What's the best/worst actor casting for a character in a game or book adaptation...

[Koldov]

Just for a fun discussion (obviously there will be a lot of 'opinion') but some are just out and out wrong, not because of the acting as such, just that the characters are nothing like the actual characters as described in black and white in the book (or actually shown in the case of a game)...

 

This of course relies heavily of the observer having read the book or played the game obviously... if they haven't it wouldn't even matter to them obviously (which is what I think some rely on as they just want the 'big name' actor to draw viewers regardless of alienating the original fan base).

 

My OH always brings up the terrible casting of Tom Cruise as Lestat in 'Interview with the Vampire' (I always thought it was called Interview with a Vampire)...

 

Anyway...

 

Lestat describes himself as six feet tall. He has blond hair that is not quite shoulder length, and that is rather curly, which sometimes appears white under fluorescent lighting. His eyes are gray, but they reflect the colors of blue or violet easily from surfaces around them. His nose is fairly short and narrow, while his mouth is well shaped 'though slightly too large for his face', his skin deathly white.

 

Certainly not describing Tom Cruise there are they (even in a wig)....

 

On the other hand when I saw Kathy Bates portraying Annie Wilkes in the film of 'Misery'... it was like they pulled her out of my mind and put her on the screen. Not just the look though, the voice, the mannerisms, everything!

Edited July 20, 2022 by Koldov

[LeMarchand]

It's that man again!

 

Jack Reacher is known for being a physically imposing character, described in one book as “extremely tall, extremely broad, long-armed and long-legged” with “hands the size of dinner plates.”

 

So, again, not Tom Thumb. To be fair, the films were entertaining.

 

On the "good" side, to most people (Little Orphan) Annie = small, slightly annoying, curly red hair. I can quite understand why there were raised eyebrows at the race-swapped 2014 version as "red haired" seems to be Annie's defining feature. However Quvenzhané Wallis knocked it out of the park with her performance (and Jamie Foxx was pretty good too).

[jthompson]

Not the worst example out there, but Keira "I want to be parrot" Knightly as Elizabeth Bennett doesn't work for me. Elizabeth Bennett is basically the best thing in one of the best things ever written in the English language, so it's a tall ask, in fairness.

[LeMarchand]

Oddly, the Audio cast for "Sandman" matches my "mind's eye" far more that the Netflix cast, on the whole.

 

 

 

vs

 

 

Hopefully the Netflix show will be a better adaptation as the audio was too much of an audiobook for my taste, as I assumed that with such an extensive cast it would be more like an audio drama.

[Norphy]

David Jason as Rincewind in the Sky adaptation of The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic was pretty bad. I thought that was odd casting as a) he was too old b) he’d already played Albert in Hogfather. In any case, it just didn’t work for me.

 

Also, Carl Urban in the JJverse Star Trek films. Something about the accent was wrong, it felt to me he was concentrating too much on doing a bad southern American accent to the detriment of the rest of his performances. He didn’t sound anything like Deforest Kelly either.

[Koldov]

On the "good" side, to most people (Little Orphan) Annie = small, slightly annoying, curly red hair. I can quite understand why there were raised eyebrows at the race-swapped 2014 version as "red haired" seems to be Annie's defining feature. However Quvenzhané Wallis knocked it out of the park with her performance (and Jamie Foxx was pretty good too).

 

Yeah that could stray into territory that is beyond the scope of this thread, probably many a long and intense discussion elsewhere in 'Gammon Land' about it I'm sure... obviously it's done for $reasons and that means we have to accept they have no intention of trying to represent the original description of the character.

 

But I'm talking about those that are just blatantly wrong for no obvious reason (possibly apart from getting a big name actor)...

 

Oddly, the Audio cast for "Sandman" matches my "mind's eye" far more that the Netflix cast, on the whole.

 

Hopefully the Netflix show will be a better adaptation as the audio was too much of an audiobook for my taste, as I assumed that with such an extensive cast it would be more like an audio drama.

 

Yeah I guess even voice 'actors' can have the same issues...

 

The OH is an avid audiobook listener and sometimes complains that the reader has spoiled it as it wasn't the voice she 'heard' in her head whilst reading the original...

 

I guess that's a completely different thing though unless the character is from a particular country/region, or has been described as having a particular accent and that is ignored.

 

Also, Carl Urban

 

I take it you've seen 'The Boys'... 'nuff said...

 

Talking of which (steering clear of colour/race/ethnicity) etc. But it seems that there is a real problem of say English actors being cast as Americans (or the other way around), sorry for any of you who like actors that do this...

 

It honestly makes me cringe (almost to Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins levels) when I hear their accents and I just think, 'why couldn't you get an actual American/English/Scottish/Irish actor to play that part'?

 

Obviously these are just ones I pick up on as I'm most familiar with them...

[LeMarchand]

But it seems that there is a real problem of say English actors being cast as Americans (or the other way around), sorry for any of you who like actors that do this...

 

US actors doing UK accents are nearly always bad, but the other way around doesn't usually sound so bad. I would say that this might be down to UK viewers not having such a good ear for the nuances of US accents but apparently Hugh Laurie's "House" accent, which I thought sounded fake, had most Americans assuming he was one of them.

[Norphy]

 

Talking of which (steering clear of colour/race/ethnicity) etc. But it seems that there is a real problem of say English actors being cast as Americans (or the other way around), sorry for any of you who like actors that do this...

 

It honestly makes me cringe (almost to Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins levels) when I hear their accents and I just think, 'why couldn't you get an actual American/English/Scottish/Irish actor to play that part'?

