30 Times Perfectly Good Movies Were Ruined By The Casting

To gain more insight on this topic from a movie expert, we reached out to the team at IMO Flicks, a film review hub, to hear their thoughts on how poor casting choices can impact a movie. First, we wanted to know if they've ever been distracted by miscast actors. "The Sun is Also a Star, which starred Yara Shahidi and Charles Melton, is one movie that really stands out to me for its bad casting choices," the site's representative told Bored Panda. "The female lead in the movie is a Jamaican girl from New York, and her whole family is dark-skinned and Jamaican. Yara Shahidi, on the other hand, is light-skinned, half-black, half-Iranian, with no Jamaican in sight, and it definitely hindered the authenticity that this film requires. Shahidi didn't present any Jamaican or New York culture. She was just reciting a script, not becoming a character."

"There is one scene where her character is recommended to chemically straighten her hair. As a black woman, this scene comes off as extremely unrealistic, since Shahidi would be considered to have 'good hair' in the black community," the cinephile went on to explain. "A dark-skinned woman with kinkier hair would have been more affected by this comment, but Shahidi was able to laugh it off. Moments like that which could have had a deeper cultural impact were missed opportunities because the actors chosen were not fit to embody those roles. I feel as though casting a full Korean character and a dark-skinned Jamaican character with beautiful tight-coiled Type 4 hair would have the potential to make this film more authentic and something people can actually relate to. Instead of the heartwarming story that this movie could've been, it rather resembled a superficial display of pretty people, not real characters."

"Good casting can make or break a movie for sure," the person behind IMO Flicks noted. "Having solid characters that feel real, and make you feel, pity, empathy, anger, anything; characters that make you believe they're real is the difference between watching National Geographic and watching a movie. How many people would pay to watch the latest nature documentary in theatres versus how many people would pay to watch Chris Evan's latest movie without even knowing what the plot is about? The difference is the people, the characters, and the connection."

"There's this show I've been loving lately called Jury Duty on Freevee where showrunners cast one person, Ronald Gladden, off of Craigslist to take part in a fake trial where everyone else was actors," the cinephile continued. "The whole show relied on how cooperative, expressive, and involved this one person was. By the end of the season, I couldn't help but think how lucky the showrunners were in picking the perfect person as their subject because the success of the whole show relied solely on Gladden's reaction to the wild situations he was put in, and he didn't disappoint."

Because the power of casting is so strong, we also asked the film expert if there were any mediocre movies or shows that were enhanced by excellent casting choices. "The series Wednesday would be an average show lost in the noise if it wasn't for Jenna Ortega," she explained. "She truly understood who her character was and pushed the envelope to make the appropriate changes to the script. The acting across the board for other characters tended to dip into 'Disney Channel original movie' energy, but she elevated the quality of the whole narrative by being very intentional, tasteful, consistent, and believable in how her character presented herself."

We were also curious if the IMO Flicks expert could cite some of the most common mistakes casting directors make when choosing their actors. "One mistake I sometimes notice is that you may have two individuals who are great actors on their own, but when they work together, there is no chemistry there," she told Bored Panda. "I don't know if casting directors are skipping chemistry reads or if a good chemistry read was unable to transfer to the screen, but the main characters have to have a real connection or at least be really good at faking it."

"Another mistake would be to cast a popular name over someone who may not be so popular but has all of the tools needed to make a character believable," the cinephile continued. "Anyone would watch any movie with their favorite actor, so that's instant money in the creator's hands just to have a big name attached to their movie. The issue though is that the attention for the film is short-lived if the actor is not a good fit for the role. It's risky to present a movie with a not-so-familiar name, however, some truly amazing stories will pay off that risk. Oftentimes, it feels as though some movie creators will try to compensate for a bad story by casting big names, instead of fleshing out believable characters and a story that people can connect with."

"Movies are make-believe," the film expert added. "If the people being cast are not making you believe the story that they're telling, then it's really difficult to become invested in a movie and to actually enjoy it. Great casting is essential to a great movie."

If you'd like to hear more of this cinephile's thoughts or learn how to start writing reviews of your own, be sure to check out IMO Flicks' website right here!