"Worst Movie Representation of a Fictional Character?" Topic

Where a film is based on a book, which films have done poorly in depicting the fictional character?

Please mention movie and character. (If there are multiple movies with similar titles, please give year as well.)

Any Sherlock Holmes incarnation that portrays the character as an upstanding, sober, and dry academic. Robert Downer Jr. (and even Hugh Laurie's "not-Holmes" in the TV show House) is far closer to the books: obnoxious, drug-addict genius.

Or Peter Ustinov as Poirot.

Jason Momoa as Conan (Conan the Barbarian 2011) .

Kevin Sorbo as Kull (Kull the Conqueror 1997).

Taylor Kitsch as John Carter (of Mars 2012).

Lord of the Rings – most of the characters!

I'll second Cloudcaptain and expand on that.

Conan the Barbarian (Arnold #1) was a Kull story with a non-canonical origins story, but ends up being the best of the lot.

Conan the Destroyer (Arnold #2) – uh yeah, basically a D&D movie that has nothing to do with anything I can think of in the Conan books, other than maybe the monster at the end. If I thought about it, I could probably find a scenario book they stole the plot from.

Conan 2011 – I'm not going to write up everything crappy with this movie, from the random changes of geography to the end-of-the-world premise (something literary Conan only really encounters once) to another bloody made-up origins story.

And then the Kevin Sorbo Kull movie is really a Conan story.

I guess I'm really answering "What author has gotten messed up the worst by the film industry", cause I also have Solomon Kane to throw in. And Howard isn't even around to profit from it.

Any white actor who played Charlie Chan and Fu Manchu, or an Native American indian.

What herkybird said plus a million.

John T

Specific nominations, please, I'm not going to Wikipedia it for you!

James Bond--any and all portrayals (although in my mind, Daniel Craig comes closest to resembling my high schooler's image of 007). Someday the Bond books will be made into movies. I look forward to that day.

Treebeard in Two Towers. Well realised visually, but preferred his characterisation in the book.

Maybe not the worst, but Johnny Rico, Starship Troopers.

Faramir son of Denethor.

Van Helsing – no contest.

It's a matter of both quality – as in portrayals vastly removed from the template – and quantity – as in, literally hundreds of interpretations, but none 'as written'.

Problem is, even the most faithful portrayals get the basic concept wrong from the get-go: Van Helsing wasn't a vampire expert at all, never mind a vampire-hunter.

He was a conventional medical doctor, consulted because of his expertise with rare and exotic diseases.
He has, however, read about vampirism, regarding it as a superstition surrounding what he himself regards as a disease.
(Stoker undermines this when he has VH mention his "dispensation from the Vatican" for his investigative activities)

Edward Van Sloan plays him Dutch (or Dutch-German) as written, and both he and Peter Cushing get the scholarly, coolly dispassionate temperament.

Anthony Hopkins meets the physical description but plays him as a scenery-chewing sociopath.

Jackman portrays an amnesiac steampunk James Bond of possibly-supernatural heritage, raised from infancy by a secret order of religious Special Forces.

I didn't mind the LoTR casting.

Aragorn was supposedly a much taller man though. I like Vigo so I'm biased and happy.

My Father-in-law despises Legolas (O Bloom) of which I can't fully understand.

Liv Tyler is meh, but passable.

Agent Smith was alright as Elrond.

Gandalf good.

I liked Merry more than Pippin. Sam was OTT, Frodo alright.

Gimli alright.

He nailed it with the eye Sauron though.

Patrick Stewart as Captain Ahab….Moby Dick…

LOTR--my problem wasn't with the actors, but what the were made to do.

Johnny Depp's Willy Wonka. The character is a nut job but not that kind of nut job.

Johnny Depp as Conan

That guy as The Lone ranger in the Johnny Depp version (oh… and Tonto as well)

Off the top of my head and in no particular order as they are all as execrable as one another – Sylvester Stallone in Judge Dredd. Johnny Depp as Charles Mortdecai. Michael Yorke as Charles Carruthers in The Riddle of the Sands. Roger Moore as James Bond. Leo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby (I'm holding Baz Luhrmann equally culpable here for his tiresome direction).

The main characters in Tombstone, Wyatt Earp and most other Westerns. They are by and large far older than the real folks they portray.

Not a book, but the Last Airbender totally mangled the characters from the excellent animated series Avatar. In the show, the characters are nuanced, empathetic, and often hilarious---not so with the movie, where they are blocks of wood.

Superman in Man of steel and Batman v Superman.

Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker was particularly odious, and I was not impressed by the choice of Paul Bettany to play Stephen Maturin in Master and Commander.

The cast of Starship Troopers.

Any white actor who played Charlie Chan and Fu Manchu, or an Native American indian.

Are you equally judgmental of non-white actors playing, say, Shakespearean roles?

@rmaker: Having nonwhites play Shakespearean roles does not disparage or lessen those characters.

Characters like Fu Manchu, or even positive stereotypes like a noble (but usually helpless) tribal leader in a western, are not written to be nuanced depictions of people, but rather as either placeholders in a story or as racial caricture, for the audience to be able to quickly identify as bad or silly or deviant.

So the issue is not only having white (or even nonwhite) actors playing them (typically a way for film producers to avoid the possible controversy of hiring nonwhites), but rather what they represent in the story.

