Looks like I was close with the Mad Mag gag. It was from 1958.
This one is from 1962. Look in the bottom half of the right-hand side. 
At this point, I don’t think Deadpool could be played by any actor not named Ryan Reynolds.
To be fair, Galecki was a great Leonard. Leonard may not have been as much fun for the writers as Sheldon, and Sheldon was definitely the breakout character, but if Parsons had not had such a good “Leonard” to play off of, his Sheldon would not have been as good as it was.
[quote=“The_Other_Waldo_Pepper, post:79, topic:923530, full:true”]
First off, it’s not like there haven’t been attempts at Herman Munster.
Edward Hermann (see the third picture)
John Schuck
Sam McMurray
Jerry O’Connell
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2130271/?ref_=tt_mv_close
Except for the last one (which I remember), I wasn’t even aware the others existed without the interwebs.
As for the Fonz, that show certainly was high camp, so it would take a high camp actor to fit that role the way it was written. Could Jim Carrey have pulled it off? What about the aforementioned Jim Parsons? Maybe somebody in a motorcycle jacket?
Two characters that are puppeteers in suits? Well, let’s throw Frank Oz as Yoda in there. Or Mel Blanc as Bugs Bunny. At least they have distinctive voices, and lines.
You’d be better off with Lou Ferrigno as the Hulk - even though be didn’t really have lines, he certainly created an iconic look, and not from a suit.
since the thread already has 100 answers i can post my thoughts. Sure, there are roles that have become connetected to the actor but one could never know how another character would have done it. If Galecki had been Sheldon, he would’ve been very good and we’d say “who else but Galecki”.
There is a heavy survivor bias. What if Courtney Cox had been Rachel?
Interestingly, IIRC what I read once, the casting call for that role did not call for a short Jewish guy. The original casting call went out for an actor over 6’2, well-muscled, and blond. They also intended to play him kind of stupid to contrast with Richie being smart.
I forget how Henry Winkler got the role. I don’t know whether he had an agent with a lot of insight, or someone on the production crew who’d seen him do something else, but whoever it was convinced casting to go a totally different way. It probably helped that Ron Howard is a redhead, which meant they could go either way with Fonzie’s hair-- he could be blond or brown-haired; they didn’t have to worry about going one way or the other to contrast with Richie.
But if the show were ever rebooted (difficult to imagine, since it capitalized on a 50s nostalgia the Boomers were all having when they hit 30), they could try the original concept of Fonzie.
We could certainly reenvision Fonzie for something different. In the spirit of the current trend for dark retellings, like Joker, how about a dark, ironic “Happy Days”, where the Fonz is a motorcycle-riding, brooding thug who bullies Ritchie and the gang?
It wasn’t exactly a leap. Henry Winkler in a PRE-Fonzie role:
There was a TV movie called Sometimes They Come Back Written by Stephen King. Pretty much the same idea.
To me he was immensely overrated. He wasn’t even the best actor playing a villain in the Dark Knight, let alone the best version of the Joker. About all I’d say is he was a better Joker than Jared Leto (which may very well be the fault of others making Suicide Squad than Leto’s abilities).
Nicolson, Phoenix, even Romero were better in the role, but they didn’t die between production and release, so to state the truth of such things so bluntly is treated as some sort of heresey. Hamil as the voice is great too, none of that stupid teeth sucking tick that Ledger filled his performance with,
I thought Ledger was one of the scariest movie villains, because it just seemed like you’d have no idea what he’d do next (and maybe he didn’t either).
Barney Fife, Gomer Pyle & Sergeant Carter, Jethro Bodine & Granny, Dorothy Gale & the Cowardly Lion, Maria von Trapp, most of the MTM Show cast, Louie de Palma, Rocky Balboa
Hmm, those are some interesting suggestions.
I wonder if Rocky could be retold with a different star as the character. Not the version with Rocky coaching someone new, but an actual reboot version. Remade in the modern century. Maybe he’d need to be an MMA competitor rather than a boxer. Would it work, or would that feel like the new “The Karate Kid”, where he trains in kung fu, not karate. (Yeah, I know to the average person that doesn’t seem like much of a difference.)
Dorothy Gale and the Cowardly Lion are very much a result of saturation from the film. It’s been such an iconic film for so long, played every year for just about everybody who is alive.
Recent attempts to retell the tale in a more modern context have been interesting in their own ways, but they aren’t Frank Baum’s classic tale. Of course, the movie deviates from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz a bit, too, but it is something close to the story in the book, with the same setting and feel.
How about Gilligan? Would a reboot “Gilligan’s Island” be any good? Of course the original was very camp, and that’s not the modern sentiment.
You know 21st century Hollywood. They’d make it dark. They’d make everyone unlikable. And it wouldn’t have been a random bit of bad luck that got them stranded, it would be a conspiracy. And there’s be a secret room on the island and random mysterious happenings on the island, and people wouldn’t be who they seem to be. And it would have a completely incomprehensible ending where no one has any idea what happened. Maybe they are all dead.
And it would suck. For seven seasons.
Bob Denver is, and only is, Maynard G. Krebs, and conversely.
Maybe it depends on the viewer’s generation. Thus, for example, we have posts above saying that the iconic Superman is either George Reeves or Christopher Reeve (with added confusion due to the similarity of the names). For us old farts of the 1950’s, it was George.
Louise Fletcher was Nurse Ratched.
(To be sure, of course, I’m not aware of any sequel or re-make in which there was a different actress playing Big Nurse, nor am I aware of any major well-known roles that Louise Fletcher played.)
Who is the most iconic President of the United States?
Henry Fonda?
E.G. Marshall?
Morgan Freeman?
Personally, I prefer Ronny Cox. (But for the 1990 version of Captain America, not for Murder at 1600.)
Harrison Ford!
David Suchet IS Hercule Poirot.
Other actors played Poirot on the big screen before and after Suchet. Albert Finney and Peter Ustinov put in good performances. Suchet as a matter of fact played the role of Inspector Japp in one of Ustinov’s Poirot films.
But it was the TV series of Hercule Poirot that defined Suchet as the character. The meticulous detail that went into the rotund appearance, thinning hair, crisp moustache, odd walk and eccentricities along with the magnificent accent attaching the Belgian origin was something only he nailed. The others just didn’t tick all the boxes and others hardly at all. Their depictions made for acceptable detective stories but only Suchet fit the bill as Agatha Christie would have wanted it.