6) Marlon Brando – Superman Returns
For the unusual reboot/sequel that was 2006’s Superman Returns, director Bryan Singer was after something that would link his movie with the beloved films starring Christopher Reeve. He found it in Marlon Brando, who reprised his role as Superman’s father Jor-El… despite having died two years earlier.
For his appearance in the scene where Kevin Spacey’s Lex Luthor and his goons storms the Fortress of Solitude, a blend of deleted scenes and outtakes from Superman II and some computer trickery was used to create Brando’s disembodied talking head. Two speeches of Brando’s from the original Superman movie are also used at the beginning and end of the film.
“We had access to all of the Brando footage that was shot,” Singer recalled. “There was unused footage that had Brando reciting poems, trailing off subject and swearing like a sailor.”
5) Laurence Olivier – Sky Captain And The World of Tomorrow
For pulpy movie serial throwback Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, the filmmakers decided to add a bit of legitimacy and class by recruiting one of Britain’s most respected actors ever as its villain, Laurence Olivier. The fact that he had died 13 years previously in 1989 wasn’t a problem.
In the movie, Jude Law’s action-hero fighter pilot Sky Captain faces the evil Dr Totenkopf, a crazed Nazi scientist who created an A.I. hologram of himself to control his island lair before he died. In a process that would directly inspire Brando’s appearance in Superman Returns two years later, footage and audio taken from the BBC’s archives of the actor as a young man was digitally manipulated to fit into the film.
It worked a treat in the movie itself, though we’ve no idea what the classical Shakespearean actor would have thought about being in such a wacky film.
