A scenario.

I love games like this! You do realise that every other response you get will have all positons filled by Joss Whedon regulars though don’t you?

I’m going to try and structure mine around the theme of British telly actors who could be big in the outside world but probably won’t be.

The Stoic Leader: Ken Stott. Too old? Too much of a big name in the outside world for my theme? Probably yes to both. But he’d be good.

The Right-Hand Man Who Gets All The Good Jokes: Philip Glenister – to save him from playing Gene Hunt/Gene Hunt knock offs for the rest of his life. The guy has got the neccesary comic timing and can play the doggedly loyal type very well.

The Weapons Master: David Bamber. Just Because I’d like to see what he’d do with this sort of part to be honest.

The Gung-Ho Kid Who Falls For The Pretty Girl: Mike Bailey. I’ve only seen him on Skins. But he could be good. Unlike most British actors under 25 I don’t want to waterboard him.

The Guy Who Claims He’s Only In It For The Money: Marc Warren. The best Constantine casting that will never be.

The Wanted Man On The Downward Spiral: Kris Marshall. Because the guy really needs to get out of the dreaded British Rom Com blackhole and a darker role would be good for him.

The Outsider (Who Identifies With The Villagers): Burn Gorman. Because he’s wasted on Torchwood.

Setting… I dunno. I watched a documentary on the the rivalry between Classical physicists and the Quantum Mechanics guys the other night. So lets say that the conflicts turned violent and they need their conference/village protected by a crack team of former theoretical physicists turned guns for hire.

Also have seen this? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bradford/7204543.stm

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Good choices Oddking, especially for Sprial Man and Gung Ho Kid. I reckon Joseph Gordon-Levitt could be huge if he keeps his nose clean and picks his parts well – have you seen him in Brick?

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Through a combination of arrogance, stubborness, and utter lack of planning, the budget quickly bloats to 250 million dollars and overshoots the production schedule several times over. About a quarter of the cast either dies from a drug overdose, or is arrested by the police for possession and sentenced to community service. While studio heads are screaming bloody murder, I blissfully continue to be heavily involved in the post-production, absolutely convinced that this will be my masterpiece. When it is released, the movie is universally panned by critics. Gene Shalit is quoted, “Fuck Milkman Dan, fuck him in the ass, and fuck his crappy movie too.”

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In the future, people with severe mental disorders are deliberately placed into comas and kept alive but forgotten in White Buildings. In Building M7 in inner city Baltimore, a virus has somehow gotten into the keeping rooms and is infecting, and killing, patients. Doctors have noticed, though, that patient ID #244788MPD, or Chris, is fighting the infection. Chris, of course, has multiple personality disorder, and we leave the cold, sterile future at the end of the prologue and enter his mind, where his subconscious struggles to fight off the infection by joining together his formerly fractured personalities in order to conserve mental strength and stamina. At the end of the film, when Chris rides off into the sunset, he suddenly wakes up on a narrow steel gurney covered by thin, white mattress with doctors looking over him, coldly, medically surprised to see him awaken. Declared healed, he’s given a little money and sent out into the world, which is a cold, iron gray dystopia in sharp contrast to the film’s bright western blue skies and red brick mesa vistas.

The Stoic Leader: Ryan Phillipe
The Right-Hand Man Who Gets All The Good Jokes: Kris Marshall
The Weapons Master: Samantha Morton
The Gung-Ho Kid Who Falls For The Pretty Girl: Jamie Bell
The Guy Who Claims He’s Only In It For The Money: Kevin Costner
The Wanted Man On The Downward Spiral: Owen Wilson
The Outsider (Who Identifies With The Villagers): Edward Norton

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Setting: Early 80’s punk/sci-fi desolate sub/urban city landscape. The “under siege” place would likely be an “Artist co-op” neighborhood, likely vacant buildings with Punk squatters. A la Assault on Precinct 13 or Repo Man, so of course Alex Cox is directing. He did love him some Westerns. The theme, of course, would be The Clash’s “the Magnificent Seven.”

All casting choices are the respective actors at their “ideal” age, versus how old they are now. I have invented time travel for this movie.

The Stoic Leader: Harry Dean Stanton, from his Repo Man days, of course

The Right-Hand Man Who Gets All The Good Jokes: Ewan McGregor, from his Trainspotting/Shallow Grave days

The Weapons Master: Ernest Borgnine, circa Escape from New York

The Gung-Ho Kid Who Falls For The Pretty Girl — no, for the Pretty Guy: Ben Foster, 3:10 to Yuma

The Guy Who Claims He’s Only In It For The Money: Bill Moseley, The Devil’s Rejects

The Wanted Man On The Downward Spiral: Gary Oldman, The Professional

The Outsider (Who Identifies With The Villagers): Emilio Estevez, with his Repo Man attitude, but older

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Setting: Transhumanist future urban ghetto or something. Fuck, take any three panels from Transmetropolitan and glue them together in the order of your choice, then sprinkle with equal parts glitter and fake blood. All of our cast are cyborgs or something.

