From this thread on Wonder Woman there seemed to be popular consent that Lynda Carter should be cast as WW’s mom.
Am I the only person here that hates it when they recast an original cast member in the remake of something?
It really takes me out of the moment. Not only is it usually someone who can’t act very well, it is one big wink at the audience.
I’m not a big fan of audience winking!
Maybe it just makes me sad seeing someone from the original cast, once a primetime player, reduced to a supporting role in a property they made famous.
No offense to those who like this kind of thing, it just really bugs me.
Depends on the circumstances. I did a thread a while back on best and worst shout out cameos that touched on the theme. If the part is well done and serves some purpose then I tend to think of such casting as a nice touch and a respectful acknowledgement of the contributions of the original. Casting Lynda Carter as Hippolyta would be a terrific example of that. I could also see her doing a reprise of the original role in a passing the mantle kind of thing, i.e. she’s ascended the throne and so must pass the identity of WW to another.
At worst it’s pandering stunt casting. Think Jacklyn Smith in the second Charlie’s Angels movie or David Soul and Whats-his-name Glaser in the Starsky and Hutch movie.
Simply from a marketing perspective the producers of the WW movie would be foolish not to cast Lynda Carter in some significant capacity. She’s been a terrific representative of the character and the franchise and would undoubtedly continue to be so in promoting the movie.
I usually find it amusing when they do this sort of thing. There’s also an indirect form of this when someone is cast in a show that has some relation to the subject of their original show. They recently had Michael Learned as a patient on an episode of Scrubs, which brought a little smile to my face, as Miss Learned, besides playing Olivia on The Waltons for years, was also the star of a later drama, Nurse, which, as you can probably guess from the title, was set in a hospital.
Sorry for posting again, but there’s another excellent example of the indirect form that just occurred to me. Molly Ringwald’s appearance near the end of Not Another Teen Movie was sublimely appropriate.
Dude…it’s a superhero movie. It’s inherently campy, unless the source material is by Frank Miller. Even dark source material doesn’t guarantee non-camp…look at the Spawn movie…
So that would be…Sin City? That’s the only comic book movie I can think of right now that played it totally straight. And like I said, that’s Frank Miller source material, so there was no camp in the first place.
What other superhero movies have played it completely straight?
Batman Begins played it fairly straight. The XMen movies, for the most part, did as well.
The spiderman flicks, especially the second one, went more for action/adventure than a lot of other comic book films (Aunt May’s Superman comment aside.)
What’s wrong with camp, anyway? I enjoy camp. When the little homages like Noel Neill turning up on Lois & Clark or Michael Learned showing up on Scrubs happen, I feel amusement and happiness that the creators of the show have some knowledge of what came before and enough respect for the history to make it happen onscreen.