Booking Through Thursday #6

 

 

Booking Through Thursday is a weekly meme hosted by Booking Through Thursday.

Last week's topic was Dream Cast

so it makes perfect sense that this week's topic is:

NIGHTMARE CAST

And, the reverse–which actors have been particularly badly cast in roles of characters you first met in the pages of a book? Do you blame the actors or the writers and other film-people for the failure? Who would you have cast instead?

This is going to take a lot of thought. I cannot lie and say that I am not biased towards or against certain actors and actresses. A lot of older popular book to film adaptations came out before I knew they were books first. As I got older and started to read more and more, I realized that almost every movie was first a book. That makes it difficult to choose because some actors were a character for me while I see others mention that they absolutely abhorred their acting. (ie. Tom Cruise as Lestat in Interview with a Vampire) I read 'Interview With A Vampire' years after watching the movie a hundred times so Tom Cruise always was my idea of Lestat and when 'Queen of the Damned' released I was livid that Lestat was brown-haired and completely different in manner, though I ended up loving the movie anyway.

I read so much these days that I can hardly keep up with the book to movie adaptations. I usually have opinions on who is cast as soon as we find out but after a while of seeing them in the trailers, etc. I become more used to the idea of them playing a character.
Like I said in my 'Dream Cast' post, I wasn't thrilled with the prospect of Jamie Campbell Bower being cast as Jace in The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones movie adaptation because he just didn't fit my idea of a bad ass shadowhunter. Also, while reading the books, I imagined Valentine as a white-haired man of about 40+/- years, but I am a huge fan of Jonathan Rhys Meyers and think he can easily pull off a villain so I'm perfectly okay with him being cast for that role. I wouldn't have thought to cast him as Valentine, though. While I enjoyed the books, he is the reason I am anticipating watching the film.

One casting decision I cannot agree with (and I'm mentioning this only because I recently watched the movie and the opinion has stuck with me for a couple of days) is Mila Kunis being cast as the wicked witch in 'Oz the Great and Powerful'. Even in that wide brimmed hat, she looked more like a New Yorker as she greeted 'Oz' than a native of the Land of Oz. Her thick 'northern' accent grated at my nerves the entire movie, especially when she yelled, and even though she pulled off the ugly green witch visually, I just thought she was all wrong for the part.

Do you agree or disagree? Who is your 'Nightmare Cast'?