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Why has Kim Basinger been relegated to playing villain roles recently such as The Nice Guys and Fifty Shades Darker?

posted 6 years ago by TMC-4 (19392)
6 replies | jump to latest

I’ve noticed that in two of Kim’s most recent movies, “The Nice Guys” and “Fifty Shades Darker”, she’s in effect, playing villainous parts. Kim Basinger to the best of my knowledge, has played villainous or “not-so innocent” roles before such as “The Natural”, “Final Analysis”, and “Cool World”.

But Kim Basinger if you ask me isn’t the type of actress who should be playing villain-roles (or could be convincing in it). Kim doesn’t have the swagger, charisma, presence, or edge in her acting style to make it work. Kim is better suited at playing women for whom you want to emphasize with or women for whom you desire (not somebody whom you should be repulsed that). It’s also a bit damning that in the more recent stages in her career, the best that she can do is portray not so morally upstanding people.

http://villains.wikia.com/wiki/Judith_Kuttner

http://villains.wikia.com/wiki/Elena_Lincoln

https://www.quora.com/Why-has-Kim-Basinger-been-relegated-to-playing-villain-roles-recently-such-as-The-Nice-Guys-and-Fifty-Shades-Darker

[–] TMC-4 (19392) 6 years ago

I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that one factor for why Kim Basinger’s post-“Batman”/pre-“LA Confidential” movies didn’t connect with audiences is because Kim often portrayed unlikable, unrelatable, grating, unsympathetic, and/or morally ambiguous characters in contrast to more grounded, innocent, pure-hearted characters like Vicki Vale.

*In “The Marrying Man”, Kim plays a woman who repeatedly marries and divorces Alec Baldwin in roughly, an eight year span.

*In “Final Analysis”, Kim essentially plays a more unhinged, murderous version of her “Blind Date” character. http://villains.wikia.com/wiki/Heather_Evans

*”Cool World” is a bit harder to describe. It’s another movie like “Final Analysis”, where Kim plays a villain, but “Cool World” was in part, weighed down by Kim’s incompetent performance once she becomes a live-action person. It also showed that Kim couldn’t elevate mediocre material or could coast by a movie on just her sex appeal alone. http://villains.wikia.com/wiki/Holli_Would

*This overview of Kim’s role in “The Real McCoy” basically sums it up:

https://moviechat.org/tt0107927/The-Real-McCoy/58c75bbc6b51e905f67c9e58/Cannot-stand-Karen

Horrible unlikable character. Someone who comes out of prison after a career as a bank-robber should be a very strong woman who doesn’t take shi* from anybody. Yet she lets the parole officer treat her like crap and doesn’t do anything about her ex telling her boy she’s dead (except hit him which does absolutely nothing productive for her). So just when you think she might have SOME brains she starts hanging around a robber who OF COURSE gets her in trouble. Ridiculous. Not to mention this is not Basinger’s best acting.

*In “Wayne’s World 2”, Kim plays a woman who tries to manipulate Garth into killing her supposedly no good husband.

*In “The Getaway”, Kim plays a woman who sleeps with a sleazy gangster to get her bank robber husband out of jail, promising to do another bank job for him. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-getaway-1994

[–] Otter (24464) 6 years ago

Oh honey, there just aren't many roles available to actresses of her age, and almost no good roles.

Playing antagonists is more interesting than playing moms.

[–] TMC-4 (19392) 6 years ago

Even after “LA Confidential”, Kim continued to play decidedly unappealing, unlikable, grating, or morally objectionable characters.

*In “Bless the Child”, Kim plays perhaps one of the weakest, most unfulfilling female characters in movies:
http://horrornews.net/52539/film-review-bless-the-child-2000/

*In “8 Mile”, Kim plays a whiny, needy, fictionalized version of Eminem’s demonized mother. Kim even as a sexual relationship with her son’s former classmate from high school.

*In “Cellular”, Kim arguably gives the worst performance of her career as a whimpering, melodramatic, and even sometimes wooden, kidnap victim.

*In “The Sentinel”, Kim plays the First Lady of United States, who is having an adulterous affair with Michael Douglas’ Secret Service agent.

*In “Charlie St. Cloud”, Kim plays a rather off-putting, absentee mother, in what’s essentially a glorified paycheck cameo.

*In “Grudge Match”, Kim plays a woman, who cheats on Sylvester Stallone with Robert DeNiro, and has the latter’s kid. But after her husband dies, Kim wants to get back with Stallone.

*And then there’s of course Kim’s two most recent roles, “The Nice Guys”, where she plays a corrupt government official, and “Fifty Shades Darker”, where Kim plays a child predator.

[–] AP (5256) 6 years ago

Why are most of your threads on this forum about Kim Bassinger? Why not post on Bassinger’s forum?

[–] TMC-4 (19392) 6 years ago

Would it be more preferable if I stacked up on treads about Robert Wuhl!?

[–] MickyMac (2935) 6 years ago

Because she's so sexy.