“Two that I didn’t think were right for me”: the 1997 classic and the 2001 stinker Billy Bob Thornton turned down
While he’s made it clear that big-budget blockbusters are the furthest thing from his mind when he’s considering his next role, Billy Bob Thornton isn’t immune to the lure of mindless escapism.
He could have increased his bank balance by several zeroes had he accepted offers to play the Green Goblin in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man or Owen Davian in JJ Abrams’ Mission: Impossible III, but that was for the best, since Willem Dafoe and Philip Seymour Hoffman were dependably on form in his place.
Ironically, the best blockbuster he’s ever been in is probably Michael Bay’s Armageddon, which is also a film he called a “two-hour piece of trash” that he admitted he only made because he’d recently gone through his fourth divorce, leaving him desperately short on cash after paying for the split.
Thornton’s aversion to running, gunning, and explosions can be traced back to his miserable time working with Steven Seagal in On Deadly Ground, but even after he voiced his general disdain for the medium, he hasn’t exactly been choosing the best material for his rare forays back into spectacle-fuelled guff.
Admittedly, he’s only done it twice, but DJ Caruso’s Eagle Eye and the Russo brothers’ The Gray Man were equally tedious as they were forgettable, so you can only hope that he was well compensated for his efforts. On either side of Armageddon, though, he could have seized another pair of big paydays, but he wasn’t interested, and one of those big-budget capers was significantly better than the other.
When asked if there were any lucrative gigs he’d passed on, Thornton dropped a pair of bombshells: “Con Air and Pearl Harbor were two that I didn’t think were right for me,” he revealed, and while you could forgive him for thinking that Michael Bay’s World War II epic would be terrible, which it was, Simon West’s airborne actioner is one of the most preposterous, and therefore entertaining, blockbusters of the 1990s.
He didn’t reveal what role he could have been playing, but with Nicolas Cage and his mullet going up against a who’s who of character actors that included John Cusack, Danny Trejo, John Malkovich, Ving Rhames, Dave Chappelle, and Steve Buscemi, you’d have to say that Thornton would have been an inspired addition, if he were gnawing on the scenery as one of the inmates.
As for Pearl Harbor, it did win an Academy Award, but 40 or so memorable minutes in an otherwise laborious and laughable three-hour picture isn’t a great return, not to mention the six Razzie nominations. He’d most likely be cast as a one-note member of military personnel, anyway, so you can forgive him for dodging that bullet.
Still, it’s difficult to say that he wouldn’t have been an excellent addition to the Con Air ensemble, and with the film releasing seven months after Sling Blade, he could have followed the tried and trusted tradition of recent Oscar winners following up their finest hour with an idiot action flick, too.
