Badmovies.org Forum

There are movies that have the occasional character or two that are miscast.
Then there are movies where almost everyone is miscast.

For example:

I was watching The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer the other day on cable and realized that darn near every single actor in that movie was horribly miscast.
It's the casting director's job to make sure that each actor is perfectly cast for each role.  The CS on this movie got it all wrong, wrong wrong!

Ioan Gruffudd looks and acts nothing like Reed Richards.
Jessica Alba as Sue Storm was a total joke.  She didn't look or act like Sue Storm at all.
Michael Chiklis was just ok as The Thing.  The costume he wore in those films also was too small.  The Thing is freakin' huge!  The Thing in these movies was the same size as the average man.
The guy who played Doom was also miscast.  There was just something "off" about him.

Heck, even the supporting actors were all miscast.
Not one person looked like they should be in this movie.

The only actor they got right in both of these films was Chris Evans as the Human Torch.  He absolutely nailed the role and was totally believable as Johnny Storm.

The casting director for those films needs to find a new profession..fast!

Are there any other movies you can think of that were horribly miscast?

Val Kilmer as Batman and as The Saint. Val Kilmer in most things truth be told.
Dolph Lundgren as The Punisher

I know this was brought up in a recent thread, but what about Jon Voight in Anaconda. That casting was so bad I had absolutely no idea what the ethnicity of the character was. A complete mystery.

Space Mutiny: The woman they hired for the leading female role wasn't right.  It seemed like the role was for a MUCH younger woman than what they had.

Julianne Moore as Clarice Starling in Hannibal.  :buggedout: :buggedout:

You aren't kidding there.

Shelley Duvall as Wendy Torrance in The Shining.

ben affleck in Daredevil

Keanu Reeves in Bram Stoker's Dracula

the kid in phantom menace (had to look him up, jake lloyd) WOW he sucked...he must be related to lucas.  he makes keanu reeves look like daniel day lewis.

Yeah!
"Back off,vampire dude!"

 :lookingup:

Everybody in Scooby Doo.  Freddie Prinze Jt. as Fred, Sarah Michelle Gellar as Daphne, Matthew Lillard as Shaggy, and Linda Cardellini as Velma.  Horrible - all of them.  Not within a country mile of acting like the characters from the animated show.

Will Smith in I am Legend.
You know what, scratch that. The whole movie sucked.

Oh come on!  Matthew Lillard was a good choice for Shaggy.  I thought he looked and protrayed character quite well.

Everyone who has played Batman since Adam West

Will Smith as James West

Nicholas Cage in anything

I agree with InformationGeek.  Scooby Doo was perfectly cast.  The movie was still terrible-but their pretty much who I would have chosen.  All except Velma, because I had never heard of that actress before.

Batman Forever.  That was the worst cast Batman movie.

Bloodrayne was another.  Ben Kingsley as Kagen?  Slthough, I've said I thought Kristen Lokien at least looked like she made a pretty decent Rayne.

he's perfectly cast in Wild At Heart imo


for me Denzel Washington in AMERICAN GANGSTER

he's way too clean-cut looking and acting to be convincing as a murderous drug dealer. He has the aura of a cop or a minister or something similar to that kind of thing in that film.

I've always wondered why in the hell Roseanne Barr & Tom Arnold were in Freddy's Dead.

 :bouncegiggle:

Almost the entire cast of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

Kevin Kostner: As Robin Hood? Are you f***ing kidding me?
Christian Slater: WTF!!!
Morgan Freeman: What kind of revisionist history crap was that?

Exception: Alan Rickman. He was a badass.

John Wayne as Genghis Khan in "The Conqueror."

(http://www.badmovies.org/movies/conqueror/conqueror8.jpg)

Samuel L Jackson as Mace Windu - SLJ had no business being in a Star Wars movie.  I don't care how big of a fan he was or ever will be.  If he isn't swearing in a movie, I have no interest.

Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker - Wooden, awful and just plain unwatchable.   I partially throw blame to the script.

Christian Bale as Batman - He makes a GREAT Bruce Wayne.  As Batman, he flops and generally looks silly in the costume.

