I'm finally writing about voice actors! It feels like every time I go to do so, a big controversy pops up and I decide to not get involved, but the time has come so let's move quickly! You see, I love voice actors! I want to talk about voice actors, and now Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is out so you're damn right I am going to use this opportunity to it's advantage!
Before we begin, here's a quick spoiler-free summary of how I felt about the film.
I... kinda loved it? Yeah, I was surprised too because the first film was fine. Passable, better than expected but the second one is such a wild ride and an absolute blast with enough respect to the source material to know what to keep in and to know what to make changes to. Jim Carrey steals the show as he goes as nutty as he can with this professor character Robotnik/Eggman, Idris Elba's Knuckles is such a great and fitting casting choice, Ben Schwartz continues his career of playing blue-based characters with the charm and style expected of him, his friendship with Tails is only heightened by Colleen O'Shaughnessey's performance, and my least favourite character from the last film because one of my favourites thanks to an extended sequence where Natasha Rothwell gets to go absolutely insane in the best way. Overall, a really damn fun time.
The four main players of the film, Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Robotnik are all standouts, with the writing and visuals making sure they steal the show, and their actors' performances are just as important as their animations. And that brings us to Colleen O'Shaughnessey, and this article itself.
You see, when this film was first being advertised, they of course released several posters for it. (My favourite by far is the one that's a perfect callback to the original poster of the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 video game, with Eggman's fingers resting on top of the 2 menacingly.) As is the case with every movie poster, the main members of the cast are featured all along the top of each poster, and this is where the backlash began. I wonder if we'll ever get a Sonic movie without some form of backlash...
Colleen O'Shaughnessey was not on that poster. And that's stupid, and nowhere near the first time we've seen this treatment towards voice actors. This issue was eventually fixed, but that was only because people spoke up and were loud enough about it to get some notice.
Let me say this as bluntly as possible to make sure there is no confusion: Tails is in this film a lot. More than James Marsden, possibly even more than Idris Elba's voice, and yet they were both placed in the "top 4" on the original posters instead of Colleen O'Shaughnessey, not because they are the better actors or any other reason, but because Colleen O'Shaughnessey is a voice actor and much less famous, and therefore much less marketable.
The cold reality is that it makes sense. Of course James Marsden, despite being in the film significantly less, got advertised to the public. He's a great actor, and he deserves to be mentioned too, but this is a completely corporate crap decision that shows complete disrespect. I remember something similar happened with that awful Space Jam sequel, where Jeff Bergman, Eric Bauza and several others all got completely ignored by the marketing department despite voicing all the wonderful Looney Tunes characters. Oh except one. One Looney Tunes actor got advertised; Zendaya as Lola Bunny. You've probably never heard of her unless you've seen Spider-Man, Euphoria, K.C Undercover, The Greatest Showman, Dune... Again, she's great. She deserves to be recognised for her work. The point I'm making here is that so do the non-famous voice actors!
"Why would they market the voice actors? They aren't famous." They would be if they got the recognition they deserve! It drives me absolutely insane how many voice actors out there have given performances that influence so many projects, who have done so much work, aren't well-known when literal abusive scumbags and cult leaders get signed up for film after film and are celebrated for it.
And of course, this extends to the amount of pay each voice actor gets. At the time of writing, there's been quite a lot of discussion about this after the news that the voice actors behind Jujutsu Kaisen 0, both dub and sub, were severely underpaid despite the amazing performance of the film itself. These people don't get royalties for the film when it does well. Their names aren't on the poster. And yet they do voicework for a film big enough to be out on the same weekend as The Batman!
Celebrities doing voice acting roles can be fantastic. I'm sure we all know James Earl Jones' masterpiece of work as Mufasa, or Will Arnett breaking our hearts as Bojack Horseman. And both Idris Elba and Ben Schwartz are fantastic at these unique versions of the iconic characters. The point I am fighting to make as clearly as I can is that the right person should be chosen for the right role, and "how famous they are" is an unfortunate and terrible method of choosing that too many executives have made since the dawn of time itself. Yes. The dawn. Colleen O'Shaughnessey is the perfect Tails for this film, and that's that.
I'm going to end this article by posting a few of the many voice actors I enjoy greatly, and inviting you to check them out, see where you've heard them before. I can guarantee you know most of them around the place. They deserve the pay, they deserve the recognition, and they deserve the respect. Colleen O'Shaugnessey is a great start. Can we keep that momentum going?
Fred Tatasciore
Keith David
Grey DeLisle
Monica Rial
Kevin Michael Richardson
Max Mittelman
Christopher Sabat
Erika Harlacher
Clancy Brown
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