One of the more fascinating things, at least to me, is finding out that a famous or even iconic movie/TV roles might have gone to another actor or actress who was first pursued for that role.
In the following link, you have a group of TV roles that were originally considered for other actors/actresses:
Perhaps the one that intrigues me the most of those mentioned in this article is Matthew Broderick, Mr. Ferris Beuller himself, was originally considered for the title role that went to Bryan Cranston on Breaking Bad. But, thinking about it a little…I can kinda see where the producers of the show were going. After all, the character of Walter White, as originally presented in the show, was originally presented as a meek, innocent man who decided to take a very dark path. I suppose Mr. Broderick could have pulled that off, but what a different show it probably would have been!
By the way, a couple of my favorite movie role “what ifs”:
Clint Eastwood’s iconic turn as Dirty Harry was originally targeted for…Frank Sinatra?!
Harrison Ford’s iconic turn as Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark was originally meant for…Tom Selleck!? In fact, the only reason that Mr. Selleck wound up not getting the role was because the producers of Magnum P.I., the TV show he was doing at the time, wouldn’t allow him the time off to make the Steven Spielberg film!
Of course, sometimes an actor takes on a role for tragic reasons. I’ve always wondered, for instance, what type of career Paul Newman would have had if James Dean hadn’t died back in 1955. The next two movies Mr. Dean was supposed to act in before his untimely death were Somebody Up There Likes Me and The Left Handed Gun. Both movies were made, with Mr. Newman in the title role. In the case of Somebody Up There Likes Me more than The Left Handed Gun, that role proved a great success for Mr. Newman, and may well have given his then very early career a much needed boost. Mr. Newman’s only previous feature film, indeed, his film debut, was 1954’s The Silver Chalice. This film was a huge flop, and when the film was aired years later on TV an embarrassed Paul Newman famously paid for and published a full page apology and request for people not to see the film in a trade magazine!
Not to sound too terribly geeky, but much of the material presented was familiar -the one big exception being all those numerical items. I may be a fan of the character, but to have all that data at my fingertips would have been…scary.
Of all the items presented, this is the one I found the most surprising and had never heard of before:
Fifteen years (after the 1949 Batman series) came Batman Dracula, a little-seen avant-garde oddity written and directed (without the approval of the comic publisher) by a rising young artist named Andy Warhol.
As it turns out, some of that (very bizarre) material can be found on YouTube:
Released a mere two years after Alien, it was pretty clear that the 1981 Peter Hyams directed and Sean Connery starring movie Outland took as much from that film’s sci-fi visuals as it did, story-wise, from the classic 1952 western High Noon.
Like Alien, the look of the Jupiter mining station is generally grim and gritty, with dark, well worn equipment and characters who look like they belong in a mining town (as opposed to Alien, where the characters appeared for all intents and purposes like interstellar truckers). The plot of the film is essentially identical to High Noon: Sheriff of the town/colony takes a stand, killers come in on the next shuttle/train, which is due at a very specific hour. During the wait, the Sheriff tries to enlist the aid of others in fighting the killers, is rebuffed.
The clock ticks down, slowly, surely…
Yes, Outland is High Noon in space, and given my tolerance for “homages”, you would think that would instantly turn me off from this film. There is also the secondary issue of logic, which the film sometimes lacks, particularly regarding the whole idea of gun play. As the movie is set in an environmentally sealed outer space colony, you would figure guns would be, if not banned outright, kept under very, very tight control. After all, one stray bullet could prove catastrophic to everyone should it rupture a wall or damage some sensitive equipment. Yet the guns are fairly plentiful, and the shootouts are on the level of a western.
Now that I’ve described the bad, let me state the good: Outland is a solid piece of entertainment. Sean Connery is good in the heroic role, the story moves well, and the bad guys are fearsome.
However, this is one of those films that seemingly is forgotten today. The DVD was released some time ago and the reviews of it were quite brutal (I believe I have it somewhere in my collection but never watched it).
The reason I mention the film at all is because, lo and behold, it is about to be released on Blu Ray this coming Tuesday and I found this review that was quite positive regarding the overall transfer:
Not much information on the extras (if any) are provided, thought this review does note that we get director commentaries. Anyway, I’m intrigued.
In conclusion, if you’re in the mood for some grim and gritty sci-fi action that has the look of Alien and the plot of High Noon, you should check out Outland when it arrives on Blu Ray this week.
Sad to realize this film would be the second last one Mr. Kubrick would direct before his death in 1999. Full Metal Jacket was followed a little over a decade later, and just before Mr. Kubrick passed away, with the Eyes Wide Shut, a film that to this day I don’t like. At all. And that’s saying something as I’m a HUGE fan of Mr. Kubrick’s work.
