6. Mos Def - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was a film absolutely bursting with bizarre casting choices, but none of them got fans as up in arms as Mos Def's strange selection to play Ford Prefect, a character who up to this point we had all perceived as being white. While the race debate around casting rages on, it's Def's entire manner that makes the casting seem odd, as though he was picked just so the film would have a more overt racial presence, a crass marketing move more than anything. In the source material, Ford Prefect was something of a slacker, a sly fool who manages to get by on the skin of his teeth, but Def imbues the character with a calm cool that just feels completely at odds with what Douglas Adams would have wanted. Simply, Mos Def is too badass for a role that is meant to be funny because the guy shouldn't succeed, but does; Mos Def makes it all look too easy, and so a lot of the original characterisation is lost as a result.