For all the problems with the most recent FF movie, Michael B Jordan was not one of them. It really showed how a character could be played easily by someone with a different genetic make-up than people's perceived version and still remain true to the spirit of the character. For what its worth, I actually liked all of the cast in that movie.
The film was completely mishandled, and was "FF in name only, just to be different than the Evans-starred crappers, while not taking any opportunity to get the FF story right--but hey, there's that MCU thing, and we have to keep shit on the screen.."
It is pretty bad when you have an ensemble of award winning/nominated actors and can't pull off a decent movie.
Really? Its quite common, as "award winning/nominated actors" are no guarantee of enhancing and/or saving a project--particularly fantasy projects--that were doomed at the
germ of an idea.
Examples:
Dick Tracy (Touchstone, 1990) - from its star/director Warren Beatty, to Al Pacino, Michael J. Pollard, Kathy Bates, Charles Durning, Dustin Hoffman and James Caan.
Overloaded with Academy Award winning or nominated actors, and they could not save a bloated production that was creatively exploitative / bankrupt from the start.
Flash Gordon (Universal, 1980) Here,, you had AA nominee (Chaim) Topol, and Golden Globe nominee Max von Sydow...and everyone knows what a crapstorm that De Laurentis "epic" turned out to be.
How about
The Black Hole (Disney, 1979). This expensive (non) event film had AA & Golden Globe winner Ernest Borgnine, Golden Globe winning Anthony Perkins, and Golden Globe winner Joseph Bottoms. The point is when the project is just a creatively bankrupt mess, all of the acting firepower in the world won't make a difference. In some cases, it makes it worse, as some directors and producers lean to heavily on whatever kind of aura or performance which earned the actor his or her award, and that's often out of place in the role they were hired to play.