Stoic Leader: Sigourney Weaver — Ellen Ripley wasn’t a leader, but Sigourney certainly has the charisma to do it if needed.

Right-Hand Jokester: Jeanine Garofalo — Sardonic sidekick who isn’t Sarah Silverman? Yes please.

The Weapons Master: Zoe Bell — C’mawn.

Gung-Ho Girl-Faller: Michelle Rodriguez — It’s easy to play yourself.

Only for the Money Claimer: Madonna — While I can’t really attribute any grand philanthropic motives to Madonna, at least part of it would fit. She would not be allowed to sing.

Wanted on a Downward Spiral: Helena Bonham Carter — She does Down and Out pretty well.

The Identifying Outsider: Eddie Izzard — Ladies, please. Alternate choice: Rupaul.

There isn’t any aim at high art or nothin’, just really to let the ladies have a shot at it.

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Having only seen Samurai 7, an anime loosely as a goosely based on Seven Samurai, I’m going to go with the weaponmaster in the sense “Bruce Lee with nunchuks,” since that’s how the anime went. And I’m going to use one Joss Whedon regular, because I can. And since this is a remake, I’m going to totally miss the point, because, hey. Remake. They’re supposed to miss the point.

Setting: A future readily identifiable to sci-fi and anime aficionados, Earth’s population dwells in dome structures because pollution and a war with an alien species that has resulted in the decimation of Earth’s atmosphere. Though humanity believes itself to be the victor in its war with the aliens, a bunch of them remain on Earth’s surface, hiding and waging a guerilla war out of the erroneous belief that reinforcements are coming and that Earth will be theirs. A remote dome tasked with finding a means to repair the atmosphere comes under attack, and a team of seven assemble to save Earth’s last, best hope for returning to natural equilibrium. The film wouldn’t aim for pretentions of having a meaningful message, using sci-fi as a metaphor for real war, or try to bash Bush, or anything like that. Just thick, meaty action with characters you can enjoy, and writing that’ll get you invested in their adventure.

Alternatively, the seven would be a group of misfits holed up in an fortified army base in the not too distant future, where rampant homeopathic medicine use has destroyed conventional, evidence-based medicine. The seven would be tasked with defending the last real doctors, who are frantically working on a cure. The result of widespread homeopathy is that 90% of the world’s remaining population (there were mass deaths because people didn’t seek treatment and took bogus homeopathic cures instead, so there’s not a lot of people left) is a zombie-like creature that must consume the organs of other creatures to survive and stave off a flesh-eating contagion that’s rotting them from the inside. The zombie-like creatures would be a mix of zombies, cannibals, and the violent gangs of a Mad Maxian future. Their leader would be Dane Cook, playing a pastiche of famous homeopaths. This film would leave no cheap shot to the balls untaken, and no below the belt joke untold.

The Stoic Leader: Christian Bale. I think he does stoic very well, though I could also use him for TRHMWGATGJ if he channeled his Patrick Bateman (I lol’d at the moonwalk). His work in the Machinist and Equilibrium would be what I would want to have him emulate for this role. Other candidates: Michael Ironside or Bruce Willis. Ironside does stoic very well, and he was probably the best part of Starship Troopers. As a bonus, he’s probably not too expensive and if someone could light a fire under him he’d be great. I’m not really sure Willis needs explanation, and I’d just point to Tears of the Sun and Sin City to show how I think he’d fit the part.

The Right-Hand Man Who Gets All The Good Jokes: My first instinct is Samuel L. Jackson, but I’m not sure how well it’d play out. He’s perhaps a little overdone in this sort of role, you know? I don’t know why, but afterwards I tend to lean towards Denzel Washington or Wesley Snipes. It’s probably wrong that I’m just thinking of African American actors as right hand men who get good jokes, but I think they’re all excellent actors able to pull off action and snappy dialogue (particularly Denzel, who’s done some awesome work). Lastly, perhaps Hugo Weaving channeling V and Agent Smith. The good jokes would probably have to be wry and dry, but that’s not so bad.

The Weapons Master: Amy Acker, as a Joss Whedon style magical girl. She did it in the tail end of Angel, so it’s probably not a good bid (though, as another poster points out, we’ve had Uma Thurman do weaponmaster, and dare I also mention the two Underworld films, the Resident Evil franchise, and the Bloodrayne films? It’s not bad or anything). Give her some gun kata or something neat like that. Alternatively, Tony Jaa. He wouldn’t be much for talking and stuff, but I guess we could make him a mute and just have him wreck people five ways to Sunday (I doubt anyone would expect more from Jaa). Ron Perlman as a grizzled old guy who’s seen more fighting than the whole group put together might work. The guy’s getting on in years, though, but with a big budget movie I’m sure we could work around it.

