Tangents ahoy!
Sometimes when I sit down to write topics there is the danger that they slightly flow away from the main branch of the blog a little. Well, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. And I don't always do the cleanest job of reigning everything in, most of the time intentionally because I think it's more fun. All that being said, this one here is something that I have a hard time condensing down into a small lane, because it's such a lofty topic that whenever I think about it I end up going literally everywhere with it. That will absolutely come out in what in this mess of diatribes and 'but what about this', yet hopefully I've laid something out for you at the end. Afterall, there's just so many different avenues of talk to tumble down whenever I bring up the utterly bizarre cross overevent which graced the Sea of Thieves world recently, the Pirates of the Caribbean event starring their rendition of Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow. I mean, who in the heck could have seen that coming? (Disney showing up with presents to a Rare game? What a twist.)
At the time of this announcement I remember making a note of this event, but I didn't really feel like I had too much perspective on it and so I left it on the back burner. Then I was reminded again when the event actually dropped, but I passed once more figuring I'd see a little more of what became of the event and how people received it. Now it's been a while, and everyone's had time to guffaw over Jared Butler's (not Gerard Butler) rendition of Johnny Depp, forged in a career peppered with Captain Jack impersonating roles, and I've sat back and watched it all. And now I have something to say! I don't like it. Not the performance, that was miles better than Kingdom Hearts II's Johnny Depp voice, I mean the very practice of Disney (and others like) throwing around the likeness' of celebrities in order to push their products ever further down our throats. I find it an ill branch of the entertainment art form.
And yes, I understand that Captain Jack is a Disney owned character who was just bought to life in live-action by Johnny Depp; but let's be honest, that was a character-role by Depp and when you bring that character back around you're bringing the actor us as well. Which essentially means that Disney's death march to infuse celebrities irrevocably with entertainment transcends pimping out their cadre of actors and becomes a strange sort of immortalisation of these celebrities by making them into the definitive characters and then selling that character around long after the actors aren't involved anymore. (And they really want the face and not the person for Captain Jack. Rumours are that they want to kill Jack Sparrow off screen for the next Pirates movie) I'm sure it made for a fun event, and Sea of Thieves is apparently looking very healthy in it's wake, but it feeds a growing trend that I feel is a misstep on the road to a better and more creatively free industry. (As well as one with ample opportunities for it's suitors) And it's a trend that doesn't just touch on gaming, but movies and television shows as well. A trend of characters being replaced by celebrities.
Prolific and celebrated actor Nolan North was interviewed once, not too long after the launch of 'Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare'. Now the game was only really bought up in passing, Nolan wasn't in it afterall, but I found his tongue-in-cheek response remarkably striking. You see, the big thing about Advanced Warfare was that it was staring Kevin Spacey (before all the bad things came out, obviously) and that was used as a springboard to ask Nolan, this savant of the gaming voice acting field, what he thought about celebrities getting involved in game voice acting. Mr North took a moment to ruminate, or perhaps just to let the room sit with the devious gleam in his eyes of practised jokester orator, before responding; "F**k 'em". He elaborated that those people had their own success' and these opportunities should be for someone else, namely him. And though Nolan said this all in a light-hearted way, with a smile on his face, irrelevant as he likes to be, the point is a solid one. Celebrities have made their mark, why do they need to take show in places they don't rightly belong too?
The blame doesn't lie totally on the celebs themselves, of course, but on the studios who seek them out for 'star power' and 'brand appeal'; rather than seeking out people to fill roles who would be best for them and who would bring the role to life. Recently HBO tried to make this really dumb Family Guy clone based on the Royal Family called 'The Prince'. The show itself was total uninspired boredom personified, but the majority of the bored enthused cast who manned this trainwreck; they were celebs. No reason for that, the show was animated, but it sure made headlines before release! That's a pattern you'll see shared across practically any animated movie, every big budget movie and most TV shows both traditional and new-wave streaming-site feed. (Guess it's not really 'new wave' anymore, is it. Just the status quo now.) Now of course, the obvious argument is that this is how Hollywood and showbizness works, the person with the biggest credits gets the biggest roles, which is whatever, but often times you have situations where people who have no business getting a role with the credits they have, end up there anyway. Why was Russel Crowe playing Javert in 'Les Misérables', despite not being a singer? Or putting effort into learning how to sing? Or being a somewhat decent singer? (Okay, he wasn't terrible. Most of the time.) See what I'm driving at?
You don't see celebrity roles being snatched up by celebrities too often in the gaming world yet, but it's cropped up now and then and when it does, it rarely feels like it was done for the health of the role and more cynically for the health of the marketing cycle. Take Natalie Dormer's role as Lexi in Mass Effect. She's the ship's medic, doesn't have much of a role, yet for some reason there was entire pre-release interview video talking about her involvement. Yes, Doctor Chakwas before her had a famous voice, Carolyn Seymour, but she was just there, and playing a role that fit with what she was good at as an actress. Not saying that Natalie Dormer was bad at all, she was completely fine, I just don't know what she bought to the role that no one else could have. (You know, except for the fact that she was also doing Game of Thrones at the time.) It almost feels like a hold over from the old age of entertainment, where roles were made to fit famous actors and those actors would go around pretty much playing themselves everywhere. ('Arnold Schwarzenegger is- John Matrix', etc.) But now that's giving way to a new age of idolisation where characters are now becoming larger than life and taking on a reality of their own: Like the Avengers cast. (Which is funny because Anthony Mackie has talked about something similar before) And I'm not sure either is healthy for the overall art.
Seeing the same faces pop up everywhere as the same character used to make total sense to me. (consistency is good, right?) But the more I've grown up, as an amateur artist and just as a viewer of content, the more I realise that this sort of stuff is just stagnancy for the artform. Tolkien, for example, used to be uncomfortable about attempts to illustrate his work because he apparently saw that as a breaking down of the creative potential of his work. Should any one interpretation become 'definitive', then that could rob the original source material of it's infinite evocative range as a written piece of fantasy. I personally like it when art transfer mediums, but I can see where he's coming from. This new Amazon version of Lord of Rings feels hollow to me before I've seen a single inch of it, simply because Gandalf, Frodo and the gang are already set in my head and attempts to recast them will just seem like bad cosplay to me. That's ridiculous, of course, there's no such thing as a 'definitive adaption' but it's a symptom of this idolisation syndrome.
So what does any of this have to do with Johnny Depp? I just find it a cynical and weird symptom of this whole affair for the literal face and features of an actor to be profited off without the actor's approval or involvement, and I'm trying to rationalise how we got here. I'm sure that Sea of Thieves treated the entire thing with respect and dignity, Rare seems to made up of decently folk afterall, but I'm still left disquiet. To play devil's advocate, I'd much rather actor's likenesses and performances be immortalised through their roles than the actor themselves being dragged around the industry for their 'star power' alone. Ideally, though, the art would come first. Larger than life celebrities sticking their heads everywhere without provocation, or simply for marketing, could do with some serious toning down. So there's my utterly unfocused rant out of the way, back to gaming talk tomorrow!
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