Marlon Brando Actually Played Vito Corleone Twice, the Second Time in 1990
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Published Mar 7, 2026, 9:24 AM EST
Ambrose Tardive is an editor on ScreenRant's Comics team. Over the past two years, he has developed into the internet's foremost authority on The Far Side. Outside of his work for ScreenRant, Ambrose works as an Adjunct English Instructor.
Did you know Marlon Brando revisited his legendary Godfatherrole in 1990? In what, a deleted scene filmed for The Godfather III? No, that would be too obvious. Make too much sense. What if I told you instead that Vito Corleone returned to the screen, sort of, in a wacky buddy comedy called The Freshman?
In fact, on Rotten Tomatoes, The Freshman holds an almost 30% advantage over the third film in the Godfather trilogy, with the comedy boasting a near-perfect score.
Marlon Brando Revisited His Career-Defining Role As Vito Corleone In Off-Beat 1990 Comedy "The Freshman"
A Sort Of Reprisal Of The Godfather
If you were playing a game of movie trivia, and you got the question "how many times did Marlon Brando play Vito Corleone?," you wouldn't technically be wrong for answering "just once." But really, the answer is more like 1.5 times. Despite its positive reception in 1990, The Freshman is a pretty obscure movie 35 years after its release.
Marlon Brando was originally supposed to return as Vito Corleone in the final scene of The Godfather II, but he no-showed the production on the day of filming.
It's the kind of movie some '90s kids might have hardcore nostalgia for if, say, their family owned the VHS back in the day. Beyond that, though, it's not really a movie that comes up a lot. It doesn't exactly rank among the greatest comedies of the '90s. It's obviously overshadowed by many other roles in both Brando and Matthew Broderick's careers.
Even upon its release, Brando's role as a Godfather lookalike was The Freshman's big novelty, and it is what makes it remarkable all these years later. Especially when you consider that The Godfather trilogy concluded ignominiously with Part III just half a year after The Freshman was released in the summer of 1990.
Late-Career Marlon Brando Is Perfect As A Godfather Lookalike In "The Freshman"
Brando Returns To His Vito Corleone Roots With A Twist
The bit at the heart of The Freshman is that Marlon Brando's character is a dead ringer for Vito Corleone in The Godfather. Brando is almost 30 years older, but he flawlessly recreates the Don's jowly look, his mannerisms, and his iconic raspy voice. Yet he's also clearly a distinct character. A clone, but not a copy, so to speak.
Marlon Brando was known for adding his own details to characters that he played, and he influenced The Godfather's Don Vito Corleone in several ways.
The funny thing is, Brando was 48 when he made The Godfather, playing a man in his 50s-60s. Almost three decades later, he aged perfectly into the role of Carmine Sabitini in The Freshman. He looks like a real-life doppleganger of Vito Corleone, not an exact duplicate. And like his Godfather performance, Brando's turn as Sabitini legit awed film critics in 1990.
The truth is, there was no place for Brando in The Godfather III, even if he'd wanted to be in it. But The Freshman proved to be the perfect opportunity for the actor to retrospectively "do the thing" one more time. And doing it in a comedy proved to be the perfect charming spin on the classic archetype Brando helped establish.
35 Years Later, "The Freshman" Has A Better Reputation Than "Godfather III," Even If It's More Obscure
Critics & Audiences Preferred The Comedy Over The Gangster Trilogy's 3rd Installment
The Godfather III has a 66% Rotten Tomatoes score. It's a divisive film, to say the least. The Freshman is at 94%. Funnily enough, Roger Ebert gave both movies 3 1/2 stars. They're two very different movies, of course, but they're tied together by the way both are products of The Godfather's legacy.
35 years later, what's the biggest difference between the two? The Freshman is the more rewatchable movie. It's a charming mix of "odd couple" comedy, crime caper, and coming of age story. It's a "one joke" movie, to a certain degree, but it's a memorable joke, and the movie gets enough mileage out of it in the end,
It might be a footnote in the career of Matthew Broderick, and especially Marlon Brando, but The Freshman is a movie you should give a shot when it's available on streaming. It's a lighthearted homage to The Godfather's place in pop culture history, and if nothing else, it's a piece of film trivia to keep in your hip pocket for future use.
What do you think, readers? Have you seen The Freshman? Is it better than The Godfather III?
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