As I was looking through the IMDB page for Brave, I realised that I recognised a lot of the names, names like Billy Connolly, Craig Ferguson, Robbie Coltrane and Emma Thompson. None of these people are voice actors by trade, although to be fair all of these people have had some voice acting experience in the past. Brave is by no means unusual in this regard - pretty much every animated movie that comes out nowadays has a list of celebrity voices. So is this a good or a bad thing? Well, let's take a look at some of the reasons why a studio might get celebrities to do voices, and see whether they hold up to scrutiny.
1. Acting and voice acting are pretty much the same thing, right? I'm going to have to answer 'no', to that. Certainly, there are similarities. Many good actors can do interesting things with their voices, and various mannerisms of voice actors can find their way into the characters' animation (according to David Kaye, he invented Beast Wars Megatron's distinctive finger wriggle, the one that he often does when saying "Yeeeeeessss").
Within this idea, choosing a celebrity to be a voice actor can seem like a good idea, since many of these come from live-action acting backgrounds. If they're a great actor, they should be a great voice actor, or so the logic goes.
Yet there are also differences between acting and voice acting. Actors have their whole body to work with. Things like facial expressions and gestures make it to the screen by default, and can easily make up for an uninteresting voice. For instance, I generally find that the voices Johnny Depp puts into his characters aren't that interesting, and that it's the many mannerisms that he puts into the performance that make them entertaining. To take that away from an actor is to take away something that they inevitably use, however subconsciously it might be. On the other hand, a voice actor generally only has their voice, so they know how to use that to its fullest. I think it stands to reason that if you take an actor and a voice actor with an equal amount of talent in their respective fields, then the voice actor will have the more expressive voice (unless they want to do a monotone, in which case the voice actor would be able to do that as well).
2. Celebrities sell tickets. It's more cynical logic, but on the surface, it seems to make sense. Any live-action movie you see is likely to have at least one big-name star, with their name and/or image prominently displayed on the poster. Regardless of whether or not it makes sense, people do seem to be more likely to see a movie if it has an actor they like in it. So animation should work the same way, right? Wrong, for three reasons:
(a) The celebrities' names are often not on the poster. To be fair, this can vary a lot from studio to studio and even from movie to movie, but it seems to be the developing pattern in posters.
(b) The celebrities are not on the poster. This is fairly obvious. It's an animated movie, so unless the character happens to have had their appearance based on the celebrity voicing them, then it's not going to be immediately obvious that the celebrity is in the movie. Combined with reason (a), this means that there is often no way for the average movie goer to know that a particular celebrity is in a particular film.
(c) The average animation moviegoer doesn't care. I will admit to not having statistics to hand here, but I'm fairly sure that most people who see animated films will fall into three categories: children, parents and animation geeks like myself. Children probably don't know who the celebrity is half the time, and the other half of the time don't seem to care. My nephew loves Toy Story, but I'm fairly sure he doesn't know who Tom Hanks is - in fact I recall Mr Hanks had an anecdote along similar lines in one of the extra features on the Toy Story tenth anniversary DVD. Parents go because they need to accompany their kids, and from my experience of standing in cinema queues, they're not generally force the kids to see a movie that the kids don't already want to see. As for animation geeks, I'm writing this article, so I don't think I need to say more there. My point is that none of these groups see an animated movie for the celebrity voices. Admittedly, animation is becoming more mainstream thanks to Pixar and other studios, but then we just get back to points (a) and (b).
3. The director really wants to work with a particular celebrity. Fair enough. If I was directing a movie, I'd probably abuse my power as well.
4. A celebrity has an image that resembles the character in some way. For example, you want a cocky, arrogant guy who comes off as annoying at first but is kind of loveable deep down, you might get Owen Wilson. You want the big everyman, you might get John Goodman. You want a comedian, then there are loads of examples, depending on what you are specifically looking for. To be fair, this works reasonably well if you can get the right person, but is it really worth it? In each case, there are voice actors who can do the job just as well, if not better.
Those are the reasons that come to mind. I'd like to give a few reasons why I'm against celebrity voices in animated films.
1. It devalues voice actors. From my understanding, film is generally held in a higher regard than television when it comes to acting. Most voice actors work primarily in television. Live-action actors take the film roles from voice actors, thus devaluing their work and robbing them of some of the best roles.
2. It costs more money. I will admit that I don't actually know this for certain. For all I know, some celebrities might do voice acting work for free if the role interests them, but they certainly have the ability to demand a higher paycheck than most voice actors. So, given that I have established that it probably doesn't boost ticket sales, it winds up costing the studio money.
3. Generally, the performances are worse. This is a difficult comparison to make, but it stands to reason that someone who works constantly in a field will probably be better than someone who only does it occasionally.
Do not take any of this to mean that celebrity voices are bad. Most of them are quite adequate, and a few are actually excellent. That will form the subject of my next post. For now, I hope I have adequately explained the reasons why celebrity voices are, in general, a bad idea.
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