As for Full Metal Jacket, I absolutely loved the first half of the film, which featured boot camp. The second half of the film, wherein the recruits go to Vietnam, wasn’t quite as good, at least in my opinion. I’ve always felt that despite some flaws (most notably a very muddled ending), the Francis Ford Coppola directed Apocalypse Now remains my favorite Vietnam War film and could well be one of the best films about war ever.
Having said that, I always felt that Apocalypse Now was a very Kubrick-like film, though that remains a personal opinion and does not at all detract from what Mr. Coppola created.
Has there been a movie that received as much bad press as 2012’s John Carter?
Based on the 1912 novel A Princess of Mars by author Edgar Rice Burroughs (his most famous creation, of course, is Tarzan), the movie was released earlier this year and proved a massive flop. It cost in the neighborhood of $250 million to make (not including marketing, which I’ll return to in a moment) and its worldwide take was a decent, but far from good considering the costs, $179 million. The losses from this Disney production’s release resulted in the resignation of a chairman within the company.
The fact is that the film appeared doomed almost from the beginning. Word leaked early on in the production that there were problems. There was whispers of dissatisfaction from the studio regarding the work in progress. There was also word of reshoots and rumors that Andrew Stanton, the director of the film who was best known for his computer animated Pixar work, was in over his head with actual human actors.
When the film neared actual release, I had the feeling potential audiences already were poisoned against the movie. These opinions certainly weren’t helped by the film’s very bland title (the studios appeared worried mentioning “Mars” in the title would turn off the already turned off audiences) and a truly inept advertising campaign. In fact, the later may well have been the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.
Yet as the film was released and proved a financial calamity for Disney, I couldn’t help but notice that despite the massive disinterest shown by audiences, the reviews of the film weren’t all that…awful. True, the film polled at a mediocre 52% among critics at Rottentomatoes.com, but it held a higher 64% among the audiences that bothered to see the film.
So I wondered: Was the film unfairly condemned? Did it deserve a better fate? Were potential audiences wrong in turning their backs?
I was curious to find out. I missed the film in theaters but when it arrived on home video, I gave it a look. So, what did I see? In brief, a good, though not great adventure film.
To begin, John Carter is gorgeous to look at. The visuals are quite impressive and I felt the filmmakers most certainly captured the “look” of the Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novels. The computer generated effects are, for the most part, seamless. The alien creatures look quite real, and Taylor Kitsch looks good as John Carter and Lynn Collins looks equally good as Dejah Thoris, the Princess of Mars.
Unfortunately, that the best thing I can say about them. As handsome as the two actors are in the title roles, they really lack chemistry. I always felt that one of the things that made the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs so successful, apart from the obvious pulp adventures presented, was the sexuality. Both Tarzan and the Mars series featured brawny, swashbucking men’s men and incredibly beautiful women in peril. As readers we longed for Tarzan to get Jane. In the Mars series, we longed for John Carter to marry Dejah Thoris.
But in this film, the sexuality is toned waaaay down. As I said before, part of the problem is that the actors lack chemistry. The other part, I suspect, is that the producers/director really clamped down on the sexuality. For most of the movie John Carter and Dejah Thoris show little interest in each other, it seemed, and certainly nowhere near the sexual tension present between Tarzan and Jane in films from the 1930’s.
There is also so much going on that I couldn’t help but wonder just how much was cut. The character of Sola, for example, accompanies Carter and Thoris for the middle section of the film on but is relegated to being such a minor character with so few lines of worth that one wonders why they even bothered having her in the film at all. The movie features three main “villains”, but once again very little is shown of them and when two meet their fate, one feels little satisfaction that the villain(s) got what was coming to them.
I suspect that John Carter was a victim of a combination of factors, from studio interference to director inexperience to an underdeveloped script. The actors, I felt, did what they could and weren’t bad in their roles, though I suppose an argument could be made that the two leads failed to register enough chemistry between them.
And yet, having said all that, the film is not the disaster audiences suspected it would be. It is a pleasant enough time killer with some good humor and some impressive set pieces but, and its a very BIG “but”, given the film’s costs, it could and should have been so much more. On a four star scale, I’d give John Carter 2 1/2 stars.
This should be my last post regarding the movie Prometheus. Yesterday, I posted a video that presented a pretty crushing take down of all the things that didn’t make sense/weren’t clearly explained/plot holes in the movie Prometheus.
Today, a link to a very well thought out examination by Cavalorn of much of the mythological (and other) symbolism found in the movie:
Curiously, while the author points out the many mythological elements, he misses what I thought was one of the more obvious ones, that of the myriad ways a parent/child interacts, whether good (trying to follow in their steps, make them proud) to bad (wanting them “out of the way/dead” so they can take over).
