Movies SAVED by the casting of ONE role
 

We've been discussing the miscasting of movies. Can you think of any movies that the cast may not have gelled together so well but one actor in particular signed on and it seemed that they carried the movie? Perhaps the movie would have been a failure without them?

There aren't many I can think of off the top of my head, but I really think a movie like Groundhog Day would never have been as good or great without Bill Murray.

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(500) Days of Summer wouldn't have been as good without Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

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Maggie Gyllenhaal in The Dark Knight :)

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There Will Be Blood simply would not be what it is had any other actor besides the one pictured above been Daniel Plainview.

Also, Point Break would be nothing without Reeves...still my number 1 most unintentionally hilarious movie.

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While he didn't save the movie, I found Chris Evans' performance to be the only good thing about The Losers.

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Sean Connery in Never Say Never Again. Without him, it's just a generic 80s action movie.

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Anything starring Ah-nuld in the '80s, especially Commando.

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The Three Outlaws

Neville Brand was an authentic Butch Cassidy......Compared to Alan (The Skipper) Hale Jr's Sundance Kid!!!

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Smokey and the Bandit. Nobody but Burt Reynolds could have carried such a stupid script and made it fun.

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http://img.freebase.com/api/trans/im...t&maxwidth=150

I love the movie to death, but it would be nothing without Jason Lee.

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<b>Robert Downey Jr.</b> in Natural Born Killers. "Live, Intahviews! Wayne Gale!"

He turned an ordinary supporting role into masterful, scene-stealing genius portrayal of a tabloid reporter that is still relevant today as it was in 1994.

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I don't think there is a single actor that could have carried Cast Away like Tom Hanks did.

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Heath Ledger as The Joker

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Bill Murray:Meatballs.

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Another Bill Murray movie...Lost in Translation wouldn't have worked without Billo.

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Although there contributions to each film is big and definitely made for a better movie, The Dark Knight, Kick Ass, and There Will Be Blood would have still been good movies without the actors/actresses named in this thread.

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This has me thinking. I believe the film would still have worked, but it would have taken a different life. Murray infused that performance with so many nuances and reserved charm that it's hard to imagine anyone else delivering that kind of performance and creating that specific character. But then I think about a guy like Kevin Spacey, and I think he could have made the role his and kept the film compelling; it just wouldn't have been the same film. Still and all, I'm glad Bill Murray did it, because it's easily my favorite performance in his filmography.

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I've only seen one of those three...and I wasn't about to be the one to take the Dark Knight bait.

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...No. DDL I think was the only one that could make you believe he was that son of a bitch.

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-ohbfrank- ;)

And IMHO the only thing that sold KICK-ASS was Hit-Girl. Because every other character (with the exception of Big Daddy) was lousy and unmemorable.

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Without Daniel Day-Lewis it would have been a good film as opposed to a great film.

Edit: "Hokeyboy", I was referring to "BambooLounge's" post, not the picture posted by "Fist of Doom".

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Without Paul Dano it would have been a great film as opposed to a good film.

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:up:

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Gotcha :up: I thought the handlebar moustache was unmistakable!

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It's hard to think of a bad movie that was saved by one character, but the one example that I absolutely can't imagine anybody else in the role and can't imagine what the movie would have ended up like had he not been cast, is Jeff Bridges as The Dude in The Big Lebowski.

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Hmm...I think Kurt Russell could have made a go of it. But, by and large, that movie was perfectly cast all the way around. John Goodman was hilarious as the gun-nut, and I don't think Julianne Moore gets enough credit for playing the batshit crazy artist so deftly. And I'm damned if I can name anyone that would have been as perfect as Sam Elliott as the narrator.

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I agree. I can't think of one character that was even remotely miscast in that movie. Even Tara Reid was perfect in her role.

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It's not exactly fair, because it would have still been a better-than-average teen sex comedy from the 80's even without him, but honestly is there a greater, more iconic scene-stealing role than :

http://www.portlandmercury.com/image...jpg-magnum.jpg

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No. :thumbsup:

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Liam Neeson in Taken. Witout him it's just a direct to video Steven Seagal type movie.

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Agreed. Even with him I was on the edge about the film, but without him it would be total shit. It would be something like Edge of Darkness. ;)

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Christolph Waltz in Inglorious Basterds. Would the movie have worked nearly as well had Leo been cast and with him doing a german accent

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Bruce Willis -Die Hard

he just has the persona and look of John McClane I can't imagine anyone else making that role work

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On the role, I agree. But that movie had more than him going for it, including Alan Rickman as one of the best screen villains of the decade; maybe ever.

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It's fun to speculate, but I feel that this is one of the those questions that you can't honestly answer.

A creative work is the sum of a lot of parts, and you can't really say what would have been if one part was different.

I'd love to see a film completely made twice with the same exact story and creative team, but two different directors, just to see what a difference a director can make. Or the same thing with two different leads.

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I don't think you need to speculate at all about what might have been; the OP simply asked if you could think of a movie where virtually nothing else worked, but one single performance rescued the entire production. That doesn't require any imagination; only an analysis of what you've actually seen.

On a different note, Ty Templeton posted this blog entry back in June that I found fascinating. Templeton wrote a Star Trek comic book for IDW, and it was illustrated by Stephen Molnar. Another artist, Darrin Egan, had just taken a course on art from Templeton and asked to take a crack at something just for the exercise so he handed over a preliminary version of his script. In the blog, you get to see what both artists did with the same basic story. It's pretty fascinating to see how similar, yet different, each one is. It's definitely worth a look, even if you don't care about Star Trek.

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Ed Norton in Promal Fear

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And people here are mentioning films like The Big Lebowski & There Will be Blood which do not fit in at all with what the OP is asking....in fact most of the films mentioned so far don't fit.

I will nominate Street Smart, a mediocre film, that is worth watching almost solely for Morgan Freeman's riveting role as a pimp.