The Gung-Ho Kid Who Falls For The Pretty Girl: I don’t know. Maybe Jake Gyllenhaal or Josh Hartnett? Either could probably provide an adequate performance. If I wanted to shake things up and tell an “unconventional” story (e.g. the pretty girl is an alien in disguise who ends up killing the gung-ho kid) I’d go with Shia LeBoeuf or Dane Cook. Dane Cook in Mr. Brooks had an excellent death scene.

The Guy Who Claims He’s Only In It For The Money: Michael Madsen can sleepwalk through this kind of role. It’s even sort of phoning it in to pick him. If, for some reason, we couldn’t get him, then Mickey Rourke.

The Wanted Man On The Downward Spiral: For this one, I kind of want to go with Nathan Jones. He, like Jaa, isn’t much of an actor so it’s one or the other. But he’s big and impressive, and just the sort of guy who has a final redemption scene where he dies to save everyone else. If the group (i.e. the seven) he’s in is sort of like a French Foreign Legion, him not talking is okay, since I think it would be poor. The idea behind choosing someone like Jones or Jaa is to purposefully create room for other characters. I’m simply not confident that I could get great characterization out of seven characters in the constraints of time.

The Outsider (Who Identifies With The Villagers): Claudia Black, for no other reason than fanboyism. Her outsiderness I suppose would be that she could be a civilian medic or techie of some kind that the otherwise military team needs to accomplish a goal identified as soon as they arrive at the dome. She could either be one of the people from the particular dome or tagging along.

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Setting: In a small prairie town ruled over by revival-tent gangsters, a rag-tag band of freethinkers rolls into town and lead a dance-dance-revolution . . . no, wait, that’s Footloose. A rag-tag band of freethinkers rolls into town smuggling biology textbooks and a dangerous secret.

The Stoic Leader: Katharine Hepburn
The Right-Hand Man Who Gets All The Good Jokes: Terry Pratchett
The Weapons Master: Björk
The Gung-Ho Kid Who Falls For The Pretty Girl: Cillian Murphy
The Girl Who Claims She’s Only In It For The Money: Ayaan Hirsi Ali
The Wanted Man On The Downward Spiral: Christopher Hitchens
The Outsider (Who Identifies With The Villagers): Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

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The distant future, where humanity has solved all of its internal problems and become a utopia of pure peace, harmony, and tranquility…only to be attacked by vicious aliens who won’t listen to reason. The future-humans crack open the museum cases to get at all our ancient weaponry, only to find that centuries of peace and harmony have dulled their killing instincts…so they timescoop seven heroes out of the distant past (timescooping takes too much energy to get more than seven) and send them into battle.

The Stoic Leader: Keira Knightley. Seriously. I thought she did an excellent job with a relatively thankless role in the ‘Pirates’ movies, she showed a lot of brass in the scenes where she was the Pirate Queen, and I see her as playing this like Mina in the ‘League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’ comic; not a super-tough badass, but an excellent field leader who’s good at getting people to do what needs to be done.

The Right-Hand Man Who Gets All The Good Jokes: Simon Pegg. ‘Hot Fuzz’ showed that he has the acting chops to play a relatively serious role, and the comedy chops to get all the good jokes.

The Weapons Master: Antonio Banderas. He’s always good in action roles, because he has That Stare, and this would be a chance for him to get back to pulling out more high-tech weaponry than God and blowing shit up while glaring at the camera. And really, when is that ever a bad thing?

The Gung-Ho Kid Who Falls For The Pretty Girl: Eliza Dushku, because there’s nothing to pep up a movie like lesbian action. 🙂

The Guy Who Claims He’s Only In It For The Money: Christopher Eccleston. He does dark, sarky, and cynical so well, but he’d be able to convey without being obvious how much he’s lying about only being in it for the money.

The Wanted Man On The Downward Spiral: Viggo Mortensen. He’s very good at playing damaged characters.

The Outsider (Who Identifies With The Villagers): Chow Yun-Fat. He could play a character who’s at heart, an idealistic pacifist, identifying with the tranquil harmony of the peaceful future and wanting to stay here…while at the same time picking up twin nuclear death-guns and blasting away at enemy ships.

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As much as I’d love to write a detailed analysis like y’all are doing, I haven’t the time. If I may hit and run…

Setting – Post Apocalypse

The Stoic Leader – John C. McGinley

The Right-Hand Man Who Gets All The Good Jokes – Mos Def

The Weapons Master – J.K. Simmons (And the leader’s older brother)

The Gung-Ho Kid Who Falls For The Pretty Girl – Alison Pill (Genders reversed, naturally)

The Guy Who Claims He’s Only In It For The Money – Kevin Cahoon (Turns out he is, and betrays them)

The Wanted Man On The Downward Spiral – Peter Dinklage

The Outsider (Who Identifies With The Villagers) – Ray Winstone

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The setting: Dark Ages Scandinavia, circa 900 C.E.

