should have gone to other actors. David Jansen and Barry Morse were both lifeless.
Gerard should have been played by Peter Falk, Harry Guardino, or Lee Marvin.
Nicholson and Redford were still doing TV at that time. I slightly prefer young Nicolson to young Redford, but either would have done better than David Deadpan as Kimble. Even Shatner could have done better than Jansen–a bit over-the-top but never boring, at least.
My mental Denethor always resembled Paul Scofield, largely on the grounds of his performance as the French King in Branagh’s Henry V…
ANYONE other than Jennifer Love Hewitt playing Audrey Hepburn. (She cast HERSELF-she bought into the project as a producer when it was still in the development stages and then cast herself.)
I really think that Titanic would have been much better had the part of Jack gone to someone like Christian Bale, rather than DiCaprio.
Anyone but Molly Ringwald in The Stand.
If we had to suffer through a horrible Oliver Stone Doors movie, did they have to twist the knife and give us Val Kilmer? Ever since that cheesy Clash Of The Titans movie I thought Harry Hamlin would have made a mighy fine Jim.
Or maybe I just got carried away by the long hair and the toga 
Mongomery Cliff instead of Jose Ferer in “Molin Rouge”
John Wayne instead of Ben Johnson in “The Last Picture Show” Well, maybe not, but I’d like to see his screen test.
Lee Marvin instead of Brad Dexter and Paul Newman instead of Robert Vaughn in “The Magnificnet Seven.”
If “A Clockwork Orange” were made with the Rolling Stones as they were once considering, Mick Jagger wouldn’t have been as good as Malcom McDowell, but the rest of the droogs would have been more interesting.
Bruce Willis rather than Tom Hanks in Road to Perdition. The character of Michael Sullivan was supposed to be someone who was both a devoted husband/loving father and a ruthless hitman. Hanks was able to effectively carry out the first part but, for the second part, he lacked the sufficient menace needed for someone who was also known as “The Angel of Death.” Willis, although he seems to make three or four crappy movies for every decent one, has been very good in movies like Pulp Fiction, 12 Monkeys, andThe Sixth Sense and would have been more convincing in conveying the character’s dual nature.
Interesting tidbit: at one point, Jimmy Stewart was considered to play the role of “Sam the Lion” in Last Picture Show and Dorothy Malone was almost cast as Jacy’s (Cybill Shepherd’s) mother before the role was taken by a then-unknown Ellen Burstyn.
Christopher Walken as Han Solo in the Star Wars trilogy, definitely. I heard he screen-tested for the role, and came in second place to Harrison Ford. I would have loved to see that.
“WHAT… you mean to TELL me you’ve never HEARD of the Millenium… FALCON?”
Anyone other than Tom Cruise in every movie Tom Cruise has made. Except Legend.
I’ll probably get booed out of the thread for this one, but I can’t help thinking that Sean Bean would have made a better Aragorn than Viggo Mortensen. Of course that would mean re-casting Boromir too, and I’m pretty sure Viggo wouldn’t have been convincing in that role either.
Someone who could actually sing instead of Marlon Brando in Guys and Dolls, say Howard Keel or Gordon McCrae.
Ditto the entire cast of Paint Your Wagon.
[sidetrack]I’ve always been annoyed that perfectly competent female singers, such as Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, were routinely dubbed if they weren’t perfect, yet male non-singers could be cast in singing roles and have their monotonous croaking left intact. Disney continues this practice of the guys acting and singing their roles while the women get separated in Pocahontas, the inept vocals of male lead Mel Gibson are left intact, while the voice-acting and singing for Pocahontas were cast to an actress and singer. Would it have been too difficult to find a perfomer, such as David Ogden Stiers from the same move, who can sing and act? In Mulan at least they were consistent (though in the wrong direction), having both the men and the women voiced and sung separately. C’mon, Broadway is full of people who can act and sing.[/sidetrack]
Pretty much anybody other than Glenn Campbell in True Grit. You’ve got Dennis Hopper and Robert Duvall in bit parts, while a complete non-actor gets the second lead.
None of the actors playing Batman has worked in the role. Batman needs to be a big guy, physically intimidating. Clooney, Kilmer, and Keaton are all perfectly competent actors, but none of them is a convincing badass. And while we’re at it, they miss with most of the villains, too. Jack Nicholson is all wrong for the Joker, and Arnie as Captain Cold leaves me, well, cold. They nailed it with Danny Devito as the Penguin, though. They really should cast the parts with actors who fit the role rather than names. Batman is a character who will draw an audience by himself; a big name is unnecessary.
Look at Spider-Man for a good job of casting your superhero.
I would have liked Haily Jole Osmund (sorry if that was a butchery of the spelling of his name) play Anakin in Episode 1.
No way, while Christopher Walken is a great actor he wouldn’t have the suave, coolness about him that Harrison Ford did, most of the great Solo lines would have been very very different.
Peter MacNichol was terribly miscast as Stingo in Sophie’s Choice. I don’t know who I’d choose to replace him. Maybe William L. Petersen.
Charlton Heston said he was first asked, for Ben-Hur, to play the role of Messala, rather than Judah. That would have been intriguing.
Then, when he was cast as Judah, he lent his copy of the script to Chuck Connors, a good friend, for him to try for the Messala role. I liked Steven Boyd as he was in the movie, but still, it could have been good the other ways.
Honestly, I could barely tell the difference between the two of them. They looked and talked and dressed virtually identically.
Of course, I’m hardly a connoisseur of fine man-flesh, so there may be nuances I missed. (On the other hand, I thought Liv Tyler made a dandy Arwen. 
)
I’d have loved to see RDA and Michael Shanks in the original Stargate movie… 
The idea of a Batman movie was kicked around pretty freely through the eighties, finally resulting in the 1989 Michael Keaton version, which I don’t care for.
Had the movie been made a few years earlier, Rutger Hauer would’ve been awesome. He can do the cold menacing thing (Blade Runner) and the sauve thing (The Osterman Weekend), while Keaton stumbled through both aspects, being neither scary nor smooth.
In fact, if they ever make a Dark Knight movie about an older Batman forced out of retirement (or a live-action Batman Beyond, for that matter), I’d want to see Hauer in there.
I trust you’ve heard about the new Batman movie, then, to be directed by Christopher Nolan (the director of Memento and Insomnia)? Christian Bale (American Psycho, Equilibrium) is starring as Batman this time, and I think he’ll be perfect as “scary” and “smooth.”
Did anybody find *Julia Roberts * credible as a prostitute? Now, Pretty woman was a huge success nevertheless, but still.
There have been some TV shows that I thought could have been better. Kirstie Allie was irritating to me on cheers(or anywhere else really). I thought maybe Carol Cane could have played a more interesting character there.