This is an old one, but the Maltese Falcon is a nearly perfect movie, but it is absolutely ruined by Mary Astor as the femme fatale.
She’s supposed to be this stunningly beautiful woman, Spade’s Secretary warns him to brace himself before she comes in because “she’s a looker.” Then she enters, and she’s just sort of normal. Then his partner comes in and completely loses his shit over how gorgeous she is, and I’m sitting there thinking “Her? What’s the big deal?”
Throughout the entire film, she’s portrayed as this conniving woman whom Bogey can’t resist, but I just didn’t see any chemistry at all.
I told my son, who is an extremely knowledgeable cinephile, and he told me that’s a thing. Filmies have noticed how absolutely wrong she was for that part. She was a fine actress, but that role called for a completely different kind of actress. It was probably a studio thing, insisting that she get the part, since she was between pictures, and they wanted something high profile to boost her career, and a Bogey mystery would be perfect. Unfortunately, she was terrible in that role.
Who should replace her? Pretty much anyone else at the time, maybe Barbara Stanwyck.
I guess Steven Seagall movies are the low-hanging fruit, huh?
Okay, semi-semi-serious answer: the first Aliens Vs Predator movie. I replace the predator with Animal from the Muppet Show. That would at least make the movie fun.
Replacing any character from any movie with any Muppet makes the movie immediately better.
Gonzo as Anton Chigurh in No County for Old Men.
I could improve on the film adaptation of Eragon by replacing the entire cast with Thunderbirds-style puppets.
Double recast in the MCU:
Starlord should have been played by Jeremy Renner, and Hawkeye should have been played by Crisp Ratt.It would have fit the characterization in the comics better. In the comics, Hawkeye is more of a goofy wisecracking dude who gets lots of chicks, and Starlord is more of a responsible & respectable straight-man for the rest of the GotG to annoy with their weirdness.
Remove Joel Silver from the production team of the Matrix: Reloaded and Revolutions. Creative control to the Wachowskis.
Allow the countercultural, noir elements that made the first Matrix excellent. Police and innocent bystanders are potential if not actual enemies. Fewer set-piece fights; more skillful, thoughtful moments like the fight against Seraph.
And, certainly, a different end-fight arc. Once Smith has the Oracle’s power, a slugfest stops making sense.
You might be right but that’s not a simple casting change
Speaking as someone who genuinely loved all four Mayrix movies, while simultaneously able to recognize the decline in quality as the franchise continued: The Wachowskis didn’t understand the media they were ripping off. They were mashing action figures together, effectively, and that’s ok. The first movie was lightning in a bottle, of course the sequels wouldn’t hold up, but I’m glad they exist because it inspired a significant portion of my own writing.
I agree that having the Wachowskis back in charge of the franchise would be an improvement, not because of their skill as writers and directors, but because of the passion and vision for the art (assuming that they still care, anyway.).
I keep saying Reloaded and Revolution would make one great sequel if you cut all the crap out. As they are the scenes are just a little too long and there’s too much gratuitous fighting. But there are enough great ideas for one great movie, just not two.
Star Wars - Attack of the Clones and Star Wars - Revenge of the Sith would both be infinitely better if a better actor than Hayden Christensen had been cast as Anakin Skywalker.
I also think Mads Mikkelsen was a terrible, awful replacement for Johnny Depp as Grindelwald in Fantastic Beasts 3. He’s such a wooden actor and lacks the subtlety and nuance that Depp brought to the role.
Star Wars - Attack of the Clones and Star Wars - Revenge of the Sith would both be infinitely better if a better actor than Hayden Christensen had been cast as Anakin Skywalker.
I really think George Lucas as director was the problem there. Hayden Christiansen isn’t a terrible actor. Neither is Natalie Portman or Ewan McGregor. But all three of them have just terrible, awful line reads in those movies.
Portman’s career took a hit from those movies, though she recovered because she already had a foothold in the industry. McGregor was a well-known actor already, so he wasn’t hurt. Christiansen got demolished.
A bad actor makes themself look bad. A bad director makes every actor look bad.
In regards to Star Wars, I remember watching the behind the scenes documentary on the Phantom Menace DVD where you get to see them auditioning child actors for the part of Anakin.
Specifically, you watch them screen test the final three kids, one of which is obviously Jake Lloyd.
In my opinion he was second place of the three, I could never understand why George chose him.
I don’t think George has ever had an eye for good actors. He just got lucky with Harrison Ford who carried the shit out of the original trilogy.
Poor Jake Lloyd had a really tough time in life because of his involvement in Star Wars, sadly.
I think HC was only cast because he was a stereotypically hot guy, TBH. His acting is just atrocious all the way through. (Though he’s acquitted himself way better in the new series as Anakin and Vader.)
There’s also a very real problem of Lucas not really caring to get the best out of them, and for the younger actors it’s disastrous. Natalie Portman is generally a bit better at picking solid projects than elevating them (IMHO), but she’s every bit as bad as the Anakins in the prequels. Only the veterans who could draw on prior experience, and especially the British-trained theater actors, could work with the abstractions of the set and chew the scenery convincingly without a lot of helpful guidance.
On ANH, George was still a young Turk in naturalistic New Hollywood, and anyway he had exactly one mainstream success under his belt, so people could push back; there’s also the sometimes exaggerated but very real contributions of the editing team picking good takes and splicing them together in a way that feels right, certainly in the moment. On ESB he did his best work by going with scriptwriters and a veteran director who’d done a dozen films. Even on ROTJ, the non-guild director was a guy who’d done a lot of intimate character work on British TV, and if the plot was straining under its weight, you still got solid line readings and some convincing emotion.
Suicide Squad. Jared Leto is replaced by Jim Carrey.
I honestly can’t tell if I’m serious about this or not.
But he’s already the Riddler!
Highlander. Recast the lead actor and Sean Connery and you have a great movie.
A Frenchman playing a Scot and a Scotsman playing an Egyptian turned Spaniard. The oddest decision ever.
Haven’t seen Star Trek: Into Darkness since before I watched the actual show, so I can’t really say if it would fix it, but it would be improved by removing the Cumberbatch of it all
Cucumber was not the right casting choice for Khan. But then Ricardo Montalban’s portrayal of Khan is a tough act to follow.
A request: who would you replace Jerry Seinfeld with in a B movie?
I’m not even joking when I say Nicholas Cage.
