10 Things I Hate About Movies - Part 8.

8. Bad Casting I’m starting to run out of steam here and need to really dig deep to think of what else I hate about movies. Bad casting isn’t something I would call pervasive and the bringer of ultimate doom to movies, but it can ruin a potentially decent movie.

Peter Jackson’s “King Kong” had some wonky casting that didn’t really work for me. I don’t mind Adrian Brody and I’ve gotten used to Jack Black, but neither of them really felt like they belonged in that movie. They just didn’t mesh with the rest of it for me. This is another subjective, it’s just your own damned opinion kind of thing, but that’s the point of all this. It’s my opinion.

The Asylum has issues with this as well, although in their defense (for a change) they don’t have access to big names, but it feels like they just grab whoever and draw the part from a hat. Sometimes it works and other times it’s just this weird awkward mess.

Uwe Boll is pretty guilty of this by times. Burt Reynolds as a king? Burt’s amusing and all, but seriously? He used to be a great actor actually (Deliverance anyone?) but now he’s just wandering through the script waiting to take a nap. Boll casts otherwise unlikely, and sometimes unlikeable, actors in roles that just don’t fit them. It’s really hard to call things out on this because it’s really a matter of taste.

People bitched back in the day about “Total Recall” and how Quaid, in the original novel, was described more like Woody Allen that Arnold. I’ve recently heard the same mutterings about “Jack Reacher” and the casting of Tom Cruise.

Casting really is an art and the issues here are more towards studios or directors playing favorites. Like when David O’Russell was doing “Uncharted” and wanted Mark Wahlberg for Nathan Drake. No one was happy about that, and nor should they. Video game adaptations get more scrutiny here I think than book adaptations. Mainly because the fans feel a little more connected to a character, especially in the case of Nathan Drake – who everyone wants Nathan Fillion to play. I love Fillion, but he’s getting a little too old to really fit that character (and Nathan’s the same age as me, so that’s not an insult, it’s just the way it is).

This post was a little weak maybe. I might’ve been premature in calling this “10” things, we’ll see how 9 goes.