Super-hero movies have gotten so pervasive they've created a new trivia topic:

Cafe Society
1

“Acting legends seen together only in a movie wayyyyy below them.”

And it doesn’t have to be a super-hero movie…but they provide golden opportunities.

Of course ‘legend’ is subjective but:

Sam Rockwell* and Mickey Rourke together INNNNNNNN…Iron Man 2??

“It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad World” of course had a lot of famous actors. But I don’t know if any had scenes together you wouldn’t otherwise find elsewhere.

I guess disaster movies would be fertile ground for this as well.

Don’t think Steve McQueen and Paul Newman had any other scenes together except in Towering Inferno.

*I guess by legend i mean utterly fantastic.

2

Anthony Hopkins and Natalie Portman in Thor: The Dark World.

Kenneth Brannagh, Maggie Smith, Richard Harris, Alan Rickman, and John Cleese in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

3

That’s not something that only started with the Marvel Studios era of superhero movies, is it? “Money, Dear Boy,” got some legends into some very silly movies long before.

4

It’s not ‘legends who appear in silly movies’ but legends that only worked together once and actually have a scene together…and that movie was silly.

It’s also exacerbated by the Marvel formula of casting a great elder actor in the mentor roles.

5

To quote Michael Cain when talking about his role in Jaws 4 (paraphrasing):

“I haven’t seen it and by all accounts it’s terrible, but I have seen the house it built and it’s terrific.”

6

Michael Caine and Donald Sutherland would appear in just about anything you paid them for. At the end of his life, when he was getting together money for his family, Laurence Olivier would take just about any role (and I loved him in Clash of the Titans, made during this period).

7

Let’s not be elitist. If Iron Man or Thor is the worst movie in your resume, you’re having a great career. Selling out is when you start doing movies like The Love Guru or Jack and Jill or Postal or Dirty Grandpa (and all of those films had an Oscar winner in them)

8

Also (allegedly) by Caine on how he takes movies roles:

“I look at the first page, and I look at the last page, and if my character is in both, I do the effing film”

Lord knows if either of these quotes are true, but god they’re great if they are.

9

Don’t forget Snow Dogs.

It stars Cuba Gooding, Jr. and James Coburn.

10

Good point but…they are still a tad silly. And yes i like them both greatly.

11

Here are Newman and McQueen together in Somebody Up There Likes Me 18 years before Inferno.

12

John Wayne and Oliver Hardy in the same scene in How the West was Won.

13

Ooh, I get to trot out the movie that I watched with my kids a thousand times, then another hundred with my sunday school kids:

RAT RACE

It’s a dumb (yet funny) remake of *Mad Mad Mad Mad World. *
Full of Oscar nominees (and winners!), and other too-good-for-this-farce actors: Kathy Bates, Whoopie Goldberg, Cuba Gooding Jr, Jon Lovitz, John Cleese…

… and where else can you see Rowan Atkinson playing a narcoleptic Italian opposite Wayne Knight?

“Do you know what we’re transporting?” “Ass! You said we are hauling ASS…” “No…”

14

IMHO Murder By Death was neither funny nor clever, despite the presence of Alec Guinness, Elsa Lanchester, David Niven, Peter Sellers, Maggie Smith and several others.

15

Then why single out super hero movies as being “wayyyyy below” an Oscar winner? Not every movie is going to be The Remains of the Day or Black Swan. Sometimes a great actor makes a movie like The Wolfman or Red 2 or Your Highness or Jane Got a Gun.

16

Nemo.

Iron Man 2 got Mickey Rourke to swing some bullwhips, and argue with Sam Rockwell about a cockatoo. It was silly. Getting Mickey Rourke to play Whiplash is like using a piledriver to hammer a nail.

I look forward to Gene Hackman or Sean Connery coming out of retirement to play Jarvis.(The real Jarvis)…ok that would be cool but still.

17

Groucho Marx and George Raft in Skidoo (1968) - Though the only scene they share is via telescreen (and it’s kind of a stretch to call Raft an “acting legend.”) Lots of other thespian “legends” - not including Frankie Avalon - in the cast as well who should have known better.

Stacy Keach and Ursula Andress in Slave of the Cannibal God (1978)

James Mason, Curd Jurgens, Stephen Boyd and Jean Seberg in the charmingly titled Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! (1971)

Brando & Depp in The Brave (1997)
Brando & Kilmer in The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996)
Brando & Dunaway in Don Juan DeMarco (1994)

Tony Curtis and everyone else in The Manitou (1977)

18

Heck, some would say that if you’re doing nothing but movies like Dirty Grandpa and Snow Dogs, you’re still having a great career. Steady work is steady work.

19

It had its moments.

Not many, to be sure.

20

True true.

And good call, great call in the spirit of my point on Island of Dr. Moreau.