Dodging a bullet: the tedious flop Scarlett Johansson turned down
It’s been 30 years since Scarlett Johansson made her feature debut, and there was nowhere for the star to go but up after her first appearance came in a film so bad it was a borderline crime against the good name of cinema.
Rob Reiner’s North may have gathered a stellar ensemble that counted Johansson, Elijah Wood, Bruce Willis, Dan Aykroyd, Kathy Bates, Alan Arkin, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus among its number, but it was so bad Roger Ebert anointed it as one of the most detestable motion pictures he’d ever seen.
Even before she scored her major breakthrough in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation, Johansson had co-starred with Sean Connery in Just Cause, been directed by Robert Redford in The Horse Whisperer and the Coen brothers in The Man Who Wasn’t There and anchored a cult classic in Ghost World.
However, it was her recurring role as the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Natasha Romanoff that cemented her as an A-list superstar and one of the highest-paid performers in Hollywood, with one of the unintentional benefits coming when she found herself unable to commit to the unnecessary remake of an Arnold Schwarzenegger classic.
As Terminator sequel Salvation, the True Lies TV series that was canned after one season, the reboot of Eraser nobody even remembers was made, the Conan the Barbarian overhaul with Jason Momoa, the majority of Predator films up until Prey, and Sylvester Stallone’s dismal Escape Plan follow-ups have repeatedly shown, the results aren’t great when the ‘Austrian Oak’ gets rehashed without the man himself.
Sure enough, Underworld director Len Wiseman’s Total Recall remake was about the dampest squib imaginable, sacrificing the acerbic humour and subversion of Paul Verhoeven’s 1990 blockbuster in favour of a drab, dull, and interminably uninteresting sci-fi actioner that saw Colin Farrell once again fail to convince as an action hero.
The part of Melina – which was originally played by Rachel Ticotin and ultimately inhabited by Jessica Biel – was offered Johansson’s way. However, with production on Total Recall V2.0 scheduled to kick off in May 2011, the actor was unable to commit due to her obligations on The Avengers.
Whereas the Total Recall do-over was resoundingly panned, barely broke even at the box office, and earned Johansson’s erstwhile replacement Biel a nomination at the Golden Raspberry Awards for ‘Worst Supporting Actress’, Joss Whedon’s superhero crossover sailed past $1.5 billion in ticket sales to become one of the highest-grossing releases in cinema history.
Needless to say, a bullet was dodged, and Johansson got the better end of the deal by far, with 2012’s Total Recall quickly tossed onto the ever-increasing pile of completely unnecessary remakes that do a terrible job in managing to justify their own existence.
