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Jacob should've been the protagonist of the Fantastic Beasts franchise.
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00:00Now, it goes without saying that a protagonist can make or break a movie, get them right,
00:05and they can bolster an entire franchise basically by themselves. I mean, I'm looking at you,
00:09Tony Stark, over there. But get it wrong, and a potentially lucrative IP can crater
00:13overnight. But sometimes the results are a little less dramatic, though, even as it's clear that
00:19the filmmakers hedged their bets on the wrong character to lead their movie and probably
00:23should have looked elsewhere. And that's what we're covering today. As I'm Jules,
00:26this is WhatCulture.com, and these are the 10 movies that chose the wrong lead character.
00:3210. Cersei – Eternals
00:34Though Marvel's Eternals is certainly an ensemble-led affair, the de facto protagonist is clearly Cersei.
00:41She's an Eternal who possessed the promising ability to manipulate matter but spends far too
00:45much of her screen time trapped in a love triangle. Now, she's not a bad character,
00:49but she's just not a hugely compelling lead, despite a solid effort from Gemma Chan. Perhaps
00:54had more time been spent developing her complex relationship with humanity,
00:58she might have seemed a more fitting protagonist. Ultimately, the Eternal's line-up contains several
01:04more interesting and well-wrought characters. Perhaps best of all, Fastos, whose unique role
01:09in shaping humanity's development through technology gives him a direct and fascinating
01:13tether to the audience.
01:149. Ford Brody – Godzilla
01:17The MonsterVerse admittedly doesn't have a stellar track record with human characters as it stands,
01:23though the decision to assign Godzilla 2014's protagonist duties to the painfully dull US
01:28Navy officer Ford Brody was an especially egregious mistake. The movie's first act benefited
01:34considerably from the presence of Ford's father, Joe, with the marketing emphasising
01:38Bryan Cranston's role in that film only for him to be suddenly killed off at the end of Act 1.
01:43Even Bryan Cranston himself has been vocal about his character's death being the wrong call,
01:48deeming it an utter waste, echoing the sentiment from many fans that Joe should have been the
01:52movie's lead and his son swapped into a supporting part. Instead, Ford takes the reins in a movie where
01:57Godzilla's screen time is relatively scant, and without the character generating any sparks of
02:02interest at all, the film becomes a pure drag almost any time that it focuses on him.
02:078. Sandy – Grease
02:09Now, Sandy is the outright lead of the hit musical Grease, though in more recent years there's been
02:14a fair amount of pushback against her character arc. That what qualifies as her happy ending is changing
02:19herself entirely for the boy in her life, Danny. But aside from that, Sandy is just a bit of a
02:24one-note character all things considered, especially compared to the leader of the Pink Ladies, Rizzo.
02:29Rizzo is a rough-edged character whose arc is considerably more interesting. Yet while Sandy's decision to drop
02:35her pretensions towards properness are rewarded at the film's end, Rizzo's free-spirited nature is
02:40largely shamed throughout the story. But Rizzo is a self-actualised person from the get-go and
02:45doesn't need a boy to get her there. Sure, she's pretty harsh to Sandy, but is born more from a
02:50frustration with her slavish devotion to propriety, and the film still does a solid job of revealing
02:55Rizzo's more sensitive and vulnerable side. Rizzo isn't as easily defined as Sandy, but that's part of
03:01why she's a far more interesting character and ultimately worthier of being the role model that
03:05young girls could look up to. 7. Cole Young – Mortal Kombat 2021
03:11Despite Mortal Kombat being one of the most iconic and recognisable video game franchises in history,
03:16Hollywood still thought that last year's new movie needed an audience-insert character
03:20for some unknown reason, and so the movie is led by an entirely original creation,
03:25MMA fighter Cole Young, who is later revealed to be the descendant of Hanzo Hasashi, aka Scorpion.
03:31Lewis Tan does a fine enough job with the meagre scraps that he has, but both he and his family
03:36feel like wildly unnecessary additions in a film overflowing with beloved existing characters.
03:41There are several easy potential protagonists among the lot of them, especially Liu Kang and Scorpion,
03:46not to mention Johnny Cage, who doesn't even appear in the film. Pre-release Cage's absence
03:50seemed so baffling that many fans, ourselves included, believed that Cole was actually going
03:55to become Johnny Cage by the film's end, but alas, that didn't happen. It's just totally
03:59ridiculous that in 2021, with Hollywood supposedly adapting video games with a degree of respect and
04:05reverence, we're still getting very cynical decisions like this.
