10 Movie Casting Choices That Were Total Misdirection

10. Bryan Cranston - Godzilla

What Everyone Expected

It's fair to say that Warner Bros. knew exactly what they were doing when they cast Bryan Cranston in a (seemingly) lead role in Gareth Edwards' 2014 Godzilla.

With Cranston's hit series Breaking Bad concluding mere months before the film was due to release, the studio was clearly banking on the hype of a Walter White vs. Godzilla showdown to put butts in seats, with the movie's trailers cut to place Cranston's Joe Brody front-and-center.

What We Got

In actual fact, Cranston's casting was a crass bait-and-switch, as he dies almost exactly one-third of the way through the movie, after which his son Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is revealed to be the stealth protagonist.

Given that few could've expected Johnson to be handed the responsibility of carrying a $160 million tentpole, Cranston's involvement was clearly an attempt to warm the audience up to the actor in the first act with a heartfelt sob-story, while guaranteeing a certain amount of buzz based on Cranston's popularity alone.

Presumably Warner Bros. wasn't convinced Cranston would sell tickets with teenagers, though, so of course, he had to end up handing the movie off to his dreamboat son, to the collective disappointment of just about everyone over the age of 17.