Practically everyone in the various discworld TV films…except Death and possibly Susan. It wasnt that particularly bad actors were selected or anything, just that almost all of them seems to have decided to deliver their lines in the flatest blandest way possible.

I thought Maturin was spot on tho…

LOTR, yeah, I didn't care for the way the Elves were depicted, with the exception of Elrond and Galadriel, they were acceptable. Legolas was unbearable. Not entirely pleased with Boromir or Aragorn but I thought Denethor was worse; most of my problems with LOTR, however, have to do with the script and direction as the series veered off the Tolkien canon. Don't even get me started on The Hobbit!! (Freeman was fine, when he was present at all, given what he was told to do, but most of the rest, dreadful, and there's that Bloom/Legolas again! Worst Elf ever!)

Depp as almost anyone fictional has become a bad joke.

I'm surprised no one has brought up Benedict Cumberbatch as Khan Noonien Singh in Star Trek.

Fine actor but totally unbelievable as the superior human. Ricardo Montalban still owns the role.

Ugh he was a bad Khan. But I blame the movie more for that than him. JJ Abrams worked so hard to look clever but was just remaking Wrath of Khan. So disappointing.

Count Olaf in the Series of Unfortunate Events movie. Everything else in the movie was painfully bleak and dry, just like the lovely novels. They allowed Jim Carey to play a buffoon (which he does … and did … very well) and totally missed out on the exquisite creepiness of the villain from the books.

Susan Calvin in the I, Robot movie. Again, not a bad acting job, not a bad movie, and not a bad story. Just painfully nothing at all like the character from the Asimov stories.

Logan the Sandman in the Logan's Run movie (also the tv show). I loved the movie and tv show as a kid. And the novel. The movie and tv portrayals make them something very different that does not capture the spirit or the characterization in the novel.

Depp as almost anyone fictional has become a bad joke.

That's why his best movie is Edward Scissorhands where he plays himself … an artificial human being.

@Grignotage – but if you're including Charlie Chan in that list, he was loosely based on a historical police officer in Hawaii and was positively viewed by Chinese-American and Chinese audiences at the time; Oland's speaking style was patterned on listening to English-as-a-second-language Chinese-Americans. I'd also argue his (Oland's) portrayal was as nuanced as anything, he has some superbly sly put-downs of intolerant white guys in almost every movie I can think of (Paris and Opera have the best).

The Chinese-American actors who played his sons also, even as times changed, held onto that opinion because they understood that at the time the movies were made, the options were no Chinese heroes on the screen or the white-guy-in-the-lead-role model (also giving real Chinese-American actors higher profile than anything else out of Hollywood). They weren't pleasant times in terms of racial portrayals, and it would have been awesome to have a Chinese-American actor in the role, but it still gave us a Chinese character who was smart, a WWI veteran, and respected and deferred to around the world.

Denethor from LOTR always struck me as be particularly off the mark from the book.

-Will

Depp as almost anyone fictional has become a bad joke.

Couldn't agree more…

Count Olaf in the Series of Unfortunate Events movie.

Didn't read the book but myself and my wife watched the first two episodes of the Netflix series and agreed that we much preferred Neil Patrick Harris' version. Can't say which is closer to the book though.

LotR's I've been much more forgiving, perhaps because of the undertaking that I originally thought would be a disaster

Having said that…I really didn't think Aragorn was at all as I interpreted him in the books but I learnt to enjoy Viggo as an actor (I think he's got a certain virtuous charisma that appealed to me. For some reason I always thought he somewhat grew into the character but I'm not sure if that makes sense as I'm not sure what chronological order it was filmed.

I despised the way Galadriel was portrayed. In fact I forgive everyone else but Cate's effort.

Denethor unrecognizable.

Wormtongue was one of the best for me.

VCarter spotted Benedict Cumberbatch as Khan in Star Trek which was IMO completely miscast although I love Benedict in a movie ordinarily.

I've hated the DC Flash in anything I've seen including the new JL

And as mentioned already but would be high on my list as I was a massive fan of the comic: Sylvester Stallone as Judge Dredd…

An altogether more attractive alternate Judge Dredd was found in a nearby tool shed

As a big Marvel comic book fan I've often felt disappointed in the characters adaptations (apart from Tony Stark and Steve Rodgers to a lesser extent)

I got brief bright spots from the various interpretations of Peter Parker but none have resonated with me. But I was a huge fan and had a very definite idea of who he was :)

Every version of Victor Von Doom I have ever seen. Julian McMahon. C'MON HOLLYWOOD ARE YOU DELIBERATELY TRYING TO ARSE HIM UP!!!!
Sorry…he was a favourite as a kid and as you've gathered I haven't grown up

Nuff Said

Most if not all the characters from the movie league of extraordinary gentlemen (Nemo is an obvious one)

Victor Von Doom … he was a favourite as a kid and as you've gathered I haven't grown up

My fave, too. Did a homemade Halloween costume as a kid. You are correct in no good film portrayals.

Wormtongue was one of the best for me.

For Count Olaf (haven't seen the TV yet), Wormtongue is about the right amount of creepiness, but in a dry detached way rather than a wet and slimy way.

I don't understand why this is a poll as opposed to just a discussion, since it will end up being so many parts, and really no resolution as to anything.