Face-palming film fans name the worst casting decisions ever made

Every job comes with its own specializations, and every employee comes with their strengths and weaknesses; a lawyer may be better equipped for certain areas of the law than others, a line cook may be more proficient with certain recipes and less proficient with others, and some actors, the shiny life-blood of the film industry that they are, are sometimes better off sticking with the genres that they’re strongest in.

Indeed, every thespian has their range, and sometimes this proves itself in some ugly ways on the big screen. Prompted by an opportunity so ruthlessly snatched away from Antonio Banderas, r/movies are on a mission to declare the worst casting decisions in the history of cinema.

One user grabbed their take right out of the oven and declared Hayden Christensen’s turns in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith as performances that dragged the films down, suggesting that Christensen was likely cast for his physique instead of his talent. Admitting later that not many could have given the scripts much life, the user would go on to suggest that a young Tom Hardy would have pulled off Anakin Skywalker much better.

There’s few targets that gets the internet giddier than nepotism, and one responder went straight for its jugular by panning Sophia Coppola’s performance in The Godfather Part III.

One other responder suggested that Cameron Diaz’s work in Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York belongs in this category, but in fairness to Diaz, even some of the best performances in film history are put to shame by Daniel Day-Lewis’ historic portrayal of Bill the Butcher.

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes you lose on the level of Gods of Egypt. Still, that will never stop Hollywood’s most gutsy from pressing forward, and for that, we commend them.