7 Actors That Got Screwed Over By Comic Book Movies

Acting in a blockbuster is not all candy and sunshine. With hundreds of millions of dollars riding on the film’s success, a lot of pressure can be placed on the crew which is then transferred to the actors. That's not to say that this is a frequent thing, but it has occurred enough to the point where it's burst in sudden ways, such as George Clooney and David O. Russell's fist fight during the filming of Three Kings or Christian Bale's infamous rant against cinematographer Shane Hurlbut on the set of Terminator Salvation. What tends to really happen, though, is things change during production. What someone signed on to do initially was altered while filming and set the actor on a different course without them even knowing about it until it was too late. This happens more often then we'd like to think, especially when studio executives begin interfering with the creative vision/direction of a film. With that being said, here are seven actors that have been a part of a comic book movie only to be unfortunately screwed over in some way. Some of them have bounced back, thankfully, but not all of them. 1) Tim Blake Nelson - The Incredible Hulk And Fantastic Four Tim Blake Nelson deserves first place on this list for one reason: he happened to get the boot twice. The character actor has had a decent filmography consisting of pictures like O Brother, Where Art Thou, Minority Report, Holes, Syriana and his directorial debut O. But he's never quite managed to receive mainstream success, despite attempting to do so through the superhero genre. The first time happened with 2008’s The Incredible Hulk wherein he portrayed Dr. Samuel Sterns, a cellular biologist that secretly collaborates with Bruce Banner during the movie in order to help him find a cure for the Hulk disease. Towards the end, he's set-up to portray Sterns' villainous alter ego The Leader when a vat of chemicals falls into an open cut on his head. Unfortunately, the deal between Marvel and Universal Studios ended up falling apart, leaving all solo Hulk movies out of the picture. Nelson then found a new avenue in the form of the 2015 reboot Fantastic Four, where early reports indicated he was going to portray the Mole Man, an enemy of the titular team who, in the Ultimate Comics, has the ability to create and lead an army of earthen creatures colloquially called "mole people." Sadly, during the film’s notorious production and reshoots, he was completely changed to a new generic bureaucrat named Dr. Allen that's interested in profiting off the discovery of an alternate dimension. In the movie's disappointing climax he, alongside characters like Dr. Franklin Storm and the other scientists inside the Baxter Institute, is quickly killed by Doctor Doom via his head exploding. A sad way to go out given his promising beginning, don't you think? 2) Ben Affleck - Daredevil Ben Affleck was suffering from a lot of scrutiny during the early 2000s. His relationship with pop singer and actress Jennifer Lopez was getting covered by the media 24/7, and he was starring in a string of critical and commercial flops, including Paycheck and Gigli. But the one film that would end up haunting him the most was Daredevil. Affleck portrayed blind lawyer Matt Murdock who becomes the titular anti-hero in order to ensure justice is delivered to everyone who escapes the criminal justice system. While Affleck's performance itself was fine (alongside the rest of the cast, including the underrated Michael Clarke Duncan as Wilson Fisk/Kingpin), the other parts of the movie ended up bringing it down, from the script which featured horrible scenes like the seesaw fight, to the editing which changed the film from an R to a lighter PG-13 (something that would be fixed in the Director's Cut). As such, the pic ended up receiving mixed reviews, and Affleck swore off comic book movies altogether. Of course, that all changed when he decided to take on the role of Bruce Wayne/Batman in Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice. But considering that Daredevil was his favorite superhero growing up, Affleck's inability to be a part of a successful series with the property, as well as the derision it left on him in the months leading up to Dawn of Justice’s release, makes it is no surprise why he regrets it the most. 3) Andrew Garfield - The Amazing Spider-Man Series Though fans have tried to forget the cash grab reboot that was The Amazing Spider-Man, there's no denying the fact that it and its sequel The Amazing Spider-Man 2 had a great cast. At the top of that list was Andrew Garfield, who managed to make the character of Peter Parker/Spider-Man his own in spite of his close proximity to previous actor Tobey Maguire. With Sony making a deal with Disney to share rights to yet another Spidey reboot, it tragically meant that the entire cast of the previous films had to be replaced, including Garfield. While he clearly has mixed feelings on the matter, he has no ill-will towards new actor Tom Holland. As Holland himself said: "I met Andrew at the BAFTAs and he was so nice, so sweet. You know, it really felt like he was passing on the torch. I'd been a little bit worried about meeting him because of what happened and I didn't know if he was sensitive about the subject." A true gentleman. 