Is it really necessary to use superstars in animated movies? Is anyone gonna think "oh...

Is it really necessary to use superstars in animated movies? Is anyone gonna think "oh, the guy who voices the main character is super famous, now I wanna watch the movie even more!" 90% of the time I don't even recognize the voice. Especially if it's a woman. "Oh, that was Bruce Willis? That was Angelina Jolie?" Ok,cool, but did it make the movie any better than if it was an unknown guy? Probably not, unless the unknown guy really sucked.

People associate popularity with quality

>Is anyone gonna think "oh, the guy who voices the main character is super famous, now I wanna watch the movie even more!"
Yes

It worked for me as a kid I honestly loved Will Smith so much back then that I went to go see the movie

I thinks it's mostly for retarded parents.

I'm not a fan of it being used as a selling point (though of course it always will be) and hate when the character looks like or is a reference to the actor, but in itself I don't have a problem with it and would prefer it over some of the voice actors that are overused in cartoons.

>90% of the time I don't even recognize the voice
This is actually why I don't mind it (guess I pay less attention to just the voice in live action?). They can do a good job or sound different from their natural speaking voice-- or, again, just be something different in terms of sound/performance from a standard cartoon VA.

>Think back to beauty and the beast
>nobody gave a fuck about voice actors

Robin Williams was a selling point in Aladdin though.

And Homer Simpson in Aladdin 2 makes it bizarre to watch now.

I guess it works because if you have the money to pay them then you must have the studio's support for your idea so it's probably not bad?

i watched hotel transylvania not knowing it was voiced by adam sandler

my experience of the movie was greatly improved

You need famous people promoting your movie. They go on the talkshows, radioshows, morningshows and do the reddit AMAs. Their paycheck should come out of the marketing budget essentially.

didn't read but Rocket Raccoon was good.

I have a lot of complaints with Pixar, but at least in most their movies they use not-so-popular celebrities who can deliver in voice acting. Disney is kind of similar.

Are there any recent animated movies that hired the voice actors based solely on their ability to deliver on the role and not box office draw? I'm pretty sure Secret of Nimh did this in the 80's.

doesn't disney still do that? I mean Jason Bateman and Ginnifer Goodwin aren't exactly draws

wait wasn't the fight between Disney and Robert that he didn't want to be the selling point?

did Disney do it anyways?

This. Pixar and Disney do it a lot. They get literally whos/niche actors. Though my biggest reason to watch Zootopia was for Bateman.

Nope, unless the characters actually fit the casting.

Dreamworks learned that around Shrek. How to Train your dragon, Kung Fu Panda, etc. Took them a few years to actually get there, but now they have more hits than misses overall.

All pretty good movies whose stories were improved by the famous voice actors.

>Robert

Yeah, that's a big part unfortunately. Nobody is going around asking Tom Kenny to guest star on their talk show and speak a little bit about the new cartoon their in. But Bill Burr is a comedian and got to promote F is for Family on Conan.

Don't even get me fucking started with Ellen and Dory.

You mean Dan Castellaneta.

Did you know that Finding Nemo wasn't the first film to feature both Albert Brooks and Ellen DeGeneres in voiceovers. The first time occurred in the 1998 version of Dr. Dolittle. Brooks voiced Jake the tiger while DeGeneres voiced the dog John owned as a child at the beginning.

Why did you choose the Will Smith Fish for the topic picture through. I mean it's Will Smith Fish. The actuall selling point.

if an actor is famous that generally means they are talented enough to deserve that fame.

Disney does it a lot. But only because Disney/Pixar is a name brand in of itself.

Otto from A Fish Called Wanda should eat Will Smith Fish.

yes
he didnt want to be just a face they sold the movie on
he also had a stipulation in most of his movie contracts that said a given number of homeless would be hired for the production
dude was amazing and the world is a little less bright without him

Occasionally the VAing is actually really good. Look at the Disney casting for Princess Mononoke.

