2. Hugo Weaving
For DC: Verbose vaudevillian vengeful vigilante V in V for Vendetta
For Marvel: Mad scientist too mad for the Nazis Johann Schmidt AKA The Red Skull in Captain America: The First Avenger
How did the change work out? This list has already touched on the difficulties of bringing Guy Fawkes masked anarchist terrorist V convincingly to the big screen. The biggest challenge was in casting an appropriate actor for a character whose face is never seen and who has to perform dialogue like the absurd list of alliteration screenwriters Andy and Lana Wachowski gave him for an intro. James Purefoy was originally cast but dropped out. Like Stuart Townsends last minute departure from Lord of the Rings or Tom Sellecks unavailability for Indiana Jones, Purefoys departure was a blessing in disguise. The Matrix and Lord of the Rings trilogies had turned respected Australian theatre actor Hugo Weaving into a blockbuster movie star and, having worked with the Wachowskis on The Matrix, he was their top choice for a last minute replacement for Purefoy. Even without showing his face, Weaving gave V presence and poise and his Shakespearean diction enabled audiences to take some of the more clumsily scripted dialogue seriously. A heroic character, even a more complicated one than most comic book heroes, is more unusual in Weavings Hollywood career than a villain and for Marvel he reverted to type as Captain Americas Red Skull. Again his face spent much of the movie hidden, this time behind a red skull prosthetic, but Weaving had a little less to sink his teeth into beyond that. Captain America was a fun movie, but, in its need to set up The Avengers, featured a villain that was all too easily dispatched.