MovieChat Forums > Speed (1994) Discussion > What if Kim Basinger played Sandra Bullo...

What if Kim Basinger played Sandra Bullock's character?


http://lebeauleblog.com/2014/12/08/what-might-have-been-kim-basinger/14/

Speed (1994)

Basinger turned down the female lead role.

Fallout: All the usual suspects passed on Speed which is understandable. It was basically Die Hard on a bus which is a ridiculous concept. Director Jan de Bont was untested. And Keanu Reeves was still best known for Bill and Ted. (Point Break wasn’t all that big of a movie at the time. It developed a cult following on video.) On paper, Speed was pretty easy to pass up.

Of course Speed turned out to be a huge surprise hit and made a star out of Sandra Bullock. Meanwhile, Basinger was starring opposite her real-life husband in the disappointing remake of The Getaway. Speed was such a success that Bullock returned for the flop, Speed 2.

So this just screams “missed opportunity”. And that’s how I’m going to classify it. But you have to acknowledge that Speed starring Kim Basinger would have been a completely different movie than Speed with Sandra Bullock. You can bet that Basinger’s role would have been beefed up since she was arguably a bigger box office draw at the time than Reeves.

Verdict: Missed opportunity

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I think it would have been worse. Kim Basinger can only play sexy or doe-eyed characters. Kim Basinger would have had to get her hands too dirty for this role. It would be interesting to see, if there were a parallel universe, what it would turn into though. Verdict: It would not have been as successful.



"I will not go down in history as the greatest mass-murderer since Adolf Hitler!" - Merkin Muffley

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Then again, when Kim Basigner tried to do something that required her to "get her hands too dirty", it was in that *beep* ass movie While She Was Out, where she systematically kills a gang in the woods w/ tools from a toolbox.

https://archive.org/details/bliptv-20131014-140147-BMB-BadMovieBeatdownChristmasSpecialWhileSheWasOut152

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG4WarA5J0c

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All I can say is, I'm glad Sandra got the role in the end.


Hey there, Johnny Boy, I hope you fry!

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dat ass

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A ranking of Sandra Bullock's major movie roles https://t.co/ZQB2HwS4z5

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Kim and Sandra are polar opposite personalities.
Sandra is very extroverted, and has that warm girl next door appeal. Plus her and Keanu Reeves have undeniable chemistry together.
Kim is extremely introverted (her parents thought she was autistic), and even battled severe agoraphobia. Unfortunately that can translate on screen and irl as cold and standoffish.

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I can understand that despite her great beauty, Kim Basinger is an actress who can easily rub people the wrong way (both on screen and in real life). Between her aloofness, awkwardness/flakiness, troublesome marriage to the boorish Alec Baldwin, her militant animal rights activism, and her grandiose and egocentric habits like buying a town in Georgia for $20 million.

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Bullock has a bubbly personality that works in movies like this. This is fast-paced action with quips and snarky dialogue. Basinger can handle snarky, but her personality is too introverted. Bullock is more outgoing. Also, while Bullock was cute and attractive, Basinger was GORGEOUS and people would have spent to much time looking at her instead of paying attention to her character.

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If Basinger played that role, then they would've recast Reeves as well as he was too young for Basinger and looked it.





Global Warming, it's a personal decision innit? - Nigel Tufnel

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[deleted]

Nah..Sandra was perfect.

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It still would have been a dumb movie.


Schrodinger's cat walks into a bar, and / or doesn't.

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https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/3zpayj/what_recent_movies_do_you_think_will_age_badly/cynzwuv/

The trailer for that was ridiculous. "Don't hang up, they're going to kill me!" "Oh no, my battery is going to die. I need to run into that brand name store and get it replaced! Nobody is helping me! BLAMBLAMBLAM! SOMEBODY REPLACE MY BATTERY!"

And yet, if you ignored the blatant advertising, there was a moderately fun thriller there in the tradition of Speed, where a lone hero has to solve a number of difficult situations over the course of a day while tethered to a "life or death" set of rules (hang up the phone and you'll never find the woman you're trying to rescue/let the bus stop or slow down and everybody on it dies)

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