Staring Blankly
Today's one of those days where I wish I didn't feel obligated to post on a daily basis.
Well, here we go.
It felt like noon before it was even 10 am. One of those damn days.
I beat the Pirates of the Caribbean level on KHII, and I still don't know for sure which actors actually lent their voices to their characters. Geoffrey Rush has KHII on his IMDB listing, which could be right or wrong, but none of the other three (Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley) are listed anywhere anymore. Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann both sound very non-starrish, but Jack Sparrow is either Depp or a damn good impersonator.
Actually, so far I've been pretty disappointed with the voice talent in this game, compared to the previous. For the most part, the previous game was able to get back most of the surviving talent to reprise their roles, and they had some fairly decent B-List talent (David Boreanaz as Squall, Haley Joel Osment as Sora, Billy Zane as Ansem, Mandy Moore as Aerith, Lance Bass as Sephiroth, etc) on board for previously unvoiced characters.
Now I understand that you can't get Eddie Murphy to replay Mushu, or Robin Williams to play Genie. You can't get Matthew Broderick or Nathan Lane to come back for Lion King, they're too expensive and too busy on Broadway.
But is it really that hard to get Miguel Ferrer to come back and reprise his role as Shan Yu in Mulan? Hell, the guy worked on Jackie Chan Adventures, for God's sake. Or Sean Astin to do a few lines for Hercules, a character he voiced in the first game? And with the exception of Osment, who plays Sora, the lead character in game, none of the previously-listed B-listers have returned, replaced by new, less talented actors in all cases. The voice work just isn't as good, even in the case of a Mandy Moore/Mena Suvari switch as Aerith. Suvari is a terrible voice actress, I quickly came to learn.
I'm not trying to complain too much, they brought in a few decent names for new roles. Rachael Leigh Cook is playing Tifa, Christopher Lee is on board. Cheech Marin, Robert Guillaume, Ming Na, Harvey Fierstein, the late Pat Morita, all reprising their various Disney roles.
I'm just surprised that none of the actors I mentioned previously were able to be brought back. That was one of the things I really enjoyed about the previous Kingdom Hearts, hearing all these actors that I knew from other work come in and do a very good job voicing characters I had grown to love, either from Disney movies or from previous Final Fantasy games. To see these characters return with horrible voices coming out of their mouths... it's just a disappointment.
There... I DO have something to write about, even if it is just baseless bitching! w00t!
PS: A lot of the links I put on here for the actors at IMDb have them listed in the game. Unfortunately, the listings are wrong. Wikipedia has a more updated listing of the voice talent, and none of the aforementioned actors are on that cast list.
Well, here we go.
It felt like noon before it was even 10 am. One of those damn days.
I beat the Pirates of the Caribbean level on KHII, and I still don't know for sure which actors actually lent their voices to their characters. Geoffrey Rush has KHII on his IMDB listing, which could be right or wrong, but none of the other three (Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley) are listed anywhere anymore. Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann both sound very non-starrish, but Jack Sparrow is either Depp or a damn good impersonator.
Actually, so far I've been pretty disappointed with the voice talent in this game, compared to the previous. For the most part, the previous game was able to get back most of the surviving talent to reprise their roles, and they had some fairly decent B-List talent (David Boreanaz as Squall, Haley Joel Osment as Sora, Billy Zane as Ansem, Mandy Moore as Aerith, Lance Bass as Sephiroth, etc) on board for previously unvoiced characters.
Now I understand that you can't get Eddie Murphy to replay Mushu, or Robin Williams to play Genie. You can't get Matthew Broderick or Nathan Lane to come back for Lion King, they're too expensive and too busy on Broadway.
But is it really that hard to get Miguel Ferrer to come back and reprise his role as Shan Yu in Mulan? Hell, the guy worked on Jackie Chan Adventures, for God's sake. Or Sean Astin to do a few lines for Hercules, a character he voiced in the first game? And with the exception of Osment, who plays Sora, the lead character in game, none of the previously-listed B-listers have returned, replaced by new, less talented actors in all cases. The voice work just isn't as good, even in the case of a Mandy Moore/Mena Suvari switch as Aerith. Suvari is a terrible voice actress, I quickly came to learn.
I'm not trying to complain too much, they brought in a few decent names for new roles. Rachael Leigh Cook is playing Tifa, Christopher Lee is on board. Cheech Marin, Robert Guillaume, Ming Na, Harvey Fierstein, the late Pat Morita, all reprising their various Disney roles.
I'm just surprised that none of the actors I mentioned previously were able to be brought back. That was one of the things I really enjoyed about the previous Kingdom Hearts, hearing all these actors that I knew from other work come in and do a very good job voicing characters I had grown to love, either from Disney movies or from previous Final Fantasy games. To see these characters return with horrible voices coming out of their mouths... it's just a disappointment.
There... I DO have something to write about, even if it is just baseless bitching! w00t!
PS: A lot of the links I put on here for the actors at IMDb have them listed in the game. Unfortunately, the listings are wrong. Wikipedia has a more updated listing of the voice talent, and none of the aforementioned actors are on that cast list.
posted by Bill at 12:33 PM
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