With the news of a possible Powerpuff Girls reboot swirling, original Bubbles VO artist Tara Strong has been quietly campaigning on Twitter to return to the role. For my part, I think that a proper take on the PPG really NEEDS the cuteness that Tara and her fellow actors bring to the show, and my first instinct here is to support Tara’s campaign, but I’m still of two minds on I frankly (no pun intended) love that Frank Welker has been the voice of Fred Jones since nineteen-sixty-something, but on the other hand I find it highly irritating when ‘Batman: The Animated Series’ fans insist that Gotham City won’t ever be right without Kevin Conroy and Mark Hammill. With so many remakes, revamps, relaunches and repossessions in play, we find today’s cinéma vérité query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) had the same problem when Michael Bay recast Megatron as someone other than Frank Welker, asking: Are you bothered when studios cast new voice actors while the old ones are still available?
7 Comments
The biggest example I can think of is Bay’s Transformers. Why in the world would you not want the original voice of Megatron for the movies.
I don’t have too much of a problem unless its a huge difference. i finished up LPing Mechassault for Xbox and am starting Mechassault 2 and noticed that all three characters are returning and one of them has a slightly different voice, while the other two are the same. I feel that if you can get the same VO then you should, if not then try to get someone close, or at least not make it 100% obvious that you changed the VO.
For the most part, it does bother me when Voice Actors are replaced with different actors. A good example is the Tenchi Muyo anime series and movies: They used the same voice actors for the English language tracts for the original series, the Tenchi Universe series, the Tenchi in Tokyo series, the Pretty Sammy series, etc. but when they went back to finish the original ova series they used entirely new actors while all the originals were still available. This was very annoying.
On the other hand, after the success of “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”, WB started making new cartoons using their classic characters, and they had Mel Blanc do all the voices again, but it was clearly obvious that during the thirty years since they had last made new WB cartoons, Mel had lost most of his vocal range, due to age, and his attempts to recreate the voices of Bugs, Daffy and crew were rather pathetic. In that case, using new voice actors might have been a better idea.
So long as the original voice actors sound like they should, they should be kept on. For example, if they tried to bring back Gargoyles, they should try and bring everyone back, because those performances are half of why I gave a damn about what happened to Goliath, Elisa Maza, David Xanatos, etc.
Tried to answer this last night and the net cut out (thanks storms) so here goes try 2.
I don’t particularly like it when most characters get replacement voice actors, but I can definitely understand that it isn’t always possible to get some of the older voice actors to return. Sometimes they have new contracts for other series or companies, sometimes it is a legal or rights issue and various other issues. For instance, a friend was upset a while ago about some voice replacements on the “Xiaolin Showdown” spinoff (whatever it was called, haven’t seen it myself). After a little searching, I found out that the spinoff was produced in Canada, and some of the original voice actors legally couldn’t participate due to the laws in place (I think it has to do with a union or something, I’ve forgotten most of the details). I can understand hers (and others) frustration, but it wasn’t really the fault of the voice actor that they legally couldn’t participate just because the studio’s choice of production location.
However, there have been a few rare instances where a replacement voice actor has actually been a better fit than the original. It isn’t the norm, but it has happened a few times.
As long as it’s not like that New Adventures of Speed Racer crap. That was GAWD AWFUL!
You can say that again.