Famous Movie Cameos That Were Completely Useless

by Mike SpohrBuzzFeedBuzzFeed StaffI'm an Editorial Director at BuzzFeed who covers the internet’s funniest photos and jokes, weird human history, movie facts, and more.

I love a good cameo when it's done right. A totally unhinged Matt Damon singing "Scotty Doesn't Know" in EuroTrip? Love it!

DreamWorks

But too often celeb cameos are just plain pointless. Or bad. Or, worse yet, pointless AND bad! These are the worst offenders:

1. Michael Jackson in Men in Black II

MJ was a fan of the first movie and reached out about doing a cameo in the sequel. So, the Men in Black II team pitched him about appearing as an alien, which would have been perfect: the famously eccentric King of Pop popping up as an extraterrestrial and getting a quick laugh. But Jackson didn’t want to play an alien — he wanted to wear the black suit. So instead of saying no, the filmmakers shoehorned him in as “Agent M,” who calls on a screen to inform Rip Torn that a race of aliens called the Durlocks have departed and signed a peace treaty. Um, okay? WTF does that have to do with anything? Making matters worse, the scene also isn’t especially funny, and Jackson's performance is stiff and oddly uncomfortable.

Columbia Pictures

See the cameo here.

2. Judi Dench in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Some cameos make sense. If Jack Black walks onscreen for a quick gag in a comedy, great. But when Dame Judi Dench — one of the most acclaimed actors alive — shows up in a Pirates of the Caribbean sequel for a mildly amusing, ten-second joke, your brain doesn’t go, “Ha!” It goes, “Wait...was that Dame Judi Dench?” By the time you’ve processed it, she’s gone. And then you spend the rest of the movie wondering how it happened, why it happened, and whether Judi Dench was having money problems. That, to me, is the definition of pointless.

Walt Disney Pictures

You can see her cameo here.

3. Donald Trump in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

This has got to be the most pointless cameo of all time. According to director Chris Columbus, the production wanted to film inside The Plaza Hotel, which Trump owned at the time. Trump agreed for a fee, Columbus said, but also allegedly told them, “The only way you can use the Plaza is if I’m in the movie.” Columbus later added, “He did bully his way into the movie.” Trump, naturally, denies this and says the filmmakers begged him to appear — with tears in their eyes, I’m sure. But putting all that silliness aside, the cameo itself is aggressively useless. Kevin asks Trump where the lobby is, which raises an important question: since when are hotel lobbies hard to find? Trump points him down the hall, and that’s it. It doesn’t move the plot forward. It doesn’t add a joke. It doesn’t reveal anything about Kevin. It just reeks of what it allegedly was: a tiny, awkward toll paid to secure the location.

20th Century Fox

You can see the cameos here.

4. Dan Aykroyd in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

This cameo isn’t terrible. In fact, it’s so harmless that plenty of people have watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom dozens of times without realizing Weber, the British-accented airport official who gets Indy onto the plane, is Dan Aykroyd. And that’s what makes it so weird. Aykroyd was one of the biggest comedy stars in the world at the time, but the camera barely lingers on him, the scene doesn’t give him a real joke, and the character exists mostly to deliver some minor exposition before disappearing forever.

Paramount

The real-world explanation? Aykroyd loved the franchise and basically asked Spielberg for any part he could get. Still, as cameos go, it’s almost aggressively unnecessary. If the role could be played by anyone, what exactly is the point?

You can see the cameo here.

5. Madonna in Die Another Day

Having the singer of the Bond theme also appear in the film? That sounds fun. Imagine if Billie Eilish had wandered into a Skyfall scene, or Paul McCartney delivered some light exposition to Roger Moore's Bond. It had never been done in the franchise's 40-year history, but when they actually did it, it was...not good. Madonna plays a fencing instructor who trades forced innuendo with Bond, saying, "I see you handle your weapon well." Bond replies, "I've been known to keep my tip up." Yeah, it's like that. Bond then tightens her corset (the film seems desperate to cook up some heat between the stars in her minute on screen), she tells him two mildly useful things about the villain, and that's it. Fun? Not so much.

MGM

6. Stan Lee in The Princess Diaries 2

Stan Lee's cameos in Marvel movies were fun. He was, after all, a Marvel legend who co-created everyone from Spider-Man to the Black Panther. Seeing him appear in, say, an Avengers movie, made sense! But popping in the receiving line to meet the queen of Genovia (played by Julie Andrews) for some weak joke about him learning English from watching the Three Stooges? That was decidedly less fun...and pretty damn pointless.

Walt