Is there anything more frustrating than when a character has a flashback to a younger version of themselves that looks nothing like them? Okay, probably, but it’s a real “you had one job” situation. Sometimes, it can be overcome by having amazingly identical vibes, but if the phenotype and the vibotype are off, it just feels lazy.
That’s why it’s so special when the casting directors totally nail it. “The one that springs to my mind is Josh Brolin as a young Agent K, whose older version is played by Tommy Lee Jones, in Men in Black 3,” Redditor P0WERFIELD told r/Movies. “I remember when I first watched the movie when it came out back in 2012, I had zero problems believing that Brolin was a younger Agent K.”
They then asked, “What do you think is the best casting of an actor to play a younger version of a character played by an older actor?” and quite a youth movement followed.
Robert De Niro in ‘The Godfather Part II’
Anthony Ingruber in ‘The Age of Adaline’
Matt Smith in ‘In Bruges’
Azriel Dalman in ‘Percy Jackson and the Olympians’
Eric Christian Olsen in ‘Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd’
Mckenna Grace in ‘The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’
Hugo Blick in ‘Batman’
Wyatt Russell in ‘Monarch: Legacy of Monsters’
Robert Aramayo in ‘Game of Thrones’
Milly Alcock in ‘House of the Dragon’
Henry Thomas in ‘The Haunting of Hill House’
Marc Pickering in ‘Boardwalk Empire’
Rob Lowe in ‘Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me’
Jena Malone in ‘Contact’
Zachary Quinto in ‘Star Trek’
James McAvoy in ‘X-Men: First Class’
River Phoenix in ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade’
Donald Glover in ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’
Ewan McGregor in ‘Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace’
Kristen Wiig in ‘Arrested Development’