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Prometheus is a tough film to discard off-hand. It fails on many levels, perhaps the greatest of which is that there are so many plot holes/unanswered questions and idiotic characterizations (and idiotic character actions) that it is not possible for me to recommend the movie to anyone.
But having said that, clearly there was considerable thought put into the film and, while it may fail overall as entertainment, Prometheus does present the viewer with many interesting symbols/mythological elements that provide plenty of food for thought…for those interested.
Red Letter Media, perhaps best known for their epic evisceration of the Star Wars prequels, here offers a nice, tight, compendium of almost all the very frustratingly unanswered questions present in the movie Prometheus:
I have to give the folks above credit, they pretty much hit every question left unanswered in the movie in these four minutes, including a few things I certainly didn’t even think about but, in retrospect, probably should have.
As I said before, it is difficult to completely discard Prometheus (at least for me…many others have!). I think the film does make a genuine attempt to do something “different” and I admire the whole “parent/child” dynamic they were exploring in all its myriad ways. Having said that, all these silly unresolved issues really take away from the overall enjoyment one might have of the film. Will there be a sequel that addresses some of this stuff? Director Ridley Scott is now 74 years old. Realistically, he’s only got a few more films in him and I wonder if he’ll ever get to do a sequel to this film…or leave it in other, perhaps less capable hands.
Of the films scheduled for release this summer, there were only a couple I really, really wanted to see in theaters. Of those, there was one I absolutely would not miss: Director Ridley Scott’s return to the Alien universe, Prometheus.
In spite of my excitement to see the film, I tried to keep my expectations low, for I knew that sometimes those things lead to a huge let down. In the end, I chose to see the film in as “good” a format as possible: In IMAX and 3D. I sat in the theater and, for the very last time, kept my hopes in check. The film played out…
…and I found myself incredibly disappointed.
A few days have passed since then, and I’ve taken some time to process my thoughts. I still feel this film is a major disappointment, and presents the viewer with too many inept moments and silly character actions, yet I nonetheless can’t help but admire what Mr. Scott and company tried to do, rather than succeeded in actually doing.
Prometheus, as the name should imply to anyone with even a casual knowledge of mythology, relates to the Titan Prometheus, who in the fables created man from clay and stole fire from the Gods. The main theme of the film relates to this as well as the parent/child relationship. On the surface and just below, this film is filled with references to how children and their parents interact…or don’t.
The protagonist of the movie, Noomi Rapace’s Elizabeth Shaw, is presented as a person that is, ironically, both outside and tied in deep with parent/child concerns. On the one hand, she’s an “orphan”, who as a young girl lost her father…yet has strong memories of him and hopes to emulate him. On the other hand, it is revealed that she is incapable of having children of her own, thus of becoming a parent herself.
The two other main characters to follow, Charlize Theron’s Meredith Vickers and Michael Fassbender’s David, have their own parent/child issues, but to go into details about that would involve considerable spoilers.
The symbolism present in the film, I have to admit, has kept me from writing Prometheus off completely, this despite the fact that the film is remarkably -surprisingly- sloppily made, with way too many story holes, paper thin characters, and general stupidity. Further, the film doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be, trying for a “Chariot of the Gods” type story for much of its run time before lurching into horror only in its final act.
I could spend way too much time going over things that didn’t make sense or were muddled in their presentation, but I’ll focus on one specific thing that bothered me more than anything else in the film…and I’ll try to be as spoiler free as possible:
Why exactly did David spike the drink?
There is never a clear explanation of this, though there are hints, particularly David’s talk with Vickers just before. But why was it done? What was the purpose?
Despite some intriguing symbolism, in the end I remain roughly where I was upon walking out of the film. I admire the attempt to create a “deep,” mythical story, but I simply cannot recommend Prometheus. I’ve heard there is a longer “cut” of the film that features at least 20 additional minutes of material not seen in the theatrical release. Perhaps when that version is released, those twenty minutes might explain the whole spiking the drink thing…though I doubt they’ll help make some of the movie’s other problems, including the cardboard side-characters and their fate, any more interesting.
A few days back, when reviewing Haywire, I noted the director of that film, Steven Soderbergh, was some kind of speed demon in the movie industry, releasing a tremendous amount of material since his first movie credits.
There is another movie director/producer speed demon out there, and this one’s output, at least given his fewer years in the industry, is nonetheless running neck and neck with Mr. Soderbergh’s: Robert Rodriguez. While Mr. Soderbergh’s films tend to be more “artistic”, there is little doubt Mr. Rodriguez’s focus is on more crowd pleasing action/adventure films.
