A fascinating list from Cracked.com regarding the above:
http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-inappropriately-awful-final-movies-great-actors/
I found it eerie that the last John Candy and Chris Farley comedy films were, at least in terms of setting and the fact that there were two leads, eerily similar. They also shared the morbid similarity of having these actors die before the film was completed, therefore necessitating considerable (and, by the looks of it, failed) work to get the picture completed. I haven’t seen either Wagons East or Almost Heroes yet recall when both were released to considerable critical scorn and very little financial success. A sad last legacy for both successful comedic actors.
As for Raul Julia in Street Fighter, I always wondered why he took on that particular role and the article offers the explanation: His kids loved the video game and therefore he wanted to be in the film. Raul Julia was a great, very talented actor and, truly, Street Fighter was a bad, bad way to finish a promising career…not that he envisioned it as his finale.
As for Sean Connery and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen…I don’t understand all the hatred directed at this film. No, it isn’t a classic by any stretch of the imagination, but I don’t think it is quite as bad a film as many make it out to be. I suspect much of the hatred directed at it comes from fans of the much more ambitious original Alan Moore penned comic book that inspired the movie. Yes, they took Mr. Moore’s writings and dumbed them down considerably to make the film, but all in all the film didn’t really strike me as the stinker so many people feel it is. I would quickly hasten to add that neither do I feel the movie is a particularly great accomplishment, either. A quick look at Sean Connery’s many films on IMDB shows he has had a hand in several movies I feel were far, far worse than this one. The Avengers (1998), Just Cause (1995), Highlander II: The Quickening (1991), and Family Business (1989) are just a few he was involved in toward the later third of his career that were, IMHO, far worse.
An actor not mentioned in this list but should be is Steve McQueen. During the 1960’s and early 1970’s he was one of Hollywood’s biggest, best known actors. While still at the height of his success, however, he withdrew from the public eye and seemed to all but disappear. 1974’s all star disaster film The Towering Inferno featured Mr. McQueen alongside his longtime acting rival Paul Newman in the starring role, but it would be four long years later that Mr. McQueen would reappear in the never theatrically released An Enemy of the People. That film was shelved by the studios and, because there was no home video market in those days, it wasn’t until 1980 that audiences once again saw Mr. McQueen, first in Tom Horn (a cowboy film that was a box office and critical dud) and then in his final film, the very mediocre The Hunter before succumbing that very same year to cancer.
The Hunter is one of those films that should have been a hell of a lot better than it was but suffers from a very weak script. Watching that film fills me with sadness at what could have been.