That's quite an obscure fact

Yeah but then look at ponyo, pure nepotism and shilling for the untalented younger siblings of teen starlets that abandoned the brand in a few years anyway.

That really makes me mad actually, ponyo could have been really fun and charming if they had used real VA's instead.

>is it really necessary to put stars in movies

This is a valid question from an artistic standpoint: to tell a story effectively you don't need a big name, if anything, you need someone who can become someone else.

>does the star system work for productions

Indubitably. You may as well ask why they needed Will Smith to be in Suicide Squad or Ben Affleck as Batman. It does break down around the edges - it's frankly inconceivable that you or I would keep getting work after losing as much money for studios as, say, Ryan Reynolds prior to Deadpool - but it's largely possible to predict how any given name will perform at the box office and thus it's easier to work out what kind of budget (if any) to give a project to which their name is attached.

>but that's not the question about art

No, but it's far from tangential. In fact, it's a necessary precursor that must be answered for any project, regardless of whether it costs $400m all-in or just the time of the participants and is filmed on their cellphones - how much is it costing and is any potential loss, financial or otherwise, arising from this cost worth the risk of making the project?

The fact is you can be the world's greatest mime artist and work for free, but if everybody in Paris is wise to your mime shenanigans already you're going to starve to death unless you get a different job.

>art is suffering! it's worth it!

That's a decision for each project, not something you can decide unilaterally. Living on dogfood for a year might get your novel finished without the distraction of a 9-5, but it'll also make you smell like dogfood.

>Is it really necessary to use superstars in animated movies?
One of the main reasons I don't watch a whole lot of them.

thanks god they get translated and dubbed by good, profesional literally-who's when exported over to my country, so we can skip all this bullshit

you're full of shit
you can't be that dumb
it's Sandler doing his vampire shtick. The character looks exactly like Sandler, too.

>dubbers
>good
Name your country so I can make fun of your dubs.

I went to see wreck it ralph because I want to fuck sarah silverman in the ass

I remember this was a big point of contention with Despicable Me 2.

Al Pacino originally voiced the villain. They planned on using him as a big selling point. Then, just a few months prior to release, he up and left, pulled his name from the project.

So a professional VA was brought in to dub over the already animated lines.

The movie went on to become one of the highest grossing animated films of all time with no real need for Pacino.

Ponyo's the only major miss in Disney's Ghibli dubs, though.

Most of the times, they don't get big name celebrities and the ones they do always fit the part. And they don't plaster their names all over the cover of the DVDs (I had to search the summary on the back to even know Cary Elwes and Anne Hathaway were in The Cat Returns).

Heck, Jim Belushi was the biggest "name" for My Neighbor the Yamadas and he was great.

Ponyo was a fuck up, but the only major one in their dub work (Liam Neeson was ok in it).

Why'd he pull out though?

Wanted more money probably.
Then again he was in Jack and Jill as the entire movie's Macguffin, so...

Probably views cartoons as beneath Adam Sandler movies.

Depends on how much the actor still acts when doing voice acting. Robin Williams did a hell of a job when voicing the genie, to the point where they were modelling the animation around his expressions and gesticulations.

Of course, he also insisted on not getting top billing based on his name, and then they went and did it anyway.

>This is a valid question from an artistic standpoint: to tell a story effectively you don't need a big name, if anything, you need someone who can become someone else.
That depends on if you view your art actually having some sort of audience as a requirement for it to qualify as art.

Wonder if in the inevitable Aladdin live action movie, they would've gone and used Robin's likeness if he were still alive.

It draws in the "adults"

It's never "necessary" to use superstars, there's no quantifiable relation between the level of fame of a movie's cast and its level of success at the box office. If anything, it almost seems like an albatross - some of the worst bombs of all time have been more star-studded than a Hayden Planetarium, while some of the most successful movies have been filled with actors that are "Literally, who?"-tier prior to the release.

That said, for some reason Hollywood clings to the idea that star power is a thing and that movies need big stars to succeed.

