

If you view it in the proper context - as intentionally playing up the campiness of the original trilogy and poking fun at it - I think it was a quality film.  Is it as good as an action/adventure film?  No.  Is it funnier?  I thought so.  The nuke scene and the "swinging with the monkeys" scene were hilarious.

Robert Ebert gave it 3.5 out of 4 stars, same as Last Crusade.  I'll just let him speak for me from here, because he says it better than I did:

Quote

"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." Say it aloud. The very title causes the pulse to quicken, if you, like me, are a lover of pulp fiction. What I want is goofy action--lots of it. I want man-eating ants, swordfights between two people balanced on the backs of speeding jeeps, subterranean caverns of gold, vicious femme fatales, plunges down three waterfalls in a row, and the explanation for flying saucers. And throw in lots of monkeys.

The Indiana Jones movies were directed by Steven Spielberg and written by George Lucas and a small army of screenwriters, but they exist in a universe of their own. Hell, they created it. All you can do is compare one to the other three. And even then, what will it get you? If you eat four pounds of sausage, how do you choose which pound tasted the best? Well, the first one, of course, and then there's a steady drop-off of interest. That's why no Indy adventure can match "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981). But if "Crystal Skull" (or "Temple of Doom" from 1984 or "Last Crusade" from, 1989) had come first in the series, who knows how much fresher it might have seemed? True, "Raiders of the Lost Ark" stands alone as an action masterpiece, but after that the series is compelled to be, in the words of Indiana himself, "same old same old." Yes, but that's what I want it to be.

[AHF]

Wow.  I cannot disagree more.  Crystal Skull isn't as good a movie as Raiders of the Lose Ark simply because it came last in line?  

To continue the food analogy, it doesn't matter if you are eating your 4th pound of sausage if you have been starving for 20 years and are desperate for food.  At that point, more sausage tastes great.

Raiders is so much of a better movie from 100 different angles than Crystal Skull that it makes me question whether Ebert is shilling for Spielberg and Lucas in this review.  It is that insane an opinion.

[niremetal]

AHF, on 09 November 2011 - 11:47 AM, said:

Wow.  I cannot disagree more.  Crystal Skull isn't as good a movie as Raiders of the Lose Ark simply because it came last in line?  

To continue the food analogy, it doesn't matter if you are eating your 4th pound of sausage if you have been starving for 20 years and are desperate for food.  At that point, more sausage tastes great.

Raiders is so much of a better movie from 100 different angles than Crystal Skull that it makes me question whether Ebert is shilling for Spielberg and Lucas in this review.  It is that insane an opinion.

I don't see how you got that from his review.  He said that ""Raiders of the Lost Ark" stands alone as an action masterpiece."  That's a pretty damn clear signal that he thinks it was the best in the series.  No matter what, the films after that would pale in comparison; the fact that Raiders was so good meant that all they could do was try to provide "more of the same," trying to entertain the audience using the same basic devices of campy action/adventure films, with the "campy" aspect turned up even more than it had been previously.

Personally, I agree that Raiders and Last Crusade were better than the other two.  But I don't think that Crystal Skull should be judged solely on the same basis, because so many elements of it were clearly tongue-in-cheek.  After Raiders of the Lost Ark, which was easily the least campy, most dramatic (even the scene you referenced of Indy stumbling into Hitler was an intensely dramatic moment, despite its practical implausibility), and most "pure action" of the series, all Spielberg & Co. could really do was keep cranking up the campiness meter because they realized the "action/adventure" freshness of Raiders could never be matched.  I think that's all Ebert was saying.  Crystal Skull was never going to be as "good" as Raiders, or even Last Crusade.  Even if they wrote an equally good story, it still would be less entertaining just by virtue of it not coming first.  So all Spielberg could hope for is that it would be almost as "entertaining" (as opposed to "good") as its predecessors.  So the campiness got cranked up with each successive film, culminating in the last one with "man-eating ants, swordfights between two people balanced on the backs of speeding jeeps, subterranean caverns of gold, vicious femme fatales, plunges down three waterfalls in a row, and the explanation for flying saucers. And throw in lots of monkeys."

Personally, I enjoyed Last Crusade the most because it was funnier than the first two but still was a great adventure flick, which to me made it the most entertaining on the balance.  Raiders was the "best" film, but I thought Last Crusade to be the most entertaining.  Crystal Skull was also very entertaining, but in a somewhat different way.  I personally enjoyed it about as much as I enjoyed Temple of Doom* after rewatching the original trilogy.

Anyway, I think Ebert was saying roughly the same thing.  If you read his review of Raiders of the Lost Ark, you'll see that he clearly thinks it was a revolutionary film with much more dramatic and historic depth.  It's central plot was built on Hitler trying to steal the ultimate symbol of the Jewish people.  If you asked him which was the best of the series, I have no doubt that he'd say Raiders, both because it was so revolutionary and because it was just so good.  But he also thinks that the later movies, though lacking Raiders in their dramatic depth, were still highly entertaining in their own way.  That's all.

(Ebert actually rated Temple higher than Last Crusade, but that's because he dug even deeper to find meaning than I am willing to (and I dig pretty deep!).)

Edited by niremetal, 09 November 2011 - 12:41 PM.