Good:
Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka. A whimsical smartass. Loved it.
Ah-nuld in Predator. Maybe the manliest movie ever, and he was the centerpiece.
Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop 1 & 2
Bad:
Adrien Brody in Predators. Giving an actor a personal trainer and pumping him full of HGH doesn’t make him a badass, Hollywood.
Topher Grace in Spider-Man 3. Eddie Brock was a brick shithouse in the comics.
Bad: Matthew Broderick in Godzilla.
Good:
Sean Connery as Captain Ramius in The Hunt for Red October
(and because I rewatched it a few days ago) Wesley Snipes as Blade.
Yeah, I kept waiting for him for climb on top of a float and sing Danke Schoen
Good: Peter Stormare as Satan in Constantine. Is there a better Satan? I can’t think of one.
Bad: Ed Norton as Bruce Banner. I don’t get this one at all. (Not that Eric Bana and Mark Ruffalo are any better.) It’s like they’re picking actors at random. I really want to see Guy Pierce or Giovanni Ribisi in that role.
John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd as Jake & Elwood Blues.
And none other than James Gregory could play Inspector Luger.
Also, James Arness as Matt Dillon. A strong authority figure tempered with a sense of fair play. The perfect John Wayne-esque figure for that genre.
Fox was the first choice for BTTF, but the producers of “Family Ties” wouldn’t make him available. After giving Stoltz up as a lost cause, Bob Zemeckis and Bob Gale went back to Gary David Goldberg and worked out an arrangement where Fox would shoot “Family Ties” during the day as usual, then work his nights and weekends on the set of BTTF. This often involved 20 hour workdays for Fox.
Nonsense. Some good Costner roles off the top of my head:
Clark’s dad in Man Of Steel
Tin Cup
Field Of Dreams
Bull Durham
The Untouchables
Open Range (“Men are gonna get killed here today, Sue, and I’m gonna kill 'em.”)
As far as I’m concerned, The Untouchables was one of the worst movies of the last 30 years.
Some muthafuckas always gotta be tryin’ to iceskate uphill.
Too late to offer anything original, but I’ll agree for best casting with:
James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano
Carroll O’Connor as Archie Bunker
Jason Alexander as George Costanza
Jack Gleeson as Joffrey Baratheon
Bryan Cranston as Walter White
Sorry if these have already been mentioned (I skimmed the thread), but some more best casting picks from a couple other TV shows:
Ed Asner and Ted Knight on The Mary Tyler Moore Show
Phil Hartman on NewsRadio
Richard Mulligan on Soap
Donald Glover on Community
Perfect casting:
Silence of the Lambs
Full Metal Jacket
Patrick Mcgoohan as The Prisoner - amazing energy and he just gets it.
and while I’m on a 60s kick … Diana Rigg as Emma Peel: holy SHIT!
Best casting - Robert Guillaume as Benson Dubois, first in Soap, then in his own show.
Desmond Llewelyn as Q: talking down to an omnicompetent superhero as if a small child needed an exasperated schoolteacher to patiently explain the obvious.
Bad: Gwyneth Paltrow in “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.”
I watched the alternate ending on the DVD (where Blade defeats a huge blood monster god thingie), wow was dropping that ending a good choice. Its a decent and fun movie but on rewatching some of the special effects are really cheap looking.
Actually all of the main characters in Blade were pretty good casting choices.
On a semi-related side-note I had a drink-snorting moment of surprise when Danny J Jules aka The Cat from Red Dwarf appeared as a vampire/ninja/assassin in Blade 2!
I can pretty much just say that;
Good Casting: The actor OWNS the role.
Bad Casting: “Um, what is my motivation again? What does this character want? Why am I here? Should I be acting?”