Karate Kid II
I’m convinced that Sato inspired Christian Bale in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Bale’s Batman voice is gravelly and ridiculous. His Bruce Wayne voice is foppishly charming.
The contrast in their good guy and bad guy voices is pretty silly. My question for you today is who had the sillier voice-180?
[poll id=”46″]
been a while since KK2, but honestly Christian Bale ruins an otherwise promising set of movies. I could only stand to watch them once each.
Michael Keaton sounded like a badass not some bully trying to act tough…. sigh
sato ftw
the karate kid had some legendary villians
i personally like terry sylver from the 3rd movie.
Chozen rules! His lines and laugh are just too awesome.
"You keep for your collection. I know you like it!"
Yeah Christian Bale's tough guy voice is ridiculous. Also, his lisp is a killer too. Attempted tough guy voice + lisp = fail.
@tokz_21 Christian Bale vs. Jack Swagger vs. Cody Rhodes in a three-way lisp dance!
@rpad
that's a tough one! They all are pretty bad. If i factor in pitch of voice (normal) and annoyance of said voice. I'm going with Rhodes. I just don't like anything that comes out of that kid's mouth.
i think you gotta throw bill pullman in this discussion too…i mean he was ok as lonestar, but next time you watch independance day, pay attention. I think he shared a trailer with robert loggia during the production of that movie
Christian's voice wasn't as bad in Begins, but they really took it over the top in post production in TDK. When it comes to perfect contract between Bruce/Batman, no one does it better then Kevin Conroy.
WHERE ARE THE DRUGS!!??!!!
I would like to elaborate on Larcenous' post:
Kevin Conroy is DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE for the schizophrenic Bale you all hear in the movie with good reason. First, let's state some facts: Kevin Conroy was the voice actor for Bruce Wayne/Batman for "Batman: The Animated Series" that aired from 1992 to 1995. "Batman: The Animated Series" (or BTAS) was THE GRATEST BATMAN series out of all the Batman TV shows and movies (with an exception for Batman Begins- maybe). The reasons for this fact are numerous and deserve its own book, so I won't get into that.
If you listen to the "behind the scenes" stuff, you'll soon learn that the reason for Kevin Conroy's voice shake up came about because they wanted BTAS to be a more serious and mature series. Because of that tone, they did not want to fall into the "Clark-Kent-can't-be-recognized-as-Superman-because-of-his-glasses" syndrome, so they had to add another layer to his disguise as Batman in order for the people who knew both Bruce Wayne and Batman to not think that Bruce is Batman. Of course any reasonable person who knows both characters will immediately recognize the same voice, so either the director, writer, producers or Kevin Conroy decided to have the Bruce Wayne voice be the "normal", easy-going, nonchalant voice while the Batman voice would be deeper, raspier and a bit "darker". If you watch any episode of BTAS, you'll know what I mean. In the series, it works brilliantly. In "The Dark Knight" … not so much. I guess it's just one of those things where either you have to have the right person, or the right balance to each of the voices, or maybe it only worked well in the animated series because it was a cartoon, and let's face it; not everything from the cartoons can translate well into real life. Just look at video games and video game movies.
-M
@Iceman That's another excellent comment! Thanks very much!!!
@ Mr. Padilla;
Thank you. Would it be any surprise to you if I told you that I started out with journalistic visions of grander when I in school? I was actually editor-in-chief of my high school newspaper and later, a writer for my college paper. Alas, I discovered that the field of journalism was not as I thought it would be and turned to marketing instead. Today, I work with my father and sister and sell gasoline, but my artistry with a pen (er, keyboard) has never left me. If you are a verbal entertainer, I would like to be known as a word sculptor.
And yes; even though you should be the “word sculptor” because of your ass-kicking prowess in Scrabble, I would prefer to call you the “Scrabble Shark”.
-M