10 Amazing Movies With Weirdly Distracting Castings

Movies can live or die by their casting choices

Get it wrong, and it can sometimes prove too hard for a great script or director to overcome

Get it right, and a production can come together seamlessly and even be elevated altogether

Sometimes, though, even the well-casted roles can end up being weirdly distracting

So, without further ado, I'm Ewan, this is Wild Culture, and here are amazing movies with weirdly distracting castings

Henry Grace – The Longest Day The Longest Day is a true epic Hollywood production

An international effort pulling together filmmakers and actors from the United States, United Kingdom, France and Germany

The Longest Day recounts in detail Operation Overlord and the events of D-Day during World War II

from the planning stages of the operation through to the airborne assaults and Normandy landings

While occasionally plodding, the all-star cast and scale of the battles depicted makes it a must-watch

But there is one aspect of the film that has always been distracting to me, and that is the man who plays Dwight D. Eisenhower, a supreme Allied commander and later US president

Growing up, and even today, I always did double takes because Eisenhower in The Longest Day looks just like the real deal, to the point where each time I watch the movie, I'm convinced that they got the man himself

The actual reality is that Henry Grace, an Oscar-nominated set decorator, was hired to play Eisenhower specifically because of his resemblance to the general

It's his sole acting credit, and the uncanny similarities between them never fails to amuse

Arnold Schwarzenegger – The Long Goodbye Before he was an actor, Arnold Schwarzenegger was a renowned champion bodybuilder and athlete

He got his first film role in 1970's Hercules in New York, but it wasn't until 1982's Codem

the Barbarian that his star truly began to rise. Arnie came to dominate the 80's with iconic

performances in films like The Terminator, Commando, and John McTiernan's Predator, arguably the best action film ever made. Before Schwarzenegger made a home in the action genre

however, he had several roles of varying prominence. Undoubtedly the most surprising

of these is his brief turn as a henchman in Robert Altman's Philip Marlowe adaptation

The Long Goodbye. Altman's film is one of the finest efforts in the noir genre

an exhaustive, dreamlike mystery anchored by a career-defining performance from Elliot Gold

It's sort of the last place you'd expect Arnie to show up, but show up he does

in a scene where Marlowe is interrogated by local gangster Marty Augustine. Arnie has his

shirt off and menacingly flexes his pecs. The fact he goes uncredited in this one makes it an

amazing jump scare. Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Taylor-Johnson Godzilla 2014 Gareth Edwards' 2014 Godzilla film has never really been given the flowers that it

deserves. While complaints regarding the human protagonists are justified, trading a post-Breaking

Bad Bryan Cranston for literally anyone else didn't do it any favors whatsoever, Edwards is the

sole filmmaker outside of Japan to really render the anguished terror of Godzilla in all his glory That being said there is one element of the film that jars through no fault of its own

but rather because of some unfortunate timing with the MCU. You see, Godzilla's two main human protagonists are portrayed by Aaron Taylor-Johnson and

Elizabeth Olsen, who play husband and wife. Their performances are solid, not Cranston levels of good, but hey, few things are

The main issue is that less than a year later, they were cast as siblings Pietro and Wanda Maximoff in Captain America The Winter Soldier and Avengers Age of Ultron

It's not enough to make the whole thing super weird per se, and they're good in both movies

but it was kind of jarring at the time given how they released in such close proximity

and also because of the whole incest thing in the Ultimate comics. Well, anyway, swiftly moving on

Larry Hagman, Nixon Oliver Stone's Nixon is a fascinatingly underrated piece of 90s cinema

A strangely sympathetic portrayal of one of the United States' most infamous presidents

the film stars Anthony Hopkins as Tricky Dick, chronicling Nixon's failed first White House bid all the way to his impeachment and the Watergate affair

It's less enjoyably chaotic than Stone's previous effort, JFK, except for one scene, which essentially sees Nixon threatened by a bunch of Texan oil barons

and bank tycoons, which the film also implies may have been behind Kennedy's death

We're through the looking glass here, people. The scene on its own is fun enough, but it takes on an added weird dimension

thanks to the presence of Larry Hagman, who was most famous for portraying ruthless Texas businessman J.R. Ewing on Dallas

Hagman's appearance in Nixon invokes the spirit of JR, to the point where it feels like it's the

same notorious oil magnate training his eyes on Sticky Dick. Hagman's cameo still works

but it's hard to shake away JR as he puts pressure on Hopkins' crumbling executive

All the Cut Rolls – The Thin Red Line The Thin Red Line is up there with the greatest war films ever made, but it's also one that had

an infamously difficult production. There's no arguing with the finished results, which are

exceptional, but the production process did leave some peculiar wounds, most notably in the form of

several actors having their roles drastically cut. The most noticeable casualty of the film's edit

was Adrian Brody, whose character, Jeffrey Fife, was originally intended as the lead

Malick's final cut reduces Brody to a background figure, a fact Brody allegedly didn't discover

until a press junket before the film's premiere, and knowing those behind-the-scenes changes does

make his presence more peculiar. George Clooney, who shows up in a minor role in the film's closing

scenes, was also meant to have a bigger part, while Mickey Rourke was excised from the final cut

entirely. None of this takes any of the shine away from the thin red line. It's beautiful

and if anything, seeing prominent actors like Clooney and John Travolta make such brief

appearances adds to its charm. But it is one of those where knowing the behind-the-scenes drama

does occasionally encroach on repeat viewings. Alice Cooper, Prince of Darkness. Oh I love this one Prince of Darkness is one of John Carpenter most overlooked efforts a terrifying entry in the writer director and composer apocalypse trilogy that revolves around the resurrection

of Satan. The film reunited Carpenter with Halloween and Escape from New York's Donald

