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
It might, now that you mention it.
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.In theory they might fit And You Thought It Would Fail even better, but I think that applies to entire works rather than just an aspect of a work.
I don’t mind just expanding it to cases where the casting was ok after all.
Also, does this cover cases where the casting was initially received ok but then considered the weak link post release (eg. Ansel Elgort in West Side Story (2021))?
I wouldn't mind expanding it to cover those two things.
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.I feel this trope (audience reaction, to be precise), in normal usage, is best defined as a reaction to the casting announcement having many saying it's the wrong actor for the role. How it actually turns out is secondary. One of the strongest cases of fans hating a casting choice then coming to love it, to the point that the initial reaction is largely forgotten, is Patrick Stewart in The Next Generation.
Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.I think the one-week after release waiting period was made specifically to counter that though...
Trust no one.Or it's to give a week to gauge audience opinion.
Usually the announcement solidifies audience reactions until the film comes out though. Then they see it and it varies whether the performance was good or not.
Trust no one.From No Recent Examples, Please!:
So it does appear that it's meant to counter what Reymma mentioned, or at least partially because of that (maybe there are some other types of examples it was meant to counter).
Edited by GastonRabbit on May 6th 2023 at 1:20:58 PM
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.Does this need more discussion, or are we ready for a crowner? And if we're ready for a crowner, do we have any options other than expanding to cover the two types of examples mentioned in this post (which would be listed separately in the crowner) and/or renaming?
Edited by GastonRabbit on May 6th 2023 at 12:44:44 PM
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.I suggested merging it with Playing Against Type earlier but I was ignored.
I don't think merging it with Playing Against Type is a good idea, especially since WTH, Casting Agency? is YMMV and PAT is Trivia.
Trust no one.I concur. Sorry, but the two aren't similar as well.
Besides, you can have a WTHCA reaction without it being about type.
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure PurenessI hooked a crowner regarding expanding and renaming.
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.Sorry for the double post, but I adjusted the titles of the thread and the crowner because I noticed that the page's actual name is Main.WTH Casting Agency, and Main.What The Hell Casting Agency is a redirect. (Though the misuse of custom titles to have "What the Hell" spelled out despite it being abbreviated as "WTH" is making that unclear; I'll fix that.)
Edited by GastonRabbit on May 7th 2023 at 2:53:47 PM
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.Posting this comment to make public that I voted in favor of a rename. I didn't upvote or downvote any of the other options.
135 - 169 - 273 - 191 - 188 - 230 - 300Calling in favor of renaming and expanding to include cases where the casting was initially received OK but then considered the weak link post release.
What are our name options?
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.As I mentioned before, Audience Alienating Casting was the name I liked the most.
Trust no one.Hooked.
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.About Audience Alienating Casting.
We have Audience-Alienating Premise, Audience-Alienating Ending (formerly Ending Aversion), Audience-Alienating Era (which used to be Dork Age), are we now going for Audience-Alienating Snowclones?
ᜇᜎᜈ᜔ᜇᜈ᜔|I DO COMMISSIONS|ᜇᜎᜈ᜔ᜇᜈ᜔I voted against the audience-alienating option as I'm not a fan of those particular snowclones and I don't think "audience alienating" is neutral wording (it could attract complaining unless there's a requirement for objective proof, as happens with AAP).
Edited by Wyldchyld on May 10th 2023 at 5:58:47 PM
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.Reiterating that all three have alienation (i.e. the work flopping somehow) in their definitions (Audience-Alienating Ending was since expanded to include backlash, since it's kinda hard to prove alienation after you've seen the whole work). But a casting decision can be clowned on independently of the work's performance, especially since most works don't 'live or die' on a single actor as they do on things like premises or endings.
Edited by Synchronicity on May 10th 2023 at 12:00:36 PM
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?
Don't cases where the casting was originally hated, but opinions changed after the release, covered by Win Back the Crowd and He Really Can Act?
Edited by SharkToast on May 5th 2023 at 4:24:31 AM