Could The Streamlining Of The DC Universe Canon Be Bad News For Animation Voice Actors?
This week, Peter Safran and James Gunn unveiled the first slate of films and shows in their multiyear project for the new DC Universe. With the first chapter being titled "Gods and Monsters," there appears to be something for everyone. We're getting a new Superman movie where the character is finally a good-hearted galoot, a Batman movie that doesn't forget about Robin, a Swamp Thing horror movie that may even be directed by James Mangold, and so much more across both TV and film, live-action and animation.
While there is a lot to be excited about, there was one announcement Gunn made that has me more than a little worried about the future of DC. According to the new co-CEO of DC Studios, we'll soon see a single actor portray each character across film, TV, animation, and even video games.
This is in the name of having a cohesive interconnected universe, one that aims to be even bigger than Marvel. The problem is not just that this sounds unfeasible (particularly with video games), but it has the potential of ruining the biggest secret weapon DC has had for the past couple of decades — animation.
Voice actors are actors
We've written in the past about why it is a very bad idea to think that live-action actors are the same as voice actors, and why casting celebrities for animated movies rarely works (the ball's in your court, Chris Pratt).
Different media requires different skills. Jack Nicholson was a great live-action Joker, but it's hard to argue against the iconic work Mark Hamill did over the years. Same thing with Kevin Conroy, Tara Strong, George Newbern, Clancy Brown, and countless others DC animated voice actors.
We've seen characters like Batman reinterpreted over and over the past few decades, from video games to animation. Each one offers something new and unique, whether it's Kevin Conroy's emotion and excellent gravitas and Benjamin McKenzie's naive yet hungry Caped Crusader, to Diedrich Bader's light fun take on the character, or Troy Baker's chameleon-like ability to voice every creature and person on the planet.
Hiring live-action actors just for the sake of being recognizable is a detriment to the animation industry and an insult to the voice actors' ability to do the same work, but it also may be a bad omen for the future of the entire DC animation department.
That's because, even in the darkest moments of the DCEU, animation kept the franchise afloat with some fantastic animated stories, including a combination of original and rather faithful adaptations of classic comic book storylines.
Good stories are better than connected stories
Years before Gunn or his predecessor even considered the possibility of having multiple Batmans at the same time in different projects, there was the DC Animated Universe, which had a relatively cohesive interconnected universe, comprised of both original stories and adaptations of popular storylines, and also straight adaptations of classic Elseworlds stories.
Gunn may be thinking of a multiverse, but everything he's doing, the animation team already did — and rather well. The DC animated movies are often incredibly faithful (see "Under the Red Hood"), but they know when to change things and when to provide closer adaptations of the comics for fans to recognize.
Those animated films also allowed us to see some of DC's weirder storylines brought to life. Who would have imagined we'd get a "Superman Red" movie? Or one where Batman fights Jack the Ripper, or fights alongside the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? James Gunn would never, but animation has already done it.
To focus so much on the main DC continuity as to have every single project build onto the next one would mean losing the one thing DC has always had that Marvel severely lacked: a good animation department with solid projects. We don't need interconnected cartoons and animated movies. Just keep allowing them to make good projects like they already were.
As fans once again start to prepare for another wave of possible DC projects that may or may not ever materialize, let's not forget the side of DC that has consistently delivered exciting and diverse stories featuring a multitude of characters for years and years, or the talented actors that brought the characters to life who will now seemingly fall by the wayside.