Casting Choices That Spoil The Movie

There are any number of things that can spoil a movie — the trailers, the posters, article headlines, reviews, social media posts, so-called friends, and more. It was a bit easier to avoid them before the internet, but now, we basically have to log off and unplug entirely when a new movie comes out if we want to ensure with any kind of certainty that it won't be spoiled before we have the chance to see it. And let's be honest — none of us are doing that.

The best we can do to try and go in as fresh as possible when we are excited about a new film, and can't get to it on opening night, is to avoid all the usual spoiler-heavy avenues. But sometimes even that isn't enough. Sometimes movies are spoiled before they even come out. The most common way this happens is via trailers that give away far too much. However, there is one more subtle but no less frustrating way that a film can be ruined for us before we see it or before it's even released. The mere reveal of a certain actor being in a movie can ruin all types of things about said film — sometimes even a movie's biggest twist. Here are some examples of just that happening.

To be fair, anyone who had already read and was familiar with J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" book series already knew most of the major story beats the movies were going to take. That includes the fact that Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen) wasn't going to stay dead after the first movie, "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring." And it also means that fans of the books were already fully expecting the character's triumphant return as Gandalf the White in the sequel, "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers."

Still, a movie should never just assume that its audience already knows what's going to happen. Those that are experiencing a novel's story for the first time by way of its big screen adaptation deserve to enjoy all the big reveals as they occur and not be aware of any of them in advance. Knowing that McKellen was coming back for the second movie made it apparent that Gandalf was going to be back in some form, which spoiled any chance that people might have had to be shocked by the initial reveal of Gandalf the White. Of course, the trailers also showed the character prominently, an issue which often goes hand in hand with the one at the heart of this article — and will definitely come up again. 

Robert De Niro can make nothing but absolute garbage movies for the rest of his career, and his status as one of the all-time greats with one of the most impressive filmographies in cinema history will remain unchallenged. But his questionable choices did seem to begin piling up after the turn of the millennium, with his name being on a movie poster no longer being an automatic sign of quality. Still, it wasn't necessarily a huge red flag for his character in "Hide and Seek" that De Niro would have chosen to star in what clearly looked to be a very by-the-numbers psychological thriller. 

But it still made viewers wary of Dr. David Callaway from the beginning — and for the movie's eventual twist to work at all, we weren't supposed to suspect him in the slightest. Certainly not from the trailers alone, which tease an evil figure named Charlie that Dr. Callaway thinks is all in his daughter's head. As you watch the "Hide and Seek" trailer, you start to ask yourself why De Niro would be playing a dull straight man in a movie like this. And before the trailer is even over, it's hard not to reach the obvious conclusion that Dr. Callaway — meaning, De Niro – is Charlie. A lesser-known actor, or at least one who isn't already known for playing unhinged characters, probably wouldn't have telegraphed that secret from a mile away like casting De Niro did. 

There are certain actors who always seem to play the bad guy. It's typically a combination of the actor having a menacing look to them, and just being especially good at playing especially evil. When these actors show up in a movie and they initially seem to be on the same side as the protagonist, it's typically a pretty safe bet that the actor is going to do a heel turn at some point during the film. As such, it's rarely a surprise when it ends up happening.

Stephen Lang has a long history of playing a very effective antagonist. A few movies have attempted to make us believe he was going to be a good guy at the start, only for the inevitable reveal that his character was anything but. Perhaps the most notable example of this, at least in terms of movies that were released fairly recently in Lang's long career, was "Avatar." In the original installment of James Cameron's epic sci-fi franchise, Lang plays Colonel Miles Quaritch — a character who admittedly seems difficult to trust but is nonetheless portrayed as being on the good team. When his methods are revealed to be much more extreme than expected, to the point that he becomes the movie's primary villain by the end, it's a surprise to literally nobody. And being played by Lang to begin with was a big part of that. 

Sometimes the casting choice that spoils a movie isn't made apparent far in advance. Instead, it occurs to the viewer while watching the movie itself. Such was the case when it was announced that Matt Damon had signed on to play a role in Christopher Nolan's then-upcoming "Interstellar." The nature of the role wasn't disclosed, and since it was confirmed to be a small part, it seemed strange to even reveal it ahead of time.

