Friday, November 02, 2012

Wreck-It Reilly

Wreck-It Ralph opens today.  Driving by a billboard that featured the four lead characters I noticed something a bit different about this film. At least I can't recall it ever being done before.

Look at the main characters, voiced by John C. Reilly, Sarah Silverman, Jack McBrayer and Jane Lynch.  Each of the visualizations seems to be based, if somewhat vaguely, on the person speaking the words.

It's sort of interesting, if a bit distracting.  The idea is generally to create a new character, not an outrgrowth of what the actor already is. (In fact, in the old days, most voice talent wasn't known, so when they created a character, you weren't thinking of them.)  The movie's gotten good reviews and is expected to do well, but I don't think anyone will be turning out to see, for example, a heroic cartoon version of Jane Lynch.

5 Comments:

Anonymous Denver Guy said...

You don't think Woody looks a bit like Tom Hanks? It's funny, but Hanks has such a distinctive voice, I've always conjoined Woody and Hanks in my mind. The same is true for Buzz Lightyear and Tim Allen - I feel like the faces they make are faces the voice actors make in real life, but maybe that's an exageration.

Of course, it can go too far, like Tom Hanks as the conductor in The Polar Express, which was creepy.

8:13 AM, November 02, 2012  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Polar Express wasn't regular animation, it was motion capture.

8:50 AM, November 02, 2012  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

On the other hand if your get well-known character actors and have 4 of them in leading roles, why not take advantage of that. I also think that 3 of these particular 4 actors (not Sarah) are much more familiar faces than names

12:34 PM, November 02, 2012  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The idea of having animated characters resemble the voice actors has been around for a while, maybe since the Jungle Book. Take a look at the Emperor's New Groove--all the principals match up. Here's a link (although I think the old Disney examples are dumb.)

http://www.flavorwire.com/295965/10-voice-actors-who-look-like-their-characters?all=1

6:17 AM, November 07, 2012  
Blogger LAGuy said...

I guess the original sin was using celebrities instead of voice actors. Once that happened, the rest followed naturally.

But really, would we want Marge Simpson to look like Julie Kavner? Nowadays, that might be how they'd do it.

8:55 AM, November 07, 2012  

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