When I heard that Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe had been cast in the film version of Les Misérables, I was excited before I ever heard which role each would be playing. It didn’t matter: either would be great in either role, and they had an interesting physical contrast that would have worked either way. And now, having seen (and loved) the film, I’d love to see another version with their roles reversed, with Crowe playing Jean Valjean and Jackman as Inspector Javert.
Something similar actually did happen with Danny Boyle’s staging of Frankenstein in London in 2011, in which Jonny Lee Miller and Benedict Cumberbatch alternated playing Doctor Frankenstein and the Monster… and seeing both castings deepened my appreciation for both actors, both characters, and the impact of the overall story.
Which iconic (or imaginary) actor pairings would be fun to reverse?
Switching actors doesn’t always work. You could not, for instance, have Mark Hamill play Han Solo and Harrison Ford play Luke Skywalker and have anything like a movie that works. But could you swap Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill? Or perhaps there’s a pair of actors you’d like to cast in a movie based on a book, TV show, or older film who could play opposite each other in swopped roles?
Have fun…
(If you have a suggestion for a QOTD, feel free to email me. Responses to this QOTD sent by email will be ignored; please post your responses here.)
Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart as Magneto and Xavier in X-men. Both were great in their roles and their chemistry is so intense, but both are also amazing actors who could have played the other part just as well. I can’t think of a single scene in the first or second movie that would have suffered for the switch.
Of course, it would have been more work for the hair and makeup people. Sir Patrick came with the hairdo already. :-)
Gender-swapping is too easy, but I’m not coming up with better ideas. Laurence Fishburne and Ralph Fiennes swapping the colour roles in Men in Black?
What if Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins exchanged roles in Silence of the Lambs? It would work better now, with Jodie being older, but how creepy to mess with gender expectations in a serial killer.
Oddly enough, when Christopher Nolan first announced that he was making a sequel to Batman Begins, I had a dream that he had cast Jodie Foster as the Joker. When I woke up, it seemed like a strange idea, but I kind of would have liked to see it.
Your dreams are way cooler than mine.
Switching Christopher Lee and Ian McKellen as Saruman and Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings could have produced interesting results – it might have made Gandalf a bit less cuddly and Saruman a little more down-to-earth.
Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains in Casablanca.
Dunno about this one. Can’t imagine Bogart having nearly as much fun with that part as Rains did. Maybe Rains and Peter Lorre?
wally and andre. andre’s insanity would be that much wackier coming from wally.
What about Rutger Hauer and Harrison Ford as Deckard and Batty, respectively?
Michael J. Fox as Doc Brown, and Christopher Lloyd as Marty McFly.
I’d love hear MJF do to “88 miles per hour” shouting and dancing after the DeLorean leaves 1955. Or see CL do the “Johnny B. Goode” bit.
NO. I do not like Russell Crowe. And I don not think he did a very good job in Les Miz in the first place. At least, nowhere near as well as the rest of the cast. His singing sounded half-hearted and a bit off key. But I resigned myself to it, as he was playing the bad guy. I probably would have thrown a fit if he’d been ValJean.
As to switching roles, when the commercials for the new tv series The Following came out, I was confused. It seems to me that Kevin Bacon should be the crazy serial killer, and James Purefoy be the cop trying to catch him.
I love Russell Crowe, but I think the reversal would have been too much of a stretch to bear for the musical version, considering the difficulty of Valjean’s songs. Now, if it were a “straight” adaptation of Les Mis, I would actually say that it would be better with Crowe as Valjean and Jackman as Javert. I say this having not seen the film yet, mind you, but simply based on their “types,” I can more easily imagine Crowe as the gruff ox of a man that Hugo described.
Nick Frost and Simon Pegg switching roles in Shaun of the Dead.
I always felt The Talented Mr Ripley could have benefitted from Jude Law and Matt Damon swapping roles. Damon is a fine actor now, but at that point in his career he was a little too green and wholesome to project Tom Ripley’s ambiguity and treacherousness for me. Granted, he doesn’t much resemble the novel’s Dickie Greenleaf either, but he has such a spotless all-American star quality that Ripley’s obsession would still have been understandable; that could have been a change from the written character that still worked.
I don’t think switching Crowe and Jackman would work – Crowe doesn’t have the voice to pull off Valjean. Imagine him trying to hit those high notes on “Bring Him Home”. Some critics even found Jackman’s rendition of that sub-par. With Javert Crowe’s slightly spoken singing worked all right, but he was the weak link in the film for me.
Er, to answer the question: Stewart/McKellen in X-Men would certainly be interesting.
I agree, In a straight adaptation of the novel, either actor would be great in either role. But in the musical, Russel Crowe was a mistake.
Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie played Jeeves and Wooster respectively, but it would also have been perfect the other way around.
Paul Newman and Robert Redford as Butch and Sundance, although you’d have to find a way to age swap them as well.
Dan Akroyd and Bill Murray in Ghostbusters.
Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt in Interview with the Vampire
I don’t have an answer, but this reminds me of the production of Romeo and Juliet where Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud alternated parts. And while typing of this comment, I remembered that Cary Grant and David Niven switched their parts when doing the Christmas film the Bishop’s Wife.