To-do list:
- Clean up wicks that still do not fit the revised definition (the original definition of casting choices that feel wrong was expanded to cover cases that were initially well received pre-release). This does not allow on-page examples, so only wicks need to be looked at in this case. Note that redirects other than the main WTH, Casting Agency? redirect (the old name) have wicks of their own (more specifically, What The Hell Casting Agency and WTF Casting Agency).
- 16 wicks that correctly use the trope (Actor was cast as a role many thought they didn't fit very well)
- 16 wicks that were just complaining (Good actor was cast in bad product! How could they accept?)
- 14 wicks that lacked the context (Actor, of all people, as character)
- 4 wicks that feel all like some kind of misuse (one is "This show's dub was badly directed and they had to redub it after complaints", one is a generic complaint for the lack of ethnic voice actor in a cast, one is complaining because the English voice cast reuses some voice talent from the seasons before on different characters and the fourth is "this deliberate Stylistic Suck web video deliberately casts men in female roles")
The usage of this trope to complain, by the way, it's very commonly found in So Bad, It's Horrible examples, where it's often used to whine how this or that horrible media completely wastes the talent of its cast as if for example Rob Paulsen was some kind of deity who committed an unforgivable sin by voicing the titular characters of both the Bubsy pilot and Coconut Fred's Fruit Salad Island, the drama!
What to do? My main ideas are either making it Flame Bait or move on Darth Wiki, other ideas?
Wick check:
Wick check for WTH, Casting Agency? to control if it has too much gushing or misuse.Wicks: 50/50
- YMMV.The Angry Birds Movie: Downplayed with Terrence: while it's strange that Sean Penn was chosen to play him, seeing as he's The Quiet One, he's been noted as having anger issues of his own, so the jokes work on another level.
- YMMV.Anna Karenina: Several reviews for the 2012 film criticized Aaron Taylor-Johnson's portrayal of Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky, noting that he seemed out of place in comparison to Keira Knightley and Jude Law.
- YMMV.Argo: Though Ben Affleck’s performance was hailed by critics for his realistic demeanor as a spy, the real Tony Mendez had dark skin, dark hair, was average height, had ordinary features, and a normal build. In short he could blend in almost anywhere in the world as the kind of person nobody would notice. Ben Affleck is quite tall and very handsome, the kind of person that easily sticks out in a crowd.
- YMMV.Batman 1989: Michael Keaton so thoroughly proved the naysayers wrong that, in hindsight, it's hard to remember just how bizarre it seemed at the time to cast a famously mild, unimposing comedic actor as a grim, Frank Miller-inspired version of Batman. Thousands of fans wrote letters to Warner Bros. protesting the choice before the movie's release, and Keaton himself initially thought that his being cast for the part meant that the film would be taking its cues from the TV series.
- YMMV.Batwoman 2019: A minor example; no one ever expected Rachel Maddow to act (even if merely as a radio host) in a superhero TV show, but it's mostly because she's a news personality/talking head first and foremost.
- YMMV.Black Lightning 2018: Some fans of Grace Choi have taken issue with the fact that her actress is much less muscular than her comic counterpart, pointing out that women, and especially Asian women, usually aren't allowed to have that body type in media.
- YMMV.Bonekickers: The final episode casts Dexter Fletcher, best known for his Cockney geezer persona, as a country gent.
- YMMV.Castle In The Sky: While the English dub is widely regarded as being very good, many fans felt James Van Der Beek and Anna Paquin to be ill-fitting choices for Pazu and Sheeta, respectively, with the most common criticism being that their performances make them sound more like teenagers/young adults, even though they were intended to be kids in the original Japanese version and the Streamline dub.
- YMMV.A Discovery Of Witches: With Trystan Gravelle, who played the role in Seasons 1 and 2, unavailable to return as Baldwin Montclair for Season 3, he is Other Darrined with Peter Mc Donald, who looks nothing like him and is noticeably older, and gray-haired. More than one viewer wondered who he was supposed to be.
- YMMV.A Fairly Odd Movie Grow Up Timmy Turner: Most glaringly casting Daniella Monet to play a conventionally attractive, glasses-less, adult Tootie.
- YMMV.Home 2015: Rihanna's voice really does not fit a character that's intended to be a young teen; Rihanna was in her late twenties at the time and didn't make much effort to make her voice sound younger, while Tip is supposed to be fourteen. That said, some people were still won over by her performance regardless.
