Controversial casting in movies

No one loved Lucy. Or her singing.
Shame too. I like Lucy but this wasn’t the vehicle for her.

 

To be fair, the director of the original anime, and the author of the manga, both liked her in the role, and had no problem with the casting.

 

6'2" Hugh Jackman as the 5'3" Wolverine.

This casting choice didn't seem to garner the same criticism Tom Cruise received when he played 6'5"Jack Reacher.

 

That may be because the Wolverine's height was never a prominent character feature, whereas Jack Reacher's height (and physically imposing body in general) were a key element to his character in the novels. Nobody would ever underestimate Reacher's potential danger to others. All that said, I think Tom Cruise did as good a job with the role as could be expected, under the circumstances.

 

Micky's role was intended to be comedic, not serious. Rooney was always an over the top actor, who didn't attend the school of less is more. I can't think of any other actor who could have filled those shoes better.

Years back, Hollywood took the actors they had under contract and featured them in many different kinds of rolls. American audiences of the day understood this and didn't have any problems with the practice.

 

I don't think that most people cared that Tom Cruse wasn't 6'5". I doubt that most people were that concerned with tall vampires.

Tom Cruise defied the Hollywood stereotype of a tall leading man for his entire career.

Back in the earlier days of westerns, lead male actors were often not as tall in real life as their onscreen personas were illustrated to be.

For this reason, it was common to make them appear larger by making the sets smaller at a 5/8 scale.

I think the initial major objection was that Tom Cruise was generally not portrayed as the heavy. People, including the author could not picture Cruise in the role of a vampire (including me). The vampire girl child stole the movie...

Seeing the movie, I was fine with the casting.

 

Reacher is no vampire. He' a huge, physically imposing, drifter who intimidates and beats the hell out of people. Many people who are fond of the Reacher series (like me) rightfully viewed Tom as just not a good choice to portray the physically imposing Jack Reacher character.

 

The great thing about Michael in the Batman Character, was that he fit the Batman of the comics. Batman was not a superhero or a Rambo type Hollywood action movie character. He portrayed a thinking, intelligent character. The same kind of character envisioned by Ian Flemming in his James Bond novels and brought to the screen by Sean Connery.

 

I guess that explains Mickey in Skidoo. It looks like he was filmed by a second unit, with none of the other cast around.

 

I think Rolling was more alarmed about the talk of Spielberg directing the movie and casting Haley Joel Osment as Harry...

Fortunately, Rolling was one of the few authors who were well off enough to retain some degree of creative control with their works.

One thing that worked greatly in favor of the HP movies, was that they not only cast English actors in the key roles but they cast unknown actors who were children first and actors second.

 

Doesn't work on any level!

 

People questioned Hugh Jackman in the movie version of Les Misérables (2012), in the roll of Jean Valjean. People questioned the casting of Russell Crowe as Javert. I think this was in part to Les Misérables being a musical. It did OK at the box office however.

 

I was watching a show on Netflix about Die Hard and they made a point that the casting of Willis led to a change in the action movie, going from heavily muscled heroes to the more ordinary man as a hero.

I strongly agree that film is different from the other types of media. I'm a comic book reader and when I go to see a movie I expect to see changes from the comic book. In some cases its because the comic book version wouldn't work on the big screen.

I think a factor is that Jackman's performance overcame that one small difference. To me, he seemed to walk off of the comic page. Although the height is acknowledged in the comics (in group scenes Wolverine is usually shown to be a head shorter than the other characters), and is sometimes a point of humor, it didn't work against him on the big screen.

Stephen King wrote about Batman and one significant difference between Batman and the other heroes, like Superman, is that Batman must stop the Bad Guy before the Bad Guy acts. The Bad Guy fires a missile and Superman can fly after it and stop it. But if the Bad Guy fires the missile, at that point all Batman can do is clean up the mess.

This leads Batman to prepare for all contingencies so he is ready no matter what happens. As an example, in the War Games story arc, we find out that Batman has created a war plan that would lead him to create a leader that would control all of the criminals in Gotham City, a leader that would be under the control of Batman. Unfortunately, someone who didn't know what they were doing implemented that war plan...

 

exactly...they were not men with special powers... they just had great toys...

 

Like "Q".

 

: )

 

Martial arts was created by short people...and those short people can kick the asses of many a tall person...size had nothing to do with it...Tom, IMO was totally believable as Reacher...

 

I hadn't really thought about it from this aspect, but I will agree.

In Batman, it usually starts out with the bad guys committing some petty crimes or things of this natured that put them on the caped crusaders radar. Batman must then put together clues as to what major crime they are about to commit, in time to head them off at the pass.

 

How many Jack Reacher novels have you read? Would zero be correct? It’s the people who were familiar with the novels that thought the choice of Cruise was “controversial”. Tom was good in the role, but no, he didn’t project Jack Reachrr IMO. I still like both the movies.

 

Would zero be correct? No , it is not correct...

 

Marisa Tomei as Aunt May was pretty controversial as Aunt May in the comics was way better looking.

 

Ok, my bad.

 

yes you are. ; )

 

It wasn't like they didn't try.

Julia Roberts had scheduling conflicts.
Rebecca Schaeffer was murdered by a deranged stalker.
Winona Ryder was a basket case and pulled out at the last minute.

If I were the director of a movie that had so much trouble casting a role, and my sister had done so well with her role, and say, "Screw it! My daughter can do it."

 

It's that side, as much as I love what Keaton/Bale/Affleck were able to do with the role, that we haven't yet really seen. The most of that we've seen so far was Christian Bale's Batman using his knowledge of ballistics to get a little closer to the Joker.

The Robert Pattinson film is supposedly going to lean more into that direction; hopefully the World's Greatest Detective *cough* will get his due on film for a change.