One film I really anticipated, because the book was so good, was Shogun, but I was disappointed as hell when the epic was made with Richard Chamberlaine as Blackthorne. When I read the book I visualized Robert Shaw in the part (although I realize now that Shaw was ill at the time the movie was shot). I could also have imagined Michael Caine or Sean Connery in that role. But who got the idea that Chamberlaine fit the character that James Clavell described so beautifully?
The Japanese characters all looked exactly as I expected them to (and no, Sparky, they don’t all look alike to me), especially Toshiro Mifune as Toranaga. But the lead character was a constant disappointment to me.
It is as if the producers of Gone With The Wind had actually taken Margaret Mitchell seriously and cast Groucho Marx as Rhett Butler. On second thought, that might have worked.
What casting has diminished your enjoyment of an otherwise perfect movie?
Pretty much anything with Tom Cruise. I think Interview with the Vampire would have been MUCH better without him. As would have Eyes wide shut and, well, pretty much everything.
Except Risky Business. He played that part perfect.
Everybody who’s played Batman so far. To be honest, I don’t know who’s be a really good choice. But you need someone who’s built and can impress you as really witty andclever and driven. Michael Keaton was the laid-back Batman. ("Yes, I will become a bat! Criminals fear bats! I will be a bat … tomorrow.)
Leonardo DiCaprio instead of Ewan McGregor in The Beach . Not a wretched movie, but if it were Ewan up there instead of Mr. Titanic it would have been 10 times better.
Fellow Dopers, the movie this thread was created for is “Bonfire of the Vanities.”
I knew it was in trouble when it was announced that Brian De Palma would direct–one of the last people you’d want in charge of a movie version of Wolfe’s social satire. From there it just got worse with the casting nice-average-guy Tom Hanks as the arrogant Yuppie WASP Sherman McCoy and Bruce Willis as the Americanized (formerly British) tabloid reporter. I’d go on but rehashing my gripes about the film only makes me more depressed.
I second the Batman complaint. Keaton was way too wimpy as Bruce Wayne and laughable as Batman. Val Kilmer was okay as Batman, but as Bruce Wayne he was too . . . well hell, too Val Kilmer! Clooney was the best of the three, I think, but lacked the dark intensity needed to pull it off.
So who WOULD have made a good Batman? I’ve always thought a younger Alec Baldwin could have done it. He was pretty good in “The Shadow” as a dark, tormented vigilante. He looked just like Bruce Wayne, and had that deep, scratchy voice. Would have been cool, I’ll bet.
Of course now he’s fat and pasty and starting to look like his 26 doofus brothers, so we can forget that.
You wanna know who would have made a good Batman? Rutger Hauer. He’s too old to play the part now, but in 1989 he could have done the cold-blooded menacing slightly insane Batman (a la Blade Runner) and the somwhat foppishly intellectual Bruce Wayne (a la The Osterman Weekend). Just dye his hair jet black and you’re off to the races.
As it stands, I’m hoping they’ll call him if they ever make a Dark Knight movie, featuring an older, embittered 60-ish Batman.
Onegin, 1999, directed by Martha Fiennes. A truly great film, sadly neglected at the box office.
The story hinges on Evgeny Onegin eventually being irresistibly attracted to Tatyana Larina - so much so that he is willing to transgress every social, moral and political code to be with her. And who gets the Tayana gig…? Liv Tyler. Little Ms. Cross-Eyed herself. Okay, so attractiveness is very much a matter of personal choice, and I’m sure her Dad thinks she’s gorgeous, but c’mon… Pushkin’s great poem/tale calls for irresistible attraction of the kind that could drive a man to rip his own heart out. Liv Tyler???