- YMMV.Interview With The Vampire: Anne Rice took out full page newspaper ads criticizing the choice to cast Tom Cruise as Lestat. She thought he was too short and didn't have the ability to play someone aristocratic. She had originally envisioned Rutger Hauer or Julian Sands in the part. Once she saw the film, however, she did a full 180.
- YMMV.King Kong 2005: Jack Black, an almost exclusively comedic actor, in the serious role of Carl Denham, though his performance is enjoyed by some.
- YMMV.A Midsummer Nights Dream 1935: The only issue here is that these two subbullets are repeated verbatim on the page for the original opera
- Mickey Rooney as Puck was criticised for favoring Box Office clout over acting ability, and to this day there are debates over whether he was atrociously miscast, tolerable or good in the role.
- Dick Powell viewed his own performance this way and asked to be taken off the film - even admitting to not knowing what any of his lines meant as he said them. His performance is seen in a better light than Mickey Rooney's however.
- YMMV.Pippi Longstocking: Astrid Lindgren was not happy with the 1949 film partially due to nine-year-old Pippi Longstocking being played by then-26-year-old Viveca Serlachius.
- YMMV.Bad Ass: One wonders why would you cast a known B-movie actor like Ron Perlman as a corrupt politician who is barely in the film and who never once encounters the Danny Trejo character.
- YMMV.Balto: Phil Collins as a couple of comic relief polar bears who never even sing.
- YMMV.Bands On The Run: Cristina Vee, of all people, is in this movie.
- YMMV.Black Rage: An albino black guy played by a white actor... who still shows very European features.
- YMMV.Brother Bear 2: Would it have killed the filmmakers to cast an actor who could at least closely imitate Joaquin Phoenix, instead of somebody with a completely different-sounding voice? Would it have killed the troper to write a decently written post, instead of a snarky complaint that feels out of place?
- YMMV.Bye Bye Birdie: From the 1995 TV movie: Why in the world did they cast Jason Alexander as Albert Peterson (a role originated by Dick Van Dyke) when he's nowhere near as charming? Tellingly, he expected to land the role of Kim's father instead.
- YMMV.Delgo: Almost the entirety of its hugely overqualified cast, but especially Burt Reynolds, Anne Bancroft, and Eric Idle. This is also a ZCE
- YMMV.Fat Slags: Dolph Lundgren, Jerry O'Connell, John Thomson, Angus Deayton, Hugh Dennis, Anthony Head, and Naomi Campbell all appear in this movie... somehow.
- YMMV.Freddie As FRO 7: We'd give anything within reason to hear the reasons Grace Jones, Ben Kingsley, John Sessions, Jonathan Pryce and James Earl Jones worked on this. Probably the usual.
- YMMV.G Force: Penélope Cruz is in this low-brow family film with talking guinea pigs? and so is Nicolas Cage?!
- YMMV.The Groovenians: Vincent Gallo, Paul Reubens, Dennis Hopper, Ru Paul and the daughter of Robert De Niro all have voiced roles.
- And what on earth is such an incredibly talented guy like Jeff Bennett doing in this pilot?
- YMMV.Happy Feet: Guess who's doing those impressions of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley! Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman, that's who!
- YMMV.Happy Feet Two: Brad Pitt and Matt Damon as the comedy relief shrimp? You heard that right! What's with the Happy Feet examples and this quiz show-esque snarkapalooza in the examples?
- YMMV.Mr Magoo: Leslie Nielsen in the live-action movie, where he's clearly giving it his all and while he looks the part, it's quite painful to see such a respected actor given such mediocre material.
- YMMV.Street Fighter The Legend Of Chun Li: Seriously, Taboo as Vega?
- YMMV.Avengers Assemble: Adrian Pasdar being cast as Iron Man... again.
- YMMV.Bratz: Jon Voight as the school principal. There's also a justifying subbullet right underneath that goes like "he's there only because he's the godfather of one of the lead actresses
- YMMV.Bright Lights Big City: Michael J. Fox as a drug and alcohol addict.
- YMMV.Cat Dog: The final episode finally introduced us to the pair's parents. Their father is a frog with a human nose... played by Billy Bob Thornton.
- YMMV.Code Lyoko Evolution: Depending which part of the fanbase you ask when it comes to the main actors.
- YMMV.Conan The Destroyer: The Queen asks Wilt Chamberlain to preserve a girl's virginity. The fact that he had to be a eunuch to do it makes it doubly funny.
