John DiMaggio And The Art Of Voice Acting

We don’t give voice actors enough credit. This is perhaps the sort of revelation at which I should have arrived sooner given my love of all things colourful and animated, but I admit that I, like many, have for so long taken these artists for granted.

This realisation was brought further into focus with the ongoing news surrounding #Bendergate, the controversy over the fact that the Hulu reboot of Futurama was planning to continue without the great John DiMaggio as the alcoholic, narcissistic bending unit Bender. While DiMaggio has finally agreed to return to the role, much of the outrage directed at Hulu was aimed at the producers’ attempts to recast the part for another actor, presumably under the illusion that an imitator could perform it without anyone noticing.

Whatever the details of the negotiations between performer and studio, the streaming giant clearly miscalculated the esteem fans hold for those characters, and thus the voices, of whom they are so fond. Just as many couldn’t conceive of anyone other than Viggo Mortensen playing Aragorn, or seeing Tony Stark wearing the face of Tom Cruise rather than Robert Downey Jr., it seems that few are comfortable with their beloved animated icons sporting a new set of vocal cords. When Disney jettisoned long-time voice of Kermit the Frog Steve Whitmire in favour of newcomer Matt Vogel, it provoked a significant backlash from those who adamantly complained that the beloved amphibian simply didn’t sound ‘right’.

This heartening revelation shouldn’t come as a surprise. For as long as there have been cartoons there have been voice actors, an underappreciated and frequently underpaid sub-stratum of artists whose skills and talents often defy mainstream recognition. In reality, of course, voice actors are some of the best in the business, relying on nothing but their vocal talents in order to bring their respective characters to life. It’s about time we realised that their contribution to the media we enjoy is as utterly phenomenal as it is uniquely challenging.

For a start, the process is entirely different behind the camera than it is in front of it. Things vary from time to time and project to project, but much of a voice actor’s career is spent in a booth reading lines to the surrounding air in a variety of tones and styles for each take. As Tom Hanks has been keen to emphasise, the transition from ‘regular’ acting roles to animated ones (specifically Toy Story) is not an easy one, an often-gruelling process involving hour after hour of line reads to find the perfect take. Anyone who has enjoyed the pleasures of the Matt Berry sitcom Toast Of London will have some small appreciation of the frustrations endured by diligent voice actors at the hands of their overbearing sound producers.

The great skill of the voice artist, then, is to be able to conjure characters through the power of the voice alone, often with minimal external resources. While performers may be gifted supplementary materials ranging from sketches to projections of footage, the general lack of other actors off which to bounce makes proceedings akin to working in a creative vacuum. Since cartoons aren’t quite so adept at conveying the infinitely varying subtleties of the human face, the importance of a decent voice behind the lines becomes even more acute. It is a skill that DiMaggio, as one of the finest exponents of the genre, has mastered, his work as Bender bringing to life one of the best cartoon characters ever seen on screen, not to mention his work as Adventure Time’s Jake the Dog, King Zog from Disenchantment and Gears of War’s very own Marcus Fenix.

It is a quality that truly shines when done correctly and feels glaringly obvious when done poorly. The quality of voice acting has coincided with the rise in quality of most animated fare in general, a trend accelerated, as always, with the ascent of The Simpsons in the 90s, although pioneers such as Mel Blanc and Jeff Bergman were fundamental in proving that a single performer could conjure up a mind-boggling number of characters through the voice alone. Combining the vocal dexterity of an impressionist and the emotive skills of trained actors, the exceptional ear that many great vocal performers possess is akin to that of a great jazz musician able to improvise melodies purely by virtue of hearing the notes in his or her head.

A voice actor’s voice is their weapon, their predominant tool in crafting characters of a range and variety, as well as depth and subtlety, of which most ‘regular’ actors can only dream. The Simpsons’ Hank Azaria has lent his talents to stalwarts such as Comic Book Guy, Cletus, Professor Frink, Snake, The Sea Captain, Superintendent Chalmers, Disco Stu and of course Mo Szyslak, while Family Guy’s Seth MacFarlane, a skilled voice actor in his own right, stretches his vocal capacity to the limit in order to voice Peter, Brian and Stewie Griffin, as well as Dr. Hartman, Carter Pewterschmidt, Sheamus, Tom Tucker and God himself.

