tMF | The Movie-Fanatic

The first time I heard the news that three actors - Jude Law, Colin Farrell and Johnny Depp - will be filling in for Heath Ledger in Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, I had no adverse reaction at all. I also think that majority of those who heard the news were positive about it. Law, Farrell and Depp are fantastic actors and can really play the role left by Ledger, who died with lots of scenes still to work on.

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But Tom Cruise? Says GetTheBigPicture:

However, Gilliam remained as true as he could to Parnassus and Ledger's memory, and turned down Cruise's offer. "I'm not sure if it was Tom or his agent (who put Cruise forward for the role). I know there was a period when Tom's agents were keen," the director tells Total Film (via Contact Music). He adds, "The thing is, I was only interested in people who were friends of Heath. Simple as that. I wanted to keep it in the family."[ read more ]

Cruise has proven to be quite a shrewd movie producer (and he has given some amazing performances in the course of his career too! Even the role of the Vampire Lestat was quite controversial, at first) but I just think the role left by Ledger is something quite 'far-fetch' for him to pursue.
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Just take a closer look at what the movie is all about: The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is a fantastical morality tale, set in the present day. It tells the story of Dr Parnassus and his extraordinary 'Imaginarium', a travelling show where members of the audience get an irresistible opportunity to choose between light and joy or darkness and gloom. Blessed with the extraordinary gift of guiding the imaginations of others, Dr Parnassus is cursed with a dark secret. Long ago he made a bet with the devil, Mr Nick, in which he won immortality. Many centuries later, on meeting his one true love, Dr Parnassus made another deal with the devil, trading his immortality for youth, on condition that when his first-born reached its 16th birthday he or she would become the property of Mr Nick. Valentina is now rapidly approaching this 'coming of age' milestone and Dr Parnassus is desperate to protect her from her impending fate. Mr Nick arrives to collect but, always keen to make a bet, renegotiates the wager. Now the winner of Valentina will be determined by whoever seduces the first five souls. Enlisting a series of wild, comical and compelling characters in his journey, Dr Parnassus promises his daughter's hand in marriage to the man that helps him win. In this captivating, explosive and wonderfully imaginative race against time, Dr Parnassus must fight to save his daughter in a never-ending landscape of surreal obstacles - and undo the mistakes of his past once and for all...

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Here are some very insightful reviews:

Says Kenneth Turan at the LA Times:

The heart of the doctor's show is a magic mirror that allows those who go through it to experience another dimension of their own minds. That device, Gilliam says, was partly because of a purely pragmatic decision on his part. "I knew I didn't have the money to compete with the big effects films," he explains. Plus, "once you get into the world the effects create, that becomes normal, so you end up doing all this work for just normality. With a magic mirror, you can come back out before you spend too much money." Ledger's character, Tony, is a hustler of uncertain morality who joins the show, in one of the film's many unsettling references to death, after he is nearly hung. Ledger, who had worked with Gilliam in "The Brothers Grimm," was watching the director explain some storyboards when, "in the middle of this, he slipped me a note that read: 'Can I play Tony?' " "People don't know how brilliant he was. He was limitless. Anything you threw at him he could handle," Gilliam says of the actor, still not resigned to his death. "When we heard, my first response was that it was a P.R. stunt for his role as the Joker. [His death] didn't make any sense. Even now it doesn't compute." [ read more ]

Todd McCarthy at Variety has this to say:

Especially considering the trauma and difficulties stemming from Heath Ledger's death during production and the fact that Terry Gilliam hadn't directed a good picture in more than a decade, the helmer has made a pretty good thing out of a very bad situation in "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus." Synthesizing elements from several of his previous pictures, including "Time Bandits," "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" and "The Fisher King," the often overreaching director addresses a mad hatter of a story with the expected visual panache and what is, for him, considerable discipline. With Ledger onscreen more than might have been expected, the film possesses strong curiosity value bolstered by generally lively action and excellent visual effects, making for good commercial prospects in most markets. "Imaginarium" joined the short list of films interrupted by the death of a star when Ledger died in January 2008, after an initial stretch of shooting in London and before the box office smash of "The Dark Knight." Gilliam struggled to figure out how to proceed before asking three other stars, Johnny Depp (who toplined for the director in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"), Jude Law and Colin Farrell, to step in to fill Ledger's shoes. Many Ledger fans certainly will turn out just to see his final performance. But it's genuinely interesting to see how, under duress, Gilliam contrived to work the other actors into the role. The way it plays out in the finished picture is that Ledger's incarnation of Tony, a man rescued from death who provides a possible way for Doctor Parnassus to win a wager with the devil, occupies the London-set framing story, while his three successors play versions of the character in the CGI sequences set in fantastical other dimensions. It all comes off well, without terribly disruptive emotional-mental dislocations. [ read more ]

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What's on your mind? Are you looking forward to this movie, the last project by Heath Ledger? What can you say about the three actors who filled in for Ledger? Let us know what you think!

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