- YMMV.Fillmore: Getting Jeff Probst, of all people, to voice Raycliff.
- YMMV.The Flintstones: A bigger "WTH" goes to Elizabeth Taylor as Wilma's mother.
- YMMV.Im A Singer: Most fans of the show did a Flat "What" when Ok Joo-Hyun was cast.
- YMMV.Its A Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie: Some took issue with Whoopi Goldberg as God.
- YMMV.Nutty Professor II The Klumps: Janet Jackson as not only a professor, but the result of two rocket scientists.
- YMMV.Paint Your Wagon: Okay, the cast would've been okay if it was just a Western, but it was a musical!
- YMMV.A Royal Night Out: Some people had this reaction to Rupert Everett getting cast as King George.
- YMMV.A Troll In Central Park: Jonathan Pryce, Hayley Mills and Cloris Leachman. Already blanked out
- YMMV.AICO Incarnation: The English and Brazilian Portuguese dubs became infamous for its poor acting and directing, and it makes the viewers wonder what Netflix was thinking when they chose a different studio to have the dub done. Both dubs were done in different locations than usual, the English dub was produced in Florida, and the Portuguese one was produced in Southern Brazil, contrary to the usual regions of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Jason Kesser, Kazuki's English VA, later pointed out that Netflix used only the first takes of the dub despite doing their best to perfect it. Quite a few voice actors in the first dub were Spanish-language actors (and Brazil-based Alex Alvarez Neto, who voiced Yuya Kanzaki) who have never done an English dub before in anime. Eventually, Netflix took the hint and a brand new English dub was produced by Bang Zoom! Entertainment, but the same didn't happen in the Brazilian dub. This is about a dub as a whole and not about a specific casting of certain characters
- YMMV.Brother Bear: Admittedly, the actors that the filmmakers cast turned in superb performances, but given that this story is based on proto-Indigenous lore, it arguably would have made more sense — and lent a shred of authenticity — if they cast Indigenous (preferably Alaskan Native) actors for the human characters, in both the original film and the sequel. This is more a generic complaint on everything than anything else
- YMMV.Digimon Frontier: Occasionally, the dub can get weird with this, likely as an aftereffect of Saban's demise and Disney's treatment of the franchise as a burden. Snimon sounds like Myotismon from Adventure, Cherubimon like Leomon from the same, and a Toucanmon and Mushroomon sound like they're channeling Kazu from Tamers and Davis from Adventure 02, respectively. Then there's Lucemon sounding like Izzy/Koushiro's dub voice. This is complaining about... the voice cast reusing some people from the earlier series?
- YMMV.Harry Potter And The Dark Lord Waldemart: Hermione is (badly) played by a guy, as is Umbridge. This is presumably a joke. Judging by everything else on the page, this is supposed to be a Stylistic Suck product so it feels sort of misused
Edited by GastonRabbit on Jun 8th 2023 at 2:36:54 PM
~Phantom Dusclops 92, the titler does not like punctuation in the link, so that's fixed.
Anyways, opening. Both Flame Bait and Darth are not exclusive to each other (we have both for What An Idiot), so we can do both.
she/her | TRS needs your help! | Contributor of Trope ReportI don't think Darth Wiki or Flame Bait is the right call because I feel like that sets the precedent of any YMMV item centered around negative criticism being moved this way. I think the victim of the page's current state is more in the inflammatory name.
I would say renaming it to something like Miscast Actor or Audience-Alienating Casting would sound more neutral and also cut down on the "good actor in bad thing" misuse.
In general, I would also think a cleanup thread would be a suitable option if we want to keep the page as-is, since I don't think there is one yet. The page was also put on No Recent Examples, Please!, which should help the misuse present in some older-written examples where there were a lot more reactionary examples.
I like Miscast Actor better. Not too big a fan of the "Audience-Alienating X" snowclones.
TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper WallYeah, we got enough audience-alienating snowclones as is.
I'm fine with renaming to Miscast Actor. Also helps with being more concise.
she/her | TRS needs your help! | Contributor of Trope ReportYeah, I think the inflammatory name helps drive inflammatory writeups. Miscast Actor seems a little too mild in comparison, but that's probably better than too negative.
Or Actor Miscasting, it be easier to use for multiple actors examples (When a film with an Eastern setting has most actors be white Americans). Still think it may end up too close to Flame Bait.
