Michael Pajaro wrote:Batman, Superman, Dr. Who, Dumbledore, the cast of MASH... All very famous characters which have been recast and accepted by fans. Everyone will have their favorite actor for each role (I think we all prefer the late Richard Harris as Dumbledore) but even Michael Knight can be recast.
If Michael Long can turn into Michael Knight, surely Hasselhoff can turn into someone else!
I'm not sure completely about MASH, but Dr. Who kind of had a gimmick with there being a new doctor every few seasons and are on the tenth one now or whatever, I'd think it's more expected or people at least got use to it.
Batman and Superman are completely different as they have a sixty plus year history and were around years before they were portrayed by an actor on TV or a movie. Knight Rider on the other hand has one source and that's the original TV Series and there's only been one Michael Knight (not counting the TKR fiasco) ever and that's Hasselhoff. As for Dumbledore, it's kind of hard to consider this to be the same situation since the first actor to portray the character died so it's not as they have any choice but to recast so it's a lot easier to accept.
Clark Kent/Superman and Bruce Wayne/Batman again are bad examples since they've been around so long and were established yeras before anyone ever physically played the characters and those that have either died (Reeves and Reeve and of course his accident)or just weren't very good/fitting in the role. IMO, the only good Superman were George Reeves and Christopher Reeve (though I didn't care for his portrayal of Clark), hell even Dean Cain did a decent job as a more modern version of Superman though more so his Clark portrayal than Superman. Then of course there's the two actors that portrayed Superboy.
As for Batman, in my opinion the only good Bruce Wayne/Batman has been Christian Bale, he's succeeded where the others before him failed (yes, I do include Adam West though his was more a product of the time and Michael Keaton) and it probably doesn't hurt that the people involved actually care about the characters enough to draw influence from the source material (note to Bryan Singer: Superman existed before the Donner movie and has changed a lot since then) and not just taken the characters and mess with things while feeling the medium in which they were created were below them like Burton did. Batman was a much needed reboot and was much more widely accepted before anyone saw anything than probably the three previous live action Batmans combined. Though, Kilmer could've been a lot better with other things were different. Keaton was lucky and the less said about Clooney the better.
Of course there's also the difference of the creator of the show actually doing to reimagining so maybe that does make it a little more acceptable. I'm getting off topic here aren't I?
Annnnnnnnnyway, it'd be nice for Daniels to have a small cameo, perhaps as a scientist that worked on the project and the influence for KITT's voice or even as Wilton Knight though maybe that'd be weird if Daniels was still also voicing KITT.