How wrong was that? Wrong on so many levels. I think Andrew's nailed it as far as the worst miscast actor goes...

nothing like white people playing asians

(http://racebending.com/v3/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/yellowface/1961BreakfastatTiffanys-MickeyRoone.jpg)

Mickey Rooney in Hollywood's gem Breakfast at Tiffany's

Oh yes. I like Jackson in most things he's been in - Jurassic Park, Pulp Fiction, Die Hard 3. I could go on and on. But, he just doesn't suit Star Wars. That is a big problem, when big name actors want to be cast in a movie because it would be so cool. Who's going to say no? So we get a character actor who is brilliant as any kind of urban badass, playing a Jedi master, who, aside from kicking some ass a couple of times, is just about as far in temperament from a typical Sam Jackson character as you can get. And it's not like anyone was wowed by his unexpected versatility. He gave a competent performance, but just couldn't sell it.

I think the other place that casting gets screwed up is when the priorities are all backward. Instead of coming up with a story and choosing the right cast, it's all about who you can get and figuring out where to use them. Or worse, the movie is written as a vehicle for a particular star.

Then you get the worst of both, when a big star pushes to get a movie made, because it would be so darn cool to star in it, and the screenplay is written around them as the star. I just can't shake this image of John Travolta as an evil alien.

Most recently, I just didn't buy Christian Bale as John Connor. No way. But he is one of the big names right now, so....

Orlando Bloom as Paris in Troy.  Bloom's huge lack of skills is apparent when he is around actors who can actually act like Eric Bana. 

You probably want a comma in there. Otherwise, everybody's acting like Eric Bana. :teddyr:

Oo-oo that is bad.  

I think that's kind of a stroke of genius.  

Y'know, I've said it before, and I'll say it again... "Mace Windu...???"  Doesn't that sound like bad gas after too much Chinese?  Who do wind-doo like mace?

How 'bout BRAD PITT as Louis and TOM CRUISE as Lestat in INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE?  CRUISE was not nearly as bad as I'd expected, but the movie turned into a laugh-fest anyway.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGkBMe3j-Sk&feature=fvst

There was a movie somewhere in the 90s called "An Eye For An Eye".  Sally Field was a mom whose daughter was raped and killed by a psycho played well by Keifer Sutherland.  The mom takes martial arts lessons and marksmanship courses and tries to become a badass in her pursuit of the killer.  Sally Field.. are you kidding me?  She's a good actress and all, but definitely no badass.  The movie wasn't particularly good; no surprise there.

I agree ~ the sad thing is the making of that film probably cost The Duke his life years later because of the place where they shot the film.  :buggedout:

Well, to be fair, the only person I've seen pull off a good Batman as Batman was that guy who played him in Batman: Dead End (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman_dead_end). Clark Bartram.

As far as Bale as John Connor, I had no problem with it. Who were our previous choices, a future Eddie Furlong and Nick Stahl? No thanks.

My vote for a miscast role, Anthony Hopkins in The Human Stain. I'm not going to spoil it for you, but the role Hopkins played had certain requirements. Hopkins in no way fulfills them.

I hate to say it-but Bela as the Frankenstein Monster in FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN.

(http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l79/RCMerchant/FrankensteinMeets006-2.jpg)

Larry Talbot was taller than Frankie!

Definitly agree about the Duke as Kahn! And the Ghoul hit the nail on the head with Batman. Micheal Keaton? Val Kilmer??? George Clooney????? WTF?

Rosie O'Donnell in Flintstones.  I remember betty....being different.

Richard Gere in First Knight

Edward Norton in Pride and Glory....he just seemed to be trying too hard...don't know if that is 'miscast' or not

Linda Cardellini as Velma.  Well, as a woman who keeps tabs on other women, i don't know if she was particularly that bad, but i know she wowed people when she finally took that turtleneck off...she looked good in a bikini!

I agree with Samuel L Jackson as Mace Windu... I think its the most disapointing role for Samuel L Jackson since he didnt do anything for the movie and his death sucked! Although the Star Wars prequels sucked because the storyline wasnt worth the 20 years wait. Gees baby vader made C3-PO in his free time... Really?

I agree. She was nothing like the Wendy in the book, but she suited Kubrick's movie perfectly.

I think the cast for the Scooby Doo Movie was perfect, it looked almost like the cartoon... :)

(http://images.fanpop.com/images/image_uploads/scooby-doo-movie-scooby-doo-753296_400_300.jpg)

Completely agree on the casting of the various Batmans.

I fully expect to be told how wrong I am (since Reeve seems to have become iconic in the role), but I could never understand casting Christopher Reeve as Superman, Marlon Brando as Jor-El and Margot Kidder as Lois Lane in Superman (1978): what were they thinking???  So Kidder's hair was the right colour and Reeve's facial profile looked the part?  Ish. Just Ish.  They did better with the villains.

I thought Lillard was an excellent Shaggy. The others were all right. I'm not sure if they would have been my picks, but they fit the roles well enough. I wasn't impressed the way I was with Shaggy though.