04:086. Julie James – I Know What You Did Last Summer
04:12I Know What You Did Last Summer's protagonist is Julie James, a smart, sensible, beautiful young
04:17woman, but ultimately is a rather boring and dead ordinary choice for the slasher flick's final girl.
04:22Many fans of the movie believe that there was a far better lead character waiting in the wings,
04:26and that's Julie's good pal Helen. The fact that Helen has her own Wikipedia page while Julie
04:31doesn't really says everything that needs to be said about the respective impact on the audience and
04:36general pop culture. At first glance, Helen seems to be a stereotypical horror movie beauty queen,
04:41defined by vapid self-interest and little else. Yet there's a surprising depth to Helen that exposes
04:47her deep-running vein of emotional vulnerability. Helen is evidently wracked with guilt over the fatal
04:52car accident that she was involved in and has a fraught home life to boot. We're compelled to
04:57root for Helen to survive, and so it's such a crushing letdown that she's ultimately killed
05:01off at the end of an unforgettable chase sequence, despite surviving in the novel no less. Julie's
05:06fate was never really in doubt, which could have made it such a fantastic surprise to kill the
05:11prototypical final girl and have Helen make it to the end instead.
05:145. Raleigh Beckett – Pacific Rim
05:18Now, Charlie Hunman did all that could be done with Pacific Rim's wafer-thin protagonist Raleigh
05:23Beckett, but the movie really belongs to the infinitely more memorable and appealing supporting
05:28character Mako Mori. Now, Mako admittedly has a relatively large role in the film, but there's
05:33no denying that she plays second fiddle to Raleigh, who by comparison is a rather uninteresting,
05:38charisma-free, generic white guy lead. Perhaps the single most memorable sequence from the film is to
05:43a flashback detailing the loss of Mako's parents in a kaiju attack on Tokyo, resulting in her
05:48subsequently being adopted. Between Mako's tragic backstory, her strong-willed determination,
05:53and the admittedly terrific performance, it's really a no-brainer that she should have led
05:57this blockbuster. However, releasing in 2013 as it did, long before Wonder Woman and Captain
06:02Marvel finally convinced crusty Hollywood executives that female-led tentpoles were viable,
06:07the apparently smart, sensible choice was picking the bland, interchangeable dude.
06:12Ironically, with Raleigh not returning for the sequel, 2018's Pacific Rim Uprising,
06:16it would have been the perfect opportunity for Mako to slide into the lead role, but instead,
06:20she returned for a mere fleeting cameo in which her character was inexplicably killed off. Cool.
06:264. Sam Carpenter – Scream 2022 The recent fifth Scream film did a rock-solid
06:33job of introducing audiences to a new cast of likeable young characters, capable of carrying the
06:37franchise forward with or without the original surviving heroes. Scream's lead character ended
06:42up being Sam Carpenter, who is eventually revealed to be the biological daughter of one of the series'
06:47original killers, Billy Loomis. While that is an interesting idea, to make the series' new lead
06:52the descendant of the original villain, who appears to have inherited their aptitude at bloodletting no
06:57less, as a protagonist Sam pales somewhat in comparison to her sister Tara. Tara becomes an
07:02immediate sympathetic character from the film's very first scene where she unexpectedly survives a
07:07run-in with Ghostface. In addition to being a horror film fan, Tara takes an incredible amount
07:12of punishment over the course of the movie, cementing both her vulnerability and her toughness,
07:17ensuring that she feels the most Sydney-like of the new characters. Furthermore, when comparing the
07:21two's acting capabilities, Tara is just simply better, more deeply felt and persuasive. Both
07:26sisters are at least set to return for Scream 6, though, which begins shooting very soon.
07:303. Jim Preston – Passengers
07:34Passengers was one of 2016's most hotly anticipated films, the star pairing of Jennifer
07:39Lawrence and Chris Pratt in a big-budget sci-fi romance having box office gravy written all over it,
07:44and yet it ultimately released to a fairly muted response from critics and audiences alike due to the
07:49rather contentious characterization of protagonist Jim. After being awoken from cryo-sleep 90 years
07:54early and spending a year living on his own on a spaceship, Jim decides to wake up a fellow passenger.
