Who cares who plays the lead?

OLD HAND: Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger. Photo / Supplied

In the latest incarnation of A Nightmare on Elm Street, Robert Englund has been ditched from the Freddy Krueger role with which he has become synonymous and replaced by Jackie Earle Haley (aka Rorschach in Watchmen). Changing the actor playing a famous character has become the vogue in Hollywood, where studios will try anything to keep a franchise going, and this trend seems to be finding favour with the public.

Haley's career has had something of a renaissance since he chilled as a convicted sex offender in Little Children opposite Kate Winslet in 2006. He seems a good candidate to play Krueger, yet there is a sense of sacrilege that Englund has been ditched. Movie fan site Ain't It Cool News captured the mood of the public when it posited: "Once one looks beyond the `Freddy Isn't Robert Englund!' prejudice, this isn't altogether unreasonable casting." Actors bringing new life to a character has always happened in theatre, and in movies it has been fair game to do it for characters adapted from such media as comic books and plays. But there has been a sense that if an actor is too old to play a part he made famous on screen, the character should be retired. William Shatner as Captain James T Kirk was a prime example.

Once, audiences would only argue over which James Bond was the best. He was the cinema character it seemed fun to compare, and which actor one preferred as Bond said a lot about an audience member's taste and age.

Now though, it's not just Bond who has had as many face-changes as Doctor Who. With the increasing number of remakes, reboots and sequels, cinema audiences are more used to casting changes. It's also the clearest sign that, over the past decade, actors have become less important in getting bums on seats.

Actors are not completely defunct, as the right one in the right role can still make it difficult for a franchise to replace them. For example, when Matt Damon said that he was following the lead of director Paul Greengrass and refusing to do another Bourne movie, it seemed to signal the end of the franchise, despite Bourne often being referred to as the American Bond.

Studios have become rather adept at keeping franchises going, through the phenomenon of the reboot, restarting a franchise from the beginning. Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire's decision to not do another Spider-Man movie led to the Sony studio drawing up a plan of how to reboot the webbed crusader. Similar soundbites have been made about Bourne. Last year, JJ Abrams did a remarkable job with his reboot of Star Trek, successfully managing to replace Shatner with Chris Pine and finding space for the original Spock, Leonard Nimoy, to line up next to his new doppelganger, Zachary Quinto.

Occasionally the death of an actor, such as that of Heath Ledger, will result in a casting change, an aspect director Terry Gilliam successfully negotiated in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, even creating a light-hearted moment when Johnny Depp's character seems surprised not to look like Ledger. "Synthespians", or synthetic thespians are artificial actors created by special effects boffins. James Cameron has already suggested the technology in Avatar could be used to bring actors back to the screen after they have died. An obvious advantage for studios is that actors have become cheaper and their bargaining position severely weakened.

Audiences still seem to prefer to see the same actors play characters, which is why studios take so much care to option actors for three movies when they think they might have a franchise.

-The Independent

*The new A Nightmare on Elm Street is due out May 27.