Who's a Character in a Movie That Deserved a Better Actor?

[killamch89]

Let's discuss those moments when a character in a movie had all the potential to shine, but the actor just didn't fit the bill. Which character do you think could have been great with a different actor?

[Shagger]

I tend to place blame for bad performances on directors and those in charge of casting before the actors themselves. Obviously whitewashing, casting cisgender actors in trans roles and casting actors for roles whare the characters have certain disabilities when the actors don't (Looking at you Music (2021) ) can cause huge problems, but even that isn't the fault of the actor.  Ultimately, it all comes back to the director. It's thier responsibility to cast the right actors for the right roles.  If the director isn't up to snuff, replacing the actor will do little to help. Take M. Night Shyamalan, he can take a great actor like Mark Wahlberg and make him look like a complete plank.

[The Blackangel]

The worst I've seen was Hayden Christiansen as Anakin Skywalker. He destroyed the role and just made me sick.

On 3/30/2024 at 6:46 PM, Shagger said:

Take M. Night Shyamalan, he can take a great actor like Mark Wahlberg and make him look like a complete plank.

M. Night Shymalan is the worst director in cinema history. It doesn't matter who the actors are, his movies are career enders. The only movie he ever did that was even half decent was The Sixth Sense. Everything else is in the toilet with Adolf trump's integrity.

[Shagger]

14 minutes ago, The Blackangel said:

The worst I've seen was Hayden Christiansen as Anakin Skywalker. He destroyed the role and just made me sick.

M. Night Shymalan is the worst director in cinema history. It doesn't matter who the actors are, his movies are career enders. The only movie he ever did that was even half decent was The Sixth Sense. Everything else is in the toilet with Adolf trump's integrity.

 

Couldn't agree more. What a director is supposed to is immerse the audience in the story being told in a movie or TV show.  Work in service to that story, but Shyamalan has no interest in that.

 

In the process of making a movie or TV show, nothing is accidental.  Directors employ actors wearing specific costumes to play specific characters with specific actions, reactions and traits with specific dialogue spoken with a specific delivery in a specific setting with specific lighting while filming with specific shots at a specific range with a specific perspective and a specific focus and with specific editing and filters with specific sound, music and ambiance.  Everything, and I do mean everything, is deliberate. They do this direct (Yes, they call them directors for a reason) the attention of the audience to whare it needs to be to create the right emotional investment from said audience.  It sounds ridiculous, but when a director does thier job well, you forget that there is a director.  You forget are you are even watching a movie or TV show at all.  This might not inflate many people ego's, but when you enjoy a movie, it has tricked you, but that's OK. It's a good thing.

 

I've always despised M. Night Shamalan's movies because he does the opposite. With those same tools of casting, costuming, editing, shot options, lighting, set designs, actor direction and script writing he is constantly trying to remind the audience that they are not only watching a movie, but more importantly, watching his movie. That's what's important to him. It doesn't matter if a scene was awkward, slow, didn't convince anyone of the emotional state of a character, was unrealistic or made any kind of logical sense. If he believes it will remind the audience who directed the movie, that will be fine.  Why else would he so often write in small roles for himself in his films?  Because the fucker can't help himself, that's why!  He has to be the centre of attention.

 

He like a pompous, arrogant artist who won't let anyone admire his work unless they ask why he used that one brush stroke somewhere of the canvas. If you need to explain what kind of a reaction a scene is meant to provoke, that mean the scene didn't work. If you asked him him why he had a guy with one muscular arm stare blankly right into the cameras for several minutes and talk about why he only works out that one arm, he's probably spend all night giving a synopsis about it (I'm not kidding, that actually happens in Lady in the Water).

[Knight Plug]

In Child's Play 3, Andy was for the only time in the franchise, played by a different actor. Kind of hated that, although he did the part well enough.

[Lens]

For me, it's the 2016 Suicide Squad movie. We can see that Jared Leto is a great actor, but he just didn't really bring the same level of crazy that Heath Ledger did in The Dark Knight.