When I was younger, there was something called Wizard Magazine, where comics fans gathered to learn new fart jokes and over-estimate the value of their comic book collections, and said magazine had a monthly feature wherein they would speculate who should play whom in movie adaptations of our favorite superhero books. All that I really remember about it was the repeated assertion that Dolph Lundgren was the only man to play Colossus, though he himself was Swedish and nearly 20 years too old to play the character. Of course, on the other side of the casting couch, we have the late-90s adaptation of the British spy-fi series, ‘The Avengers,’ which put the seemingly well-cast Ralph Fieness and Uma Thurman in the shoes of John Steed and Emma Peel, and featured a supporting cast including Sean Connery, Eddie Izzard, Jim Broadbent and even the guy who originally played Steed in a cameo! The casting seemed damn-near perfect, and yet the movie was the film equivalent of the moment where a sharp tortilla chip lacerates your gums and ruins your enjoyment of the entire Fiesa Platter combo.
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) always kinda wanted Ryan Reynolds as Aquaman, asking:
What seemingly-perfect casting has fallen flat for you?
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Its going to upset a lot of old timers I’m sure, but Adam West as Batman. I just don’t get it. Of course I came into reading Batman when Frank Miller and Tim Burton set the tone.
Ah, how I miss the old days of Wizard when it had been a lot more about comics and other similar things instead of what it turned into until it ended.
I think Ryan Reynolds as both Deadpool in “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” and as Hal Jordan in “Green Lantern” felt like it could have been really great, but ended up not quite living up to expectations. But both of those were due to the writing or whatever that altered the characters rather than because of anything he did.
There are a few others in that same vein for me, where I think they did the best with what they were given (or did a superb job but the rest of the production was awful), but none are truly “dream” castings.
Actually, it was the first Star Trek movie. It reunited the original cast but, thanks to the ponderous script and the over-directing of Robert Wise, who had probably never seen a Star Trek TV shot, and long gap between TOS and the first movie the results were dismal. It was almost as if they’d forgotten how to play their roles, either that or the director was trying to force them into performing high drama. And the new cast members – ugh! After the success of Star Wars, without which the Star Trek movies would never have been made – and its cast of then unknown actors, I had expected so much more from the first Star Trek movie. I went to see it twice, and I fell asleep in it the second time, and I am a hard core Star Trek fan from 1967 on. I only watch that movie on DVD if I am suffering from insomnia.
Ed Norton as the Hulk, well actually Bruce Banner, I guess. He just didn’t live up to what I was expecting. And I couln’t help comparing to previous actors’ renditions. And the CGI didn’t even seem that improved from the last one, which didn’t help any.
Actually I was a little disappointed in Hugh Jackman, as Wolverine. He’s a fine actor, but to me Logan always had an element of both Sarcasm and Meanness in his character that made him interesting. You saw a flash of that when he gave Cyclops the finger in the first movie. It’s that “The best at what he does…” element, although in recent years writers have pushed that to the point of self parody.
Jackman’s just a little too likable and not enough of a curmudgeon,
I liked his cameo in “First Class” because it felt a little closer to the real Wolverine to me (because all he said was “F*** off” and they left).