UPDATE
If you could pick some A-list celebrities to voice these characters, who would you have chosen to do well? Let us know below!
ORIGINAL STORY
If you know anything about Ed Boon, it’s not just that he’s a great creator and visionary when it comes to fighting games and their potential. You’ll know by listening to him that he’s a fanboy. He loves putting in things within his titles that will make his “younger self” happy and has always pushed for bigger and better things to happen with the games he oversees. With Mortal Kombat 1, he got a lot of wishes granted, including finally getting Jeanne-Claude Van Damme in the title to play a version of Johnny Cage. But he recently revealed that he wanted more than that.
In a chat with Rolling Stone, Ed Boon noted that his “biggest vision” for his latest game was to have every single character on the roster voiced by a big-name actor from Hollywood.
“One of the things that I entertained with this game […] which we didn’t do, was, ‘What if every character in this game was played by an actor?'” Boon said. “Like we got Keanu Reeves to play Kenshi. This is, like, [a] pipe dream What if we made a game that had an actor, a famous, recognizable actor play every character and Johnny Cage was absolutely the one who would have been played by Jean-Claude Van Damme.”
So why didn’t this happen? Well, not the reason you think. According to Boon, it didn’t happen because he felt there would be a “logistical issue” trying to get the various actors into the recording studio for multiple sessions. After all, sometimes they need to rerecord lines after they’re put into the game and find out they don’t sound right.
And this is where fans are likely happy this didn’t happen. Because, much like a fanboy, Ed Boon doesn’t seem to understand why this idea is such a big problem, despite his having experience in it not working. In the last entry, Ronda Rousey came in to voice Sonya Blade. This was during one of the peaks of her popularity, and it made sense to bring her in. The problem? She’s not a voice actor! Fans blasted her performance, and NetherRealm even admitted they couldn’t get her back in the recording studio.
Fast forward to Mortal Kombat 1, and we’re having a similar issue with Megan Fox, who voices Nitara. Despite her “passionate desire” to be in the game during her reveal trailer, her line delivery comes off as wooden, forced, and makes it seem like she only did this for a paycheck.
So Ed, just stick with actual voice actors. They know how to get stuff done.