When people finally watched the movie the following year, there wasn't a trace of Damon for over half the film. Once the other characters discover what they think is a habitable planet, and find Mann (Matt Damon) as the one survivor on said planet, it wasn't hard to assume that there was much more to the character than met the eye. Even with Nolan having the clout to pull A-listers into relatively small roles, it was unlikely that Damon would have played a cameo in the film had there not been some serious meat to it — and there was, with Mann turning out to be an antagonist.

Nolan later claimed that he deliberately cast Damon in this role because he figured audiences would assume the character was going to be the hero of the movie, as that was the type of character he usually plays; nobody would expect a villainous twist from him. But it all felt a little too obvious, and it ended up having the exact opposite effect. 

Actually expecting Superman's (Henry Cavill) death to stick when he is finished off by Doomsday at the end of "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" would have been naïve. In truth, the ending to that movie — wherein the dirt on top of Clark Kent's grave begins to mysteriously levitate — was already laying the foundation for Superman's eventual revival in the DC Extended Universe. The fact that there was still a "Justice League" movie to come all but confirmed it, since a Justice League movie without Superman would be like an X-Men movie without Wolverine. 

Nevertheless, it would have been nice to actually feel a little bit of the emotional impact of Superman's initial demise. As Batman (Bruce Wayne) pummels him, we already know the results are going to be temporary long before Doomsday delivers the final blow to Superman's severely weakened body. Why did we know this? Because Cavill was already confirmed to appear in the following year's "Justice League" movie. The eagerness on the part of Warner Bros. to make sure we knew that the long-awaited DC team-up film was finally coming soon — and that all the major players were going to be there — had meant that we already knew Cavill and Superman were both returning. That meant we already knew Superman wasn't going to stay dead for any measurable length of time, basically spoiling not one, but two movies. 

Bill Nighy doesn't always play straight-up villains, per se. But he rarely plays a character that doesn't at least give the audience a fair amount of unease. Like Stephen Lang, Nighy has played the surprise villain multiple times throughout his career — with a recent example being Saint Germaine on Netflix's "Castlevania" animated series. It's not the only time he's played a character in a video game adaptation, nor the only time he was a villain pretending to be a hero in one.

In the surprisingly good 2019 movie "Detective Pikachu," Nighy plays Howard Clifford, the man responsible for founding the city that allows humans and Pokémon to peacefully co-exist as equals. To the shock of literally nobody, it turns out the Howard had been the evil mastermind behind a series of cruel experiments involving Pokémon and had been forcing Mewtwo to commit evil deeds. Since everyone knew back in 2018 that Nighy was in the movie, people naturally already assumed he was probably going to be playing a shady character. Because that's why you put Bill Nighy in your movie in the first place. And when Nighy's character was first revealed during the film, the entire audience connected the dots immediately. 

If you're going to make a movie where the villain is only seen but not heard — and want people to be surprised by his eventual reveal at the end — maybe don't pick someone with a voice as distinctive as Kiefer Sutherland. Especially at a time when Sutherland's voice was on TV every five minutes in commercials for his show "24," which was one of the hottest things on television when "Phone Booth" was being hyped. The original theatrical posters for the 2002 thriller "Phone Booth" don't show or name Sutherland, so there was at least an initial attempt to keep his identity as the movie's unseen sniper a secret. 

But that all went out the window in the trailer, with Sutherland's unmistakable voice and cadence giving him away instantly — and he talks a whole bunch in the trailer to boot. So when the movie tries to fake us out by showing the corpse of some unknown pizza delivery guy and wants us to think that's the sniper, nobody was buying it. There are plenty of actors with a less recognizable voice than Sutherland that might have made the twist in this movie work, but not going with one of them made that impossible. For the DVD release of the movie, they just gave up entirely and put Sutherland's face right there on the cover. 

How awesome would it have been to not know that Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) had figured out how to resurrect himself until the same moment Neo (Keanu Reeves) himself found out? We're not here to drudge up the well-worn debate about whether "The Matrix Reloaded" was disappointing or better than it's remembered as being. But we do maintain that spoiling Agent Smith's return in advance of the movie even coming out definitely hurt "Reloaded" as a whole.

