12 Iconic Movie Characters Who Were Disastrously Recast

8. Freddy Krueger - Jackie Earle Haley

The Film: A Nightmare On Elm Street (2010)

In The Original: Robert Englund

On paper, the decision to hire the interesting - and always creepy - Jackie Earle Haley as Robert Englund's successor in the Freddy Krueger role made a lot of sense. He already had the right sort of face to fit a disturbing villain and he'd offered some incredibly affecting performances in the likes of Little Children and Watchmen.

But somewhere along the lines it didn't translate into a great performance in the misguided 2010 Elm Street remake. Haley is far smaller than Englund (a fact that the latter actually tried to sell as a positive in the lead up to release), and lacked the fundamental visual creepiness that Englund's more stringy physique brought.

The biggest issue - oddly - is the lack of self-awareness in the performance. Even though Krueger has been ruined over the years by too much goofiness, black humour was still an important part of his narrative make-up, and Haley's version played him way too straight. With Englund, part of the appeal was perversely rooting for Freddy against your better judgement, but the remake made that utterly impossible by turning him too much into a traditional monster.