With John Wayne as Ghengis Khan, it's not so much that they cast whites as Asians. That sort of thing happened all the time in those days. The problem was that Wayne was not actor enough to sell it. Ghengis Khan came across as 100% American cowboy, just like every other John Wayne character. Wayne was the Schwarzenegger of his day, basically playing the same guy under different names in different settings. Nothing wrong with that, but if you asked him to play something totally different, he just couldn't do it. If I were casting The Conqueror, I'd have put Yul Brynner in the part. He had the skill, he had the attitude, he could play tyrants, and he could obviously play Asians. Of course, with The King and I and The Ten Commandments coming out the same year as The Conqueror, Brynner was probably already booked up playing tyrants and Asians elsewhere.

Ok heres one that will get no responses because no one here watches these movies.  However I have to point out Robert Patinson as Edward in Twilight.  Thanks to my wife, I've had to sit twice through his awful acting and complete lack of chemistry with any of his on screen counterparts.  I mean the story of Twilight is horridly written enough, why make it worse? 

Kirsten Dunst as Mary Jane Watson in the Spiderman movies. Shouldn't MJ be hotter?

I'd agree with Will Smith as James West, but I'd also add Kevin Kline as Artemus Gordon and Salma Hayek as Rita Escobar. No chemistry at all, that I could see, between the three stars. And while we are on the subject of miscasting, Kenneth Branagh as Dr. Loveless, a fine actor, but not in this role, especially when you compare his performance with Michael Dunn's as the original Dr. Loveless. But he was certainly better than Ted Levine as General McGrath in the same film.

Pretty much the entire cast of the 1998 Lost In Space movie but especially Gary Oldman as Dr. Smith. Jack Johnson too as Will was bland when compared to Bill Mumy's Will full of intelligence and wonder.

Halle Berry as Catwoman. Every other lady who played the part did it much better but none compared to Julie Newmar.

Alicia Silverstone as Batgirl too.

Not only John Wayne, but how many different types of cancer are there.

Director Dick Powell - cancer of the lymph glands.

Susan Hayward - brain cancer.

Agness Moorehead - uterine cancer.

John Hoyt - lung cancer.

Pedro Armendariz - the only reason he didn't die of cancer is because he shot himself, when he found out he had cancer.

Of course, that is out of fourteen people, which would include the director and the thirteen most important actors in the film.

its very sad but I heard something like 90 people got cancer from the location while making the movie.

The screenplay was written before John Wayne became involved in the project. The writer had Marlon Brando in mind for the role. According to Harry Medved and Michael Medved's 1984 book "The Hollywood Hall of Shame", Wayne's casting in this film came about during a conversation with director Dick Powell. Wayne was about the make the last film of a three-picture deal for RKO Radio and Powell had been assigned to direct. They were going over various scripts in Powell's office when the latter was called away for a few minutes. When Powell returned, he found Wayne enthusiastically looking over a script that Powell had intended throwing in the waste basket. It was the screenplay for "The Conqueror". Powell tried to talk him out of it, but Wayne insisted that this was the film he wanted to make. As Powell later summed it up, "Who am I to turn down John Wayne?" ~ imdb

It seems that John Wayne wanted the role... although I'm surprised they were looking for Marlon Brando

good info

There's probably a case for all the actors/crew on the set of The Conqueror except for Wayne.  He was a lifelong smoker and drinker.  He was doomed anyway.  :bluesad:

That's a tough one for me, having grown up watching those movies. They just seem natural in the roles. I will say that the two actors who stood above the rest, for me, were Gene Hackman as Luthor and Jackie Cooper as Perry White. Cooper was a great fit for White, and Hackman as Luthor was the best thing in the first two movies.

The casting of Marlon Brando puzzles me to this day. I guess he was OK, but I just can't see him being on the list of people to call when you're casting Kryptonians.

I was actually ok with Reeve as Superman.  I also felt he played a good Clark Kent.  I do not however agree with Margot Kidder as Lois Lane.  She wasn't cute or even likeable in the character.   Oh and Hackman did rock.

Totally agree.
Reeve was awesome as Superman and Hackman was great as Luthor.

I've never understood how Margot Kidder got the role of Lois Lane.
Even when I was a kid I wondered what people saw in her.
All those women on earth and Superman chose HER???
Yeah, she was definitely miscast as Lois Lane.

When I watch the Superman movies nowadays, I always think Margot Kidder looks like she'd taste like cigarettes if I kissed her.