The king of the medium is arguably Mark Hamill, a man whose unusual career trajectory has taken him from the starring role in the most iconic film franchise of all time to becoming arguably the most versatile and respected voice actor of his generation. Hamill can do it all, his roles ranging from Skeletor in Masters of the Universe to Chucky in the Child’s Play remake. It’s a testament to Hamill’s extraordinary skills that his incarnation of The Joker is still held up as the truest and most complete version of the character, ahead of the likes of Jack Nicholson, Joaquin Phoenix and even Heath Ledger.

The skillset required isn’t just restricted to TV and movies. I was playing the eminently enjoyable smash hit gore-a-thon Mortal Kombat 11 when it struck me that, aside from the obvious advances in graphical fidelity and presentation that all video game franchises inevitable experience, one of the biggest improvements to Ed Boon’s titanic fighting simulator had been its quality of voice acting. The Mortal Kombat reboot, AKA Mortal Kombat 9, was released in 2011, and while the game boasts an admirably sharp fighting engine, there’s no hiding from a story so clunky you can practically hear the gears rattling off-screen. Self-consciously schlocky or not, MK9 possesses some of the most torturous dialogue this side of a Johnny Cage movie.

The video game world was once notorious for the poor quality of its voice acting, mainly because games had failed to command the same revenues and therefore struggled to entice professional, let alone ‘big name’, actors to their shores. Until relatively recently, games were straddled with a reputation for their amateurish storytelling and weak vocal performances.

Resident Evil was perhaps the definitive offender in terms of badly-delivered hammy dialogue, its cast members reciting lines with the verve and conviction of an amateur dramatics society that had just been informed that their theatre was being bulldozed to make way for a branch of Safeways. Mortal Kombat simply relied on their own staff to give life to their creations, with co-creator Ed Boon famously providing the iconic ‘Get Over Here’ line for face of the franchise Scorpion when the games were in their infancy.

Fast forward just ten years and the difference couldn’t be starker. MK11’s bewildering array of pre-match dialogues are presented with verve and conviction by every single one of the game’s performers, from Andrew Bowen’s superb reinvention of Johnny Cage to Matthew Yang King’s charismatic Liu Kang. Steve Blum’s performance as Sub-Zero, meanwhile, elevates a good character into a great one, the veteran actor rather fittingly always sounds like he’s speaking through a few inches of shattered ice.

This is a trend that has permeated the entire medium. From Roger Clark’s peerless evocation of Western antihero Arthur Morgan in Red Dead Redemption 2 to Troy Baker’s nuanced portrayal of damaged survivor Joel Miller in The Last of Us, the gaming world has seen a rapid evolution in the standard, and consistency, of its vocal performances.

It’s little surprise, then, that some of the finest voice actors working today do so through the medium of gaming. Not only is the industry where much of the money lives, it’s also an ideal showcase for a performer’s work. As titles expand and dialogue choices become ever more in-depth and elaborate, artists can expect to have their work heard hundreds of times across thousands of cumulative hours of gameplay. Coupled with the meteoric rise in quality of gaming storytelling from studios such as Rockstar and Naughty Dog, it’s little wonder that chameleonic performers such as Nolan North, Troy Baker, and Hamill himself choose video games as their predominant means of employment.

The once-derided media of gaming and animated TV now attract some of the finest mainstream actors into their respective orbits, from Gary Oldman in Call of Duty to Alfred Molina in Rick And Morty and Solar Opposites. While the big-hitters of Hollywood may have awakened to the creative possibilities of lending their voices to media besides the live-action, it’s worth remembering the astonishing skill and commitment exhibited by the performers who actually made these media popular.

The talents of actors are often overrated, their suitability and success dictated often as much by circumstances of birth, attractiveness or other trivial characteristics. The voice actor, however, is an artist, a performer utilising nothing more than the human voice to craft characters as a musician employs the keys on a piano keyboard. When Hulu dared to presume that John DiMaggio could be replaced without incident, they underestimated the impact a great vocal performance can have in shaping the characters we hold so dear.

READ MORE: 10 Best Voice Performances That Deserved Oscar Nominations