In the four-year lead-up to the first "Matrix" sequel, the internet had really come into its own and was abuzz with news and updates about the film. Among those was the confirmation that Weaving was going to play a role in the movie. Of course, it wasn't long before everyone's assumption about this news was proven correct, which was that he was playing some new version of Agent Smith. Once again, the trailers further drove the spoiler stake into the ground by not only prominently featuring Weaving, but showing him playing an entire army of Smiths. They could have at least left that aspect of Smith's return be a surprise, but showing off the so-called "burly brawl" proved to be too great a temptation for the movie's marketing department. 

The whole surprise villain trope is plenty common in the horror movie genre — but the "Saw" series in particular seems especially fond of it. Even before John "Jigsaw" Kramer (Tobin Bell) died, there was never a guarantee that he was the only antagonist in any given installment of the long-running franchise. But it really ramped up after "Saw III," which saw the character finally seem to actually die after his impending demise had been teased since the beginning of the series.

Sure, Bell continued to appear in the subsequent four "Saw" sequels, but only in flashbacks and pre-recorded messages. So it wasn't necessarily giving anything away when the actor was confirmed to be returning yet again for "Jigsaw," the eighth installment in the franchise. But given that the movie was named after his character — coupled with the fact that it was being marketed as having a supposed Jigsaw copycat who we coincidentally never actually see — it wasn't hard to put the pieces of the puzzle together and presume that the original Jigsaw had somehow actually returned. Even though it turned out to be one more flashback, his in-person reveal near the end of the film probably shocked far fewer people than if Bell's appearance in the movie had been kept entirely a secret.

For a big chunk of the original "Watchmen" graphic novel, none of the characters — not even his closest allies — know the true identity of Rorschach. But the cool thing was that readers had been seeing his face all along without even knowing it. Throughout the story, a character was seeing holding a sign that read "The End is Nigh" at multiple points, initially just seeming like a recurring background character. When it's revealed that the man, whose name is Walter Kovacs, is actually Rorschach, it's a mind-blowing moment.

Which is a perfect example of how there are things that books can do that movies can't. Everyone knew going into the 2009 "Watchmen" movie adaptation that Jackie Earle Haley was going to be playing Rorschach. So when audiences first saw Walter Kovacs holding his iconic sign, and that it was Haley, it was evident that they were seeing an unmasked Rorschach. Again, fans of the source material were aware of this going in, but first-timers never got the opportunity to enjoy the inventive reveal the way it was originally intended — because they already knew who was playing Rorschach. 

One surefire way to know that a character is probably going to end up playing a big part in a late-movie twist — most commonly, being revealed as a surprise villain — is when a big-name actor plays what initially seems to be a suspiciously small role in a movie. In the case of the fairly forgotten 2002 Clint Eastwood film "Blood Work," Jeff Daniels is second-billed behind only Eastwood himself. So when Buddy, Daniels's character, appears to just be some minor side character at first, the red flags immediately go up.

Sure enough, Buddy turns out to be the very murderer that Eastwood's FBI agent had been chasing. All the while, Buddy is pretending to help the agent find the killer while leading Eastwood's Agent McCaleb to various dead ends. Between Daniels being such a big name and the movie not being particularly well-plotted to begin with, the only thing shocking about the reveal is that a veteran FBI agent somehow didn't see through Buddy from the beginning. Because everyone watching the movie most certainly did.

Fans of Batman comics expected that after Ra's al Ghul was introduced in "Batman Begins," his daughter Talia al Ghul would inevitably make an appearance in a future film. And when Marion Cotillard was confirmed to be joining the cast of "The Dark Knight Rises," everyone immediately figured she would be playing Talia. The fact that the trailers and previews tried to sell her as some new, out-of-nowhere love interest for Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), named Miranda Tate, was met with a collective eye roll.

When actor Joey King revealed in an interview ahead of the film's release that she was in fact playing a young version of Talia al Ghul in "The Dark Knight Rises," that made it nearly certain that an older version of Talia would be in the movie. At that point, fan assumptions were all but confirmed that Cotillard was indeed going to be playing Talia — and that Talia was pretending to be "Miranda Tate" to get close to Bruce before she dropped the bombshell. In fact, that's exactly how the movie ended up playing out. So maybe it was less that Cotillard's casting spoiled the secret than it was that King's interview did so. Either way, it's hard to truly surprise comic book fans, and they certainly weren't surprised by this.