Pleasance, as well as Bigger Bull and Little China's Victor Wong and Dennis Dunn. There

were also first-time collaborators included in the cast, with one in particular likely

to raise a few eyebrows once recognized. Yep, Alice Cooper himself has a small role in Prince

of Darkness as one of the key homeless figures who surround the monastery housing Satan. Cooper

credited as street schizo in the film, lovely, is spotlighted as one of the leaders of the throng

and even gets to kill one of the scientists in the building with his trademark stabby thingy he

used in his own live performances. Cooper also recorded a track, Prince of Darkness, to go with

the film. As far as cameos go, this one is seamlessly integrated, and if anything, it's

cool to see Cooper get a recurring role rather than featuring for just one scene. It's still

distinctly him though, and while he does a great job standing there and staring menacingly

it's difficult to shake his stage persona. That's kind of the fun with it though

and Prince of Darkness is still a perfect horror film. Gregory Peck, Cape Fear 1991

A remake that's a shade better than the original, Martin Scorsese's 1991 thriller Cape Fear reinvented Max Cady for a new generation

with Robert De Niro's performance as the obsessed former convict, undoubtedly one of his most iconic

The film honours and reinvents J. Lee Thompson's 1962 original to chilling effect

with one of its more genius moves being to bring back Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck

Mitchum famously portrayed Katie in the original film, a performance almost as good as his turn in The Night of the Hunter

while Peck, true to type, was cast opposite as resolute lawyer Sam Bowden, the focus of Katie's ire

Scorsese cleverly flipped the script for the remake, bringing Mitchum back on the side of Bowden as a police lieutenant who steers him outside the law

and Peck as a stereotypical Southern lawyer who represents Katie in court

The two of them play these minor roles excellently, but whereas Mitchum, who throughout his career had portrayed heroes, villains, and everything in between, blends more seamlessly into the proceedings, Peck does not

While Peck certainly took on a variety of characters over the course of his career, he's mostly remembered as the dashing Hollywood leading man

Juxtaposing that in the Cape Fear remake is a great way of subverting that persona, and again, he's great to watch, but the contrast compared to Mitchum is profound

Audie Murphy To Hell and Back It might be weird to label the main casting of a film distracting when that's essentially the central conceit here

but watching To Hell and Back, it's impossible to silence my brain thinking about not only the behind-the-scenes process that led to Audie Murphy

the most decorated US soldier of World War II, playing himself in a film based on his exploits

but also what it must have been like for him to relive those experiences for the purposes of big-screen entertainment

Countless directors and actors who fought in the Second World War would go on to develop and star in films about it Samuel Fuller The Big Red One was inspired by his own wartime experiences

and starred Lee Marvin, who himself fought as a sniper in the Pacific Theatre

to use just one example out of the dozens available. But to relive the events and the battles they fought in specifically

in a film where they played themselves, is a whole other thing. The closest example I can think of that isn't to hell and back would be The Longest Day

where Richard Todd portrayed Major John Howard, having himself fought in the battle for Pegasus

Bridge, but it's still not Murphy playing himself levels of on-screen vulnerability

In more than one way, To Hell and Back is a pretty unremarkable 1950s war film

but there's something so unique about seeing Murphy play himself and relive those combat

experiences, but in a more sanitized environment. Murphy's real-life story was remarkable

and there's an uncanny quality seeing it rendered in To Hell and Back

Look, through no fault of his own, Brian Doyle Murray is an actor I am always distracted by

This is simply down to the fact that he bears a big resemblance to his brother, Bill Murray

So whenever he shows up, I'm constantly brought back to the same thought process of

Is that Bill Murray? No, it's not. Is it? Yeah? No? Yeah? No? Yeah

And then it just goes on like that forever. It's difficult being me. I am constantly doing double takes when he shows up, which is very silly given Brian Doyle Murray is an accomplished actor and writer with his own storied career, but the shadow of Bill looms large

Ghostbusters 2 gives me the I'm seeing double here for Murray's moment when they share the screen, but National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation is the biggest offender solely for the fact that it's a holiday staple and I am somehow incapable of retaining the vital knowledge that Brian Doyle Murray exists

Ronald Reagan – The Killers 1964 Don Siegel's 1964 remake of The Killers is amazing for several reasons

First of all, it stars Lee Marvin, who is the best, as a cold-blooded hitman on the search for truth

backed by a despicably good Clue Gooliger. Secondly, it has a banging, pizzazz-filled score from an early career John Williams

Third, it looks great. And fourth, it has a scene where John Kesevites punches HUAC collaborator and future US President

Ronald Reagan in the face. Plus, a later bit where he knocks him out with a pistol and throws him out a moving car

Get rekt, bozo. That'll teach you to deregulate our financial markets and weaponize space

Well, anyway, watching Ronald Reagan in The Killers is a bit of a wild experience, because

it was his final film before he retired from acting and became governor of California

Compared to his earlier B-movies where he looks like a typical young 40s guy, the version

of Reagan that shows up in The Killers is only a fraction away from the one who had

become president in the 1980s. The pomade, slicked haircut and wrinkled face of the then 53-year-old Reagan looks just

like his presidential persona, and while The Killers is a great, great film, seeing the

president trading bars with Cassavetes and Marvin will never not be weird