Five Pieces of Inspired Comic Book Movie Casting

As soon as Ben Affleck was cast as Batman in the forthcoming Batman vs. Superman film, the Internet exploded into what analysts have figured was hundreds of thousands of comments, around 70% of which (in the immediate wake, anyway) were negative.There’s been some push-back, of course; we were one of the first to say maybe there’s not quite reason to panic yet, but lots of others have followed up by saying similar things and the tide of support for Affleck is now, depending on where you look, a bit more even (a poll at Deadline puts his favorable/indifferent rating at 40%; one at Comic Book Resources has it at about 70%).And a fair number of the people who are supportive of the Argo star taking on the cape and cowl have turned to Heath Ledger, the most recent big-screen Joker, to make their argument. That unexpected and inspired piece of casting totally changed the public’s view of Ledger and, in all likelihood, the tone and tenor of the movie.Without overlapping too much on our list of controversial casting choices from the past (some of whom really did turn out to be wrong for the parts), we figured we’d take a look at some of the choices that made us go, “Wow! Of course!”We’ll leave Ledger off the list, only because we mention him in the introduction and there’s really no further explanation needed; he was playing against type and widely controversial, but turned in one of the  most beloved performances in comics movies and got an Oscar for his troubles.Who else can we count among the choices that are not only great, but not immediately obvious, either?