12 Iconic Movie Characters Who Were Disastrously Recast

12. BA Baracus - Rampage Jackson

The Film: The A-Team (2010)

In The Original: Mr T

There won't be many people who will claim - straight-faced - that Mr T was ever a great actor. He was more of an enigmatic, charismatic hurricane, wholly committed to a fairly one dimensional character gimmick that worked absolutely perfectly in pretty much any context. He basically moulded films and TV shows (and wrestling performances) around his existing gimmick, rather than adapting to them.

The crucial thing is that he is a huge character, whose persona was enough to sell scenes without a great deal of dialogue and who was a particularly big part of the enjoyment of iconic action-kitsch show The A-Team.

The decision to recast him with Rampage Jackson, who seems to have qualified for the role solely on his muscles for the 2010 remake was utterly preposterous. Jackson might be a lot of things - MMA legend, wrestler, car chase specialist - but he's not a charismatic character actor, and the result was a BA Baracus stand-in who was no more than a heavy-hitting personality void who was as unlikeable as Jackson's real life assertion that acting is "kind of gay".