 

Obviously these are just ones I pick up on as I'm most familiar with them...

 

I know what you mean. Renee Zellweger for instance put on a pretty awful English in the Bridget Jones films and I don't know how anyone took Hugh Laurie even remotely seriously in House. That said, Damian Lewis's American accent in Band of Brothers and Homeland was pretty good and Scarlett Johansen's English accent in Under the Skin was pretty convincing too so it's not always bad

[jthompson]

US actors doing UK accents are nearly always bad, but the other way around doesn't usually sound so bad. I would say that this might be down to UK viewers not having such a good ear for the nuances of US accents but apparently Hugh Laurie's "House" accent, which I thought sounded fake, had most Americans assuming he was one of them.

 

I've long assumed that that's because American accents don't vary anything like as much as British accents do, and don't have much of a 'class' dimension to them in comparison. Heck, even Ewan McGregor doing a slightly different Scottish accent in Salmon Fishing in the Yemen sounds a bit off.

 

American dialects are probably an easier target to hit, too.

[ICTDirect_Dave]

David Jason as Rincewind in the Sky adaptation of The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic was pretty bad. I thought that was odd casting as a) he was too old b) he’d already played Albert in Hogfather. In any case, it just didn’t work for me.

 

This is an odd one because he didn't sit well with me either. But I'm sure I remember reading that he was Pterry's ideal choice for the role.

If the author's vision was David Jason playing a slapstick Rincewind, then I guess we're in the wrong.

[Koldov]

I've long assumed that that's because American accents don't vary anything like as much as British accents do.

 

I think 'original' American accents differ wildly, someone from downtown New York sounds a lot different to a Texan... and I'm sure Americans can tell where another American is from just by their accent, just as we can about other people in England. You can end up with a homogenised view of them though as most American TV shows have actors with an 'average' American accent (unless where they're from is a big part of the character).

 

I guess with Carl Urban (he's from New Zealand... They have a Union Jack in their flag... So he's almost British, right?) playing someone from England and doing a Cockney (ish) accent probably sounded spot on to the American casting agents....

 

We all either sound like the Queen or someone who was born in the 1950s within earshot of the Bow Bells...

[LeMarchand]

I've long assumed that that's because American accents don't vary anything like as much as British accents do, and don't have much of a 'class' dimension to them in comparison.

 

I don't know, just off the top of my head there is: New York, Boston (which has the more "blue collar" accent, think Casey Affleck in most things and "moneyed", think Lloyd Grossman) , Texan, "Southern", New Orleans, Mid Western, Californian, Maine, Canadian (which varies from slight to noticeably "different"). Plus the various racial (for want of a better description) ones like Italian/American, Jewish/American, Hispanic/American and "Ebonics" which are different to, say, how an Italian person now working in the US would sound. There is less of a class element, but any pronounced accent with the possible exception of posh Boston seems to "mark you down". Certainly, as over here, a more "generic" accent is the norm in film and TV.

 

P.S. @Koldov posted whilst I had to stop to look at some iPads and covered a lot of the above.

[jthompson]

Would two American cities as close together as Edinburgh and Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester or Cardiff and Bristol, show such pronounced difference between their accents, though?

 

When Brits think of American actors doing British accents we tend to think of the vanilla, plummy Bridget Jones type or a cockney geezer type. Chris Pine as Robert the Bruce in Outlaw King is perhaps a good counter-example, though. I'm not a Scot, but I was never not convinced by him watching that.

[Koldov]

Would two American cities as close together as Edinburgh and Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester or Cardiff and Bristol, show such pronounced difference between their accents, though?

 

I see your point, as that's only say 50 miles apart and yet there is a difference (as a Sassenach I'm not sure I'd be really able to tell the difference between the Edinburgh and Glasgow accents though)... but those accents are really much older than American accents and at the time they were formed, 50 miles was probably quite a distance and not many people really travelled those sorts of distances and so they could form in relative isolation.

 

Within the USA, possibly not. A much younger country with those sorts of distances travelled more often (it may be a false impression, but I've always felt Americans treat internal flights like we do trains or buses) because I think it's less city to city and more state to state (which are much larger than an equivalent regional variance in dialect in the UK). As everything is on a much larger scale, I guess you have to go further to see (hear) a difference?

[Andrew_C]

David Jason as Rincewind in the Sky adaptation of The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic was pretty bad.

Seconded.

 

LeCarre gives a description of George Smiley that is nothing like Alec Guinness. That said, he nails it, and I can imagine no one else but him when I re-read the books.

[Koldov]

I guess it may come down to that in the end sometimes...

 

You can get a great actor who plays the part well but looks nothing like the character, or a terrible actor who looks exactly as they should.

[LeMarchand]

Would two American cities as close together as Edinburgh and Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester or Cardiff and Bristol, show such pronounced difference between their accents, though?

 

 

Like I said, there are definitely two "Boston" accents. Thinking about it, much like in London, different parts of New York have different accents. Not sure (m)any US cities are as close as any of ours, though.

 

as a Sassenach I'm not sure I'd be really able to tell the difference between the Edinburgh and Glasgow accents though

 

 

I think the Edinburgh accent is the softer one of the two.

 

Back on topic, pretty much the entire cast of the "Narnia" movies were spot on. I wish we had got to see more of the books adapted.

[LeMarchand]

Also, while Alden Ehrenreich was OK in Solo, he's not a huge Box Office draw. So why not cast Anthony Ingruber?