Ensemble Casts, In No Way Are They Losers

This past weekend, after being advised by a fellow blogger, I rented The Losers. It was released in April 2010, and I certainly remember seeing previews last spring, but somehow I never made it around to seeing it. Imdb describes the plot as follows: “After being betrayed and left for dead, members of a CIA black ops team root out those who targeted them for assassination.” It's yet another comic book adaptation that hit theaters this year. Initially attracted by the cast, the review I read here on Blogger sparked my interest again because of the comments made on its style. While it does display some stylistic elements, I would argue it acts as a timid precursor to the likes of Scott Pilgrim and was nowhere near as stylized as earlier films like The Spirit.

So let me return to the cast. The three big names (to my knowledge) were Chris Evans, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and Zoe Saldana. Morgan has been in his share of Grey’s Anatomy episodes and had the key role in Watchmen the year before. Saldana had just come off of Avatar and Star Trek. Evans had been in Fantastic Four and would be named as the future Captain America. There were other faces I recognized but didn’t know the background for as well. Point? This is the very definition of an ensemble cast. Actors who can hold their own and whose characters get a share of the screen time equal to their fellow actors.

I enjoy ensemble casts in movies because it allows audiences to look into each of the lives of the characters and safely deem any of the characters as their favorite. They also let any of the characters interact with each other, which can lead to a huge variety of comedic encounters and/or dramatic outcomes. It’s interesting to watch how one character plays off of another but could then turn around and be a completely different person with another.

In The Losers, there were several pairings that were heavily emphasized. (And on a side note, all of this is making me think about when I was a kid playing Super Smash Bros…I would play as one character and pick another, say Link and Fox, and make up some fictional back story on why they would be fighting together.) Morgan and Saldana’s characters—Clay and Aisha—were one for sure, and then there was a fantastic scene partnering Cougar (Oscar Jaenada) and Jensen (Evans). Actually, Jensen was a moderator for all of the characters and played off each of them very well, though there was a definite negative vibe between him and Aisha, and thus the two were never seen alone.

But really, if you think about it, The Losers employing an ensemble cast is really just part of a bigger picture in which I’d argue that all comic book movies employ ensemble casts to ensure the movie sells. Really, just think about it for a second!

• X-men: Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, and Ian McKellen were the top billed actors. But Patrick Stewart and Famke Janssen had respectable careers before, too.
• Spider-Man: Tobey Macguire, Kirsten Dunst, and Willem Dafoe. James Franco and the gang got a fair amount of fame on top of what they had already done in Hollywood, and I’ve seen J.K. Simmons around a lot more since the trilogy.
• Batman: Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson, and Kim Basinger. Tim Burton (who directed the first two) gained considerable attention after the films as well.
• Hellboy: Ron Pearlman, Selma Blair, and Jeffrey Tambor.
• Watchmen: it’s difficult to pick the top three billed, as the producers wanted unknowns for their characters. But again, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Jackie Earle Haley had some semblance of a career before it.

Those that only banked on one, two, three actors have tended to do more poorly at the box office or were more poorly received. Nicolas Cage seemed to be single handedly carrying Ghost Rider, though I enjoyed Sam Elliot’s performance much more than Cage’s. The film was regarded as a huge fail, save for the effects. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen rested on Sean Connery’s broad shoulders (and proved to be his final movie before retiring). It only made $68 million in the US and Canada. I’m still undecided on Daredevil, because I feel like the casting choices weren’t the best. It seemed to very well and solidified Marvel characters in Hollywood, but the reception wasn’t the most assuring. (Elektra on the other hand, was disastrous, making less than $60 million worldwide, banking on the Daredevil connection and Jennifer Garner’s attempt at a Grecian assassin.)

As much as I’d like to say, “Come on, Hollywood, take a risk…we don’t need A-list stars playing the not-to-be-taken-seriously B-movie comic characters,” I’m just going to keep my trap shut. History has proven that having the respected actors and having lots of them is the way to keep the franchises alive. Its just a sticky situation, thinking that someone out there may be able to embody the character better than say, Hugh Jackman, who will undoubtedly draw in the crowds and the money. So, for now, I’d rather the casting directors get it half-way right and the studios keep making the movies, if only for the possibility that we may realize someone may play Character X just right, than the movies not be made at all.

(It’ll only take one screw up for me to retract that entire last paragraph…one royal screw up for me to be out for someone’s blood… X3 comes to mind, but it wasn’t the actors who were primarily to blame there.)