The Stoic Leader: Sebastian Koch.
The Right-Hand Man Who Gets All The Good Jokes: Adam Baldwin.
The Weapons Master: Kevin McKidd.
The Gung-Ho Kid Who Falls For The Pretty Girl: Andreas Wilson. (Rosamund Pike as the Pretty Girl)
The Guy Who Claims He’s Only In It For The Money: Josh Brolin.
The Wanted Man On The Downward Spiral: Peter Stormare.
The Outsider (Who Identifies With The Villagers): Paul Bettany, as a newly converted Christian priest who the rest keep around due to their pragmatic outlook on religion.

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What was the movie that set the whole thing in space with Hannibal from the A-Team? “Battle Beyond the Stars”?

Anyway, to keep with the cheesy scifi vibe. ALL GO-BOTS! SCREW YOU TRANSFORMERS FANDOM! And Scooter lives!

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The Stoic Leader MUST be Lance Henriksen. No other actors need apply.

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TITLE: The Malevolent Seven

SETTING: Hell. Seven Souls are given a challenge by God himself – if they can save a huge amount of people who have been sent into Hell mistakenly (for unknown reasons) by fighting their way back out of Hell’s gates, he will allow them to be reincarnated as new people. Each soul would represent one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

The Stoic Leader – Pride – Bruce Willis, as a mob boss shoved off a building for thinking himself untouchable (Pride cometh before a great fall).
The Right-Hand Man Who Gets All The Good Jokes – Sloth – Seth Green, as a man whose terrible life (due to a lack of motivation) caused him to commit suicide, while developing a twisted sense of humour.
The Weapons Master – Gluttony – Thomas Haden Church, as a man who sold illegal weapons in New York during life and is just as sadistic in death.
The Gung-Ho Kid Who Falls For The Pretty Girl – Lust – Shia LaBeouf, as a teenager whose inept social skills caused him to open fire on his English class, injuring few, killing none, and condemning him to eternity; the ‘Pretty Girl’ he falls for later turns out to be him, reincarnated, in an ironic twist.
The Guy Who Claims He’s Only In It For The Money – Greed – Ben Kingsley. He’d either reprise his role as Don Logan of ‘Sexy Beast’, his story continued with him wanting simply to get alive again and not giving a toss for any of the others, or have a part who is the exact opposite of the character except with the same motivation.
The Wanted Man On The Downward Spiral – Envy – Jeremy Irons, as Doctor Faustus; after doing an amount of really horrible things while alive, he’s sinking even lower in Hell. Can he redeem himself now? Not likely. We’ll see.
The Outsider (Who Identifies With The Villagers) – Wrath – George Harris (Of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ and ‘Order of the Phoenix’, for those of you who don’t know), as a well-meaning man who was forced to kill to help his family, and killed himself with guilt.

Yea or Nay?

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Setting: Cartoon Network

The Stoic Leader – Brock Sampson

The Right-Hand Man Who Gets All The Good Jokes – Johnny Bravo

The Weapons Master – Wyle E. Coyote

The Gung-Ho Kid Who Falls For The Pretty Girl – Bubbles

The Guy Who Claims He’s Only In It For The Money – Daffy Duck

The Wanted Man On The Downward Spiral – Zorak

The Outsider (Who Identifies With The Villagers) – Huey Freeman

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Setting: Sci-Fi soldiers caught protecting a village behind enemy lines. Lots of shotting. And explosions.

The Stoic Leader: Like said above, Christian Bale channeling Equilibrium would be perfect for this role.

The Right-Hand Man Who Gets All The Good Jokes: Adam Baldwin channeling a mixture of Jayne from Firefly and the DC character Deadshot.

The Weapons Master: Bruce Campbell

The Gung-Ho Kid Who Falls For The Pretty Girl: Jensen Ackles

The Guy Who Claims He’s Only In It For The Money: Sean Bean

The Wanted Man On The Downward Spiral: Nathan Fillion

The Outsider (Who Identifies With The Villagers): Nakamura Shido being really badass.

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Maybe it’s just me…

The Stoic Leader: Superman
The Right-Hand Man Who Gets All The Good Jokes: Flash
The Weapons Master: Wonder Woman
The Gung-Ho Kid Who Falls For The Pretty Girl: John Stewart (where Hawkgirl is the pretty girl)
The Guy Who Claims He’s Only In It For The Money: Hawkgirl
The Wanted Man On The Downward Spiral: Batman
The Outsider (Who Identifies With The Villagers): J’onn J’onzz

Okay, it’s not *perfect*…

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Forgot the Leader, Maybe Gerard Butler?

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