[QUOTE=MaxTheVool]
I can’t get behind this at all. The people over there making sacrifices for freedom were not superheros or action heroes, they were “average Americans” doing a job and surviving the horrors of war as best they could. Tom Hanks is absolutely perfect for that role. imho.
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That’s the point the movie reaches, yes, but the script is the journey that should bring us there. In the dialogue between the other characters, the Captain begins as a cold, distant, probably brutal figure. His best friend there has been with him since Kasserine, and doesn’t have a clue as to what he did before the war. Before he orders the German set loose, the Rangers are ready to shoot, and react with shock when they get the order. Why? Because the Captain they know would kill the prisoner, no question. They can’t believe what they’re hearing. Taken scene by scene on script alone, it’s easy to see a completely different character of the Captain emerge that looks nothing like Hanks’ portrayal, and yet fits the dialogue quite a bit better imo. Some of the softer scenes that would have lent character development like his crying fit, the shaking hands, the church conversation, and the revelation of his pre-war vocation would have had far greater impact coming from the character described by the other soldiers, rather than the Hanksian everyman.
What we hear of the script agrees completely with your conclusion: it is something of a deconstruction of the Greatest Generation superman myth. But we can’t deconstruct what Hanks never presents to us. Would Tom Hanks tell Sgt. Horvath where he comes from and what he did before the war? Of course he would, he’s Tom Hanks. I must stand by my conclusion.
My perennial example of bad casting is that of Rosie O’Donnell as Betty Rubble in the first Flintstones movie. Betty was one of the sexiest cartoon characters ever and you give us Rosie O’Donnell?? To quote “Galaxy Quest”: “Did any of you ever WATCH the show?”
[QUOTE=Grossbottom]
Tom Hanks as Captain Miller in Saving Private Ryan. From start to stop, nothing about his portrayal suggests that Mr. Everyman was assembled out of spare body parts and dead GIs. The script was clearly written for a Rutger Hauer/Tom Berenger-type hardcase, instead there was…Tom Hanks. The movie was good enough that the miscasting wasn’t a distraction, but I don’t think the audience was remotely surprised to learn that Hanks’ character taught English composition at Thomas Alva Edison High School.
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This idea hadn’t occurred to me before, but now that you mention it, it was obviously the screenwriter’s intention to surprise us there. Good catch.
Speaking of Tom Hanks, I thought he and his bizarre hairpiece were horribly miscast in The Da Vinci Code. Too old, for one thing (Hanks, not the hairpiece), and no chemistry with the female lead. I would have cast Ron Livingston, who could easily have pulled off the role of smart-guy-thrown-into-befuddling-situation.
[QUOTE=Askance] Marlon Brando in Guys and Dolls. I mean honestly. And no way did he need to do that, he was at the peak of his bankability at the time. Was he trying to stretch himself?
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I once played Nathan Detroit in a community theater production, driving home to me that he has less singing to do than any other lead character. Now, Frank Sinatra did a perfectly good Nathan Detroit in the movie, but isn’t that kind of a waste of the hottest singer of the time?
[QUOTE=Kythereia]
Sean Connery as Allan Quartermain in The League of Extraordinary Gentleman. Granted, that whole movie was an abomination unto God that should be smited multiple times with a lightning bolt and fried off the face of the earth, but that choice grated most of all.
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Who would you cast as an aging expat-Brit adventure hero?!
[QUOTE=Morbo]
And as much as I enjoyed the movie Rounders, I simply refused to believe that Matt Damon was the least bit believable as a hardened, wizened poker genius. That role screamed for someone older and scruffier.
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No, it didn’t. The character was a law school student/dropout.
[QUOTE=CalMeacham]
There’s a whole sub-category of Bad Casting Because the Hollywood Version Completely Rewrote the Story. It’s not the actor’s fault.
Arnold Schwarteneggar should ever have played Quaid* in Total Recall – the original story calls for a Woody Allen-like nebbish.
Or Whoopi Goldberg in Burglar
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Under this heading: Matt Damon in Batman and Robin. I repeat yet again: Robin is not the Twentysomething Wonder. Robin is not the Teenage Wonder. Robin is the Boy Wonder. When he first joins Batman he should be no older than twelve, just like in the comic book. (And don’t tell me modern audiences wouldn’t accept putting a boy that age in harm’s way. In Master and Commander there was a prepubescent midshipman, just like you would have found in the real-life Napoleonic-Wars Royal Navy; and he gets his arm blown off in the very first scene.)
[QUOTE=featherlou]
Well, that explains a lot. :rolleyes: at the producers. Nadine was supposed to be, well, the exact opposite of everything Laura SanG. was.
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Tell the truth, I never could buy the character of Nadine in the book. Her conversion to the Dark Side was just too facile and too inconsistent with her character up to that point. And her subsequent regret/defiance made it worse, not better.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Under this heading: Matt Damon in Batman and Robin. I repeat yet again: Robin is not the Twentysomething Wonder. Robin is not the Teenage Wonder. Robin is the Boy Wonder. When he first joins Batman he should be no older than twelve, just like in the comic book. (And don’t tell me modern audiences wouldn’t accept putting a boy that age in harm’s way. In Master and Commander there was a prepubescent midshipman, just like you would have found in the real-life Napoleonic-Wars Royal Navy; and he gets his arm blown off in the very first scene.)
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[QUOTE=spoke-]
Speaking of Tom Hanks, I thought he and his bizarre hairpiece were horribly miscast in The Da Vinci Code. Too old, for one thing (Hanks, not the hairpiece), and no chemistry with the female lead.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
You’re right, I always get those two confused for some reason. (And I took the trouble to look it up before posting to avoid that confusion . . .)
[/QUOTE]
I think that Matt Damon was horribly miscast in “The Chris O’Donnel Story”.
[QUOTE=Loach]
Flagg was not a white guy. He wasn’t necessarily black either. He was the Dark Man. After I saw Sheridan play him I thought he was perfect.
[/QUOTE]
I agree. My first instinct when I saw him was “this is NOT what I had in mind” from reading the book! But damn, he won me over. It was the line about “… a little psychic twinkle. Does M-O-O-N mean anything to you?” I thought he was brilliant in the part.
And while Michael Keaton as Batman kind of sucked, he did a top notch Bruce Wayen. He had a real pyschotic twinkle, that made him dark and edgy. I just wanted to see that as his “private side” and was waiting for the very non-Batman “playboy” side to be his alter ego.
Val Kylmer as Bruce Wayne/Batman sucked goat balls. At least Clooney’s chin worked in the cowl.