07:59The problem is, of course, is that rather than focus on this action as a product of Jim's unstable
08:04loneliness, the script tries to segue it into a genuinely affecting love story in which a selfish
08:09schmuck romances the smoking-hot woman he irreversibly woke up from slumber against her will.
08:14Many critics noted that a big problem of this movie is its point of view,
08:18and that having a story unfold from her perspective rather than Jim's would have
08:22positioned the empathy in a more agreeable way. It still would have faced an uphill struggle to
08:26convince audiences that Jim's act wasn't one of total scumbaggery, even accepting his crushing
08:31loneliness, but given that we're firmly on Aurora's side, having us experience events alongside her
08:37would have righted a lot of the script's inherent tonal issues.
08:392. Newt – Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
08:44Now it's fair to say that Fantastic Beasts protagonist Newt is a fairly unconventional
08:48lead for a massive blockbuster IP. He's not even remotely charismatic, has a number of bizarre
08:53physical and verbal tics, and actor Eddie Redmayne believes that he's on the autistic spectrum.
08:57There is a bumbling charm to Newt, for sure, but he's simply not nearly as likable as his good pal
09:02Jacob is, the New York baker who ends up inadvertently joining Newt on his magical adventures.
09:07For one, any time the character is on screen, you get an effortlessly rabble-rousing performance.
09:12But more than that, Jacob is the perfect vessel through which audiences can be introduced to
09:16this corner of the wizarding world. Countless blockbusters have proven the success of using
09:21an audience surrogate character who is as clueless as the viewer, allowing them to organically
09:25experience the world alongside us, and Jacob fits the role like a glove. Though it would be easy for
09:30Jacob to end up being relegated to the comic relief role, his relationship with Queenie and his
09:34passion for baking bring a lot of heart and soul to a series that it is admittedly often lacking in
09:40it. It's probably quite fitting that Newt often feels like a passenger in his own franchise,
09:44almost as if J.K. Rowling realizes that there are more compelling characters elsewhere.
09:481. Rey – Star Wars – The Force Awakens
09:52And so we wrap up with possibly a controversial choice, that as potential rich as Star Wars' Rey was,
09:58that she shouldn't have led the sequel trilogy as its Luke Skywalker-esque protagonist.
10:03After Rey's solid introduction, she settles into an over-familiar character rhythm,
10:07largely working through the archetypal hero's journey beats that we've seen before with
10:11little in the way of creative variation. And there are two infinitely more interesting
10:15choices for the sequel trilogy's protagonist, Finn, a former stormtrooper who fans understandably
10:21expected to be the sequel's true hero, and more ambitiously, the villainous Kylo Ren.
10:26Kylo Ren is far and away the most complex and intriguing character of the entire sequel trilogy,
10:31and building The Force Awakens around him would have been an especially bold move.
10:35Audiences clearly responded strongly to the character, in large part due to Adam
10:39Driver's superb performance, and several years removed from the sequels,
10:43he's really the only new character who's had much cultural staying power whatsoever.
10:46Granted, Disney would be understandably nervous about making an antagonistic character their lead,
10:51and so Finn would have been a solid second choice. Again, Rey is a fine enough character,
10:56but she's also painfully unadventurous.
10:58And there we go, my friends, those were 10 movies that chose the wrong lead actor. Hope that you
11:02enjoyed that, and please let me know what you thought about it down in the comments section below.
11:05As always, I've been Jules, you can go follow me over on Twitter at RetroJWithAZero,
11:09or you can swing by Liv and Let's Dice, where I do all of my streaming outside of work,
11:14as well as my Warhammer Battle reports, and it'd be great to see you over there.
11:17But before I go, I just want to say one thing. Even though we detailed today a lot about lead
11:21characters who probably weren't in the right roles, you, my friend, are the starring role of your life,
11:26and you deserve all of the love, happiness, and success, all of the good things, my friend,
11:29and do not let anything or anyone else tell you otherwise. You are a massive ledge,
11:33and I want you to go out there and absolutely smash your life goals today. I believe in you.
11:37As always, I've been Jules, you have been awesome, never forget that, and I'll speak to you soon. Bye.
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