4) Mickey Rourke - Iron Man 2 Iron Man 2 is certainly one of the MCU's weaker efforts, and that's mostly because the producers evidently decided to focus a good chunk of it on setting up The Avengers rather than developing the characters in the film. As a result, Mickey Rourke's Whiplash was thrown to the back, becoming a tonally inconsistent enemy that could go from snapping a guard's neck to stupidly playing with his bird According to some revealing interviews the actor did in the months after Iron Man 2’s release, it turns out that he was also paid a measly $250,000 compared to the millions of dollars received by the other cast members, and had to implement changes of his own in order to make his character of Ivan Vanko more interesting. However, the juiciest detail was Rourke’s revelation that director Jon Favreau was not given much freedom to implement his vision: “I try to find the moments where not that cliched, evil bad guy and it's a big fight. I had it on Iron Man and they won. It was going to work for Marvel and them breaking Favreau's balls and wanting just a one-dimensional villain.” Ouch! 5) Dylan Baker - The Spider-Man Series When Dylan Baker made his appearance in Spider-Man 2 as the armless Dr. Curt Connors, fans were squealing with delight over the possibility of Connors’ villainous alter ego The Lizard appearing in a future sequel. After all, here he was being set-up as a mentor to Peter, which would contribute to his tragic Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde downfall when he became officially transformed. Everyone's hopes were slightly diminished in Spider-Man 3 though when Raimi opted to go with Sandman as the antagonist. Then, as a result of Sony and Avi Arad's tampering, the director was forced to incorporate Venom into the narrative, a decision that left him disillusioned with the studio and led to him officially dropping out of doing a fourth Spider-Man. As the rest of the main cast followed suit, Baker’s chances of playing The Lizard were tossed out the window. To add salt to the wounds? The choice of antagonist for The Amazing Spider-Man reboot was none other than The Lizard, leading some fans to theorize that its script was actually worked out of an initial draft for Spider-Man 4, even though Raimi revealed years later that the villains would have been The Vulture and Black Cat (portrayed respectively by John Malkovich and Anne Hathaway). 6) Michael Chiklis - Fantastic Four The 2005 Tim Story adaptation of the Fantastic Four was not anything to write home about. It was sloppily paced, weakly directed, and lacked the maturity of the comics. But one of its better aspects was the casting, particularly Michael Chiklis as Ben Grimm/The Thing. Chiklis had made a solid career beforehand by starring in a couple of successful police procedurals called The Commish and The Shield. Taking on the mantle of the ever loving, blue-eyed Thing seemed like an odd diversion at first, but what made his performance particularly memorable was the fact that he was actually an avid fan of The Thing growing up reading Jack Kirby's run. He put a lot of heart into the role, making this Frankenstein's Monster-esque hero have internal conflicts. It was truly sad, then, that his efforts were for nothing as the films ended up not doing him justice despite this being the only opportunity for him to play his favorite character. 7) Christopher Reeve - Superman IV: The Quest For Peace Christopher Reeve was considered by a lot of fans to be the embodiment of Superman. With his tall stature, good moral outlook, and charisma, he helped make the character’s big screen debut in 1978’s Superman a memorable one for fans and audiences. The big success guaranteed a series, but little did everyone know that there would be production problems, starting with Superman II wherein director Richard Lester and producer Ilya Salkind screwed over Richard Donner in order to gain the creative reins. Superman III, meanwhile, ended up being an avenue for famed comedian Richard Pryor to do all sorts of nonsensical gags for the purpose of drawing a laugh. It seemed almost certain that Superman IV: The Quest for Peace would be yet another disaster, and it was. With a constantly diminishing budget, idiotic villain, and lazy script that had Superman gain telekinetic powers, the movie ended up flopping and destroying the franchise for many years, along with Reeves' reputation as the character. The only good thing to come out of it was the actor managed to secure funding for his own personal project Street Smart, which ended up exponentially launching actor Morgan Freeman’s career.

7 Actors That Got Screwed Over By Comic Book Movies

3) Andrew Garfield – The Amazing Spider-Man Series