In 2010, Mr. Rodriguez’s Toublemaker Studios released two films. In the past couple of days I finally got a chance to see both of them.
First up is Predators, a sequel to the popular alien hunter/killer films. The original 1987 Predator is considered among actor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s best films. The subsequent sequel and “Aliens vs.” versions were considered quite a come down. I read that when Mr. Rodriguez was first becoming a hot commodity in Hollywood, he was tasked with writing a sequel to the original Predator. He did, but the film was never made.
Until now.
Predators, like Haywire, winds up being a pretty terrific film…until you get to the end. Director Nimrod Antal keeps the level of tension going quite well, beginning the movie with a white knuckle sky dive sequence that immediately brought me into the film. As we quickly find, several unsavory people were kidnapped from whatever it was they were doing. When they awoke, the were in freefall and landed in a strange jungle. As they would soon find, they are no longer on Earth. They have been brought here by the Predator creatures as prey.
The movie stars Adrien Brody, on paper a seemingly unlikely choice for action star, as a silent but deadly mercenary who becomes the leader of this group of fellow kidnapped killers. He is intent on survival but is reluctant to care for anyone in this motley group.
As I mentioned before, this film is quite terrific in the early going. The action sequences are damn good and the interactions among the characters are reasonably strong. Unfortunately, by the time we reach a certain “scavenger” character (I’m trying not to be too spoilery here), the movie starts to lose its steam. Worse, the three Predator creatures our protagonists fight are gone for very long stretches of cinematic time. Two of them wind up being dispatched waaaaaay too easily, especially considering what it took to get rid of only ONE of them in the original film.
In the end, I would cautiously recommend the film to those interested in the whole Predator genre. This is a decent enough film that would have benefited from a stronger conclusion.
The trailer for the film, presented below, was the source of some controversy among movie goers. At the 2:03 second mark, note how Adrien Brody’s character is “targeted” by several Predator lasers, implying that an army of those deadly beings have targeted him. In the movie itself, there wound up being one laser targeting him. While I don’t subscribe to the notion that theatrical trailers should give away movie plots, this particular change in what was presented in the film is quite a cheat. Watching this trailer, you get a sense of a far bigger threat to our hero than was actually presented, and it does diminish that scene in the film.
Also released in 2010 was Robert Rodriguez’s “grindhouse” tribute Machete. Appropriately enough, this movie began life as one of the faux movie trailers presented during the intermission of the Grindhouse double feature. A cynical person might say those trailers, and particularly the Machete trailer, were better than either Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror or Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, the actual films presented in Grindhouse.
I suppose I’m just that cynic, for while both actual films had their moments, to me the most memorable material was indeed in the faux trailers, and the one I found the most humorous of them all was Machete. When the actual film version was announced, I was therefore quite curious to see it. Thanks to home video, I finally did have the chance to do just that.
So, did Machete the movie live up to Machete the faux trailer?
Yes. And no.
The Machete trailer was filled with grindhouse-styled mayhem. There was a great mix of way-over-the-top violence, gratuitous nudity, and a tongue firmly stuck in cheek. The movie tries to stick with this formula while adhering -perhaps a little too closely- with all the scenes present in the original trailer (everything in that trailer winds up appearing in the movie, for better or worse).
What the movie adds are several famous actors, including the likes of Robert DeNiro (!), Michelle Rodriguez, Lindsay Lohan, Steven Segal, and Jessica Alba. There is a definite “wow” factor to seeing so many familiar faces in a movie that gleefully revels in this grindhouse atmosphere…
But what is lacking, in my opinion, is more overt humor.
Let’s face it: Machete borders (no pun intended) on the ridiculous. While we have plenty of bloody action and gratuitous nudity, we have a lot of tongue in cheek stuff but not nearly enough actual gags. In fact, the movie presented only two really, really funny jokes: The “Introducing Don Johnson” movie credit and the line delivered by Machete himself, stony faced Danny Trejo: “Machete don’t text.”
How I wish there were more examples to give!
Further, and most astonishingly, Robert DeNiro hardly registers as corrupt Senator McLaughlin. He is given too little to do and winds up reading his lines and hitting his marks without ever rising above the material. Steven Segal, as the movie’s big bad, is also curiously flat. His big confrontation with Machete at the end of the film is quite ludicrous, but not for the right reasons: We are told Mr. Segal is some expert swordsman, but during that last confrontation his level of swordplay is that of a kid playing ninja in a playground.
Having said all this, Machete is not without it’s bloody charms. To those who enjoy raunchy R-rated blood and guts, you will enjoy Machete for what it is. Others beware.
![Outland [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Dgh2a2IpL._SL500_AA300_.jpg)