TroperWall / WikiMagic CleanupI am not sure about miscast, as it still feels like it's saying this is meant for bad casting choices, whereas i think the more nuetral reaction would be something like, "huh?!? what was the reasoning here??", which can include just strange or unexpected casting choices.
there are lots of times an unusual casting choice will turn out to be great, or sometimes base breaking, with some of the audience liking the take and others wondering what they were thinking. but i think the direction to go is to point out that it's a actor+role combination that makes the audience scratch their heads, a ??? reaction, but not necessarily a bad one.
Edited by Tremmor19 on May 4th 2023 at 12:19:21 PM
What I like about "Audience-alienating" is that it makes clear that a large portion of the audience felt this rather than the wiki making an objective statement about the work. But it is a clunky phrase, and Miscast Actor should do. (The current title is not only hyperbolic, but as noted on the discussion page, perpetuates the idea that it's agencies rather than the director with approval from the producers who decide how to cast actors in roles.)
Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.I prefer Miscast Actor. It's less clunky and more straight-forward than "Audience-Alienating Casting". It's also probably better at curbing misuse that amounts to "How dare someone cast Actor I Like in Crappy Moneymaker?" than AAC would be. (Also, I'm not sure if making a snowclone of Audience-Alienating Premise is a great idea ).
Doesn't our usage of 'audience alienating' actually require evidence of alienation? The internet very verifiably dunked on Chris Pratt as Mario but the movie's making a billion dollars.
I prefer Miscast Actor.
Also, I fixed the capitalization of the thread's title.
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.Keep in mind that examples like Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight and Michael Keaton in Batman (1989) are valid examples as well. Initial backlash is a valid example as long as it is framed that everyone was proven wrong at the end.
With that in mind, I feel that is just more evidence that Miscast Actor would be better for the rename.
To renaming to Miscast Actor.
What about something like Confusing Casting Choice to try an encompass the the more neutral forms of WTH Casting Agency?
CSP Cleanup Thread | All that I ask for ... is diamonds and dance floorsConfusing Casting Choice might work. I think Audience-Alienating Casting might get confused for controversial actors being cast, like Jared Leto or Ezra Miller.
Edited by PhiSat on May 4th 2023 at 2:26:25 AM
Oissu!What about just merging it into Playing Against Type? Far as I can tell What The Hell Casting Agency is the same thing but complainy.
I still prefer Miscast Actor if we rename this. Confusing Casting Choice sounds like a more formal way of saying what the current name is trying to say ("What the hell?" already implies confusion; "casting agency" implies the confusion is regarding the casting choices) instead of being more indicative.
Edited by GastonRabbit on May 4th 2023 at 4:20:45 AM
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.Of all the rename ideas, I think Audience Alienating Casting sounds the best to me, since it captures the general idea/spirit of this trope without the "what the hell" part.
Trust no one.to renaming.
Rename
Kirby is awesome.I think something like Perplexing Casting Choice would work best; it avoids stating that the casting was wrong like Miscast Actor would, and says only that the initial reaction was that this was miscasting, but it could yet turn out well.
Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.TBH, you could easily have a miscast actor in the common off-site sense that people thought was a great choice for the part upon being announced, but failed to deliver in actual practice. So it's definitely not a great name for this concept.
Maybe Audience Alienating Casting would be better, then.
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.Dont like that as it implies that audiences disliked the casting enough to be scared off.
We have plenty of examples under WTHC where people where weirded out by a casting but than really liked it.
Even Chris Pratt, who produced memes about his casting being terrible for months is considered actually decent now That it's out. With that opinion changing.
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."
Crown Description:
Consensus was to rename WTH Casting Agency and expand it to include cases where the casting was initially received OK but then considered the weak link post release. What should WTH Casting Agency's new name be?
To-do list:
The usage of this trope to complain, by the way, it's very commonly found in So Bad, It's Horrible examples, where it's often used to whine how this or that horrible media completely wastes the talent of its cast as if for example Rob Paulsen was some kind of deity who committed an unforgivable sin by voicing the titular characters of both the Bubsy pilot and Coconut Fred's Fruit Salad Island, the drama!
What to do? My main ideas are either making it Flame Bait or move on Darth Wiki, other ideas?
Wick check:
Wick check for WTH, Casting Agency? to control if it has too much gushing or misuse.Wicks: 50/50
Edited by GastonRabbit on Jun 8th 2023 at 2:36:54 PM
The best character is always the one-shot disguise.