I think there's generally a degree of 'Oh Big McName is in this movie? He's pretty famous, he must have good taste in choosing his movies' thinking. Whether that thinking is general population, or what execs assume of the general population, I have no idea. But that's what I've always thought

Some famous actors deliver genuinely great performances and others so clearly just come in for a paycheck. There's really no reason to care about Lucy Liu or Jackie Chan in the Kung Fu Panda movies when they contribute at best half a dozen lines per films.

There is one voice I would watch any cartoon. I always recognize it and it is pure sex fro my ears.

Perlman does a lot of good voice work. I'm also a fan of any time Clancy Brown shows up in something animated.

worked perfectly with Frozen. Idina Menzel wasn't a house hold name till she sang Let It Go.

Tell me this Sup Forums, would kung fu panda have been the same without kangaroo jack?

Maybe Patton Oswald?

I love the "Finding" series because it has based Ellen in it.

So you want to fuck vanellope in the ass?

Well, that, and overworked casting directors can either listen to hundreds of different reads from strangers or they can go with a familiar name they know will be professional and sound nice.

I used to do commercial VO and for a while I was furious anytime I'd go to a casting call only to lose the gig to Aaron Paul or whoever, but then I realized: who the fuck was I? A casting director's got a vague description of the voice the producers have in mind, a budget, and a bunch of reads to listen to. He can easily reduce his workload by immediately ignoring nobodies like me and going straight to the C, B, or A-list names. Why is Matt Damon telling us about TD Ameritrade? Because the producers have a good budget and they know who Matt Damon is.

Most of the time it works. Other times you get Peter Dinklage in Destiny, which may be the first time I've seen any company actually rerecord lines using someone LESS famous than the original actor.

>I used to do commercial VO

can you provide an demo reel or example of your work?

When I see like twelve B and C-list names pop up on an animated film trailer I hear alarm bells.

I'd rather not post my demo on the off chance you could find out who I am.

I can tell you I:
-Was the voice of the "Every day is a quick draw day" Hoosier Lottery ads in 2011
-Voiced several Illinois Lottery ads in 2010
-Voiced Microsoft's Laptop Scout/Windows Scout interactive flash, updating as necessary for two-some years (but was never allowed to use clips from it for my demo because I signed a confidentiality agreement). It's now gone forever, much like my voiceover career
-Voiced a dog for the Maryland SPCA
-Voiced the character with a backache in an animatic that would eventually become a Bayer aspirin commercial
-Did the ending tag on a Filet-o-Fish commercial featuring pirate bobbleheads (they used a different voice depending on the region, for some reason)
-Voiced and produced several ads for a burger restaurant in Green Bay (they're playing now on WIXX, if you live there)

And that's pretty much it, despite a year of additional auditions. I went out for everything you can imagine, up to and including a redub of some kind of Tokusentai show. Then my agency folded, I couldn't find a new agent, left SAG, and got a full time job I could actually make a living doing.

I miss the hell out of it and sometimes fantasize about going back in. But you need a ton of flexibility, competition's stiff (especially here in Chicago), and demos are incredibly expensive. Maybe I'll do ACX sometime.

the whole main cast was all big-time broadway stars. they were attracting the audience for musicals with that casting choice

You do realize you're posting on Sup Forums and have given people more than enough information to figure out who you are right?

Admittedly I think this is an exception.

Sadly yes. The average movie goer will go to see a film based on the actor/actress alone. Yes, women movie goers (who are the biggest demographic of movie goer) choose movies they go to see by who is in them. No. It doesn't make the movie any better but if you are a fan of that person you will like it based on that alone.
Big name actors doing voice acting doesn't add anything to the characters either as they just do their normal speaking voice. It literally an easy payday.

>based

Seems like what's most important to her is whether or not there are gay or trans characters in the movies.

And that's bad.... how?

Sarah Silverman is gross-looking

Marketing reasons. Same why every Bart gf is voiced by a Hollywood actress who can't sound like a little girl for shit, but it looks more prestigious.

what have I done