Potential "dream" recasts of Sonic characters

Mike Pollock sounds more like a snooty banker character than he does a diabolical mad scientist, or a main villain at all for that matter. Deem Bristow and Long John Baldry had this perfect 'Captain Hook' theatricality that Mike has always been missing and it hurts Eggman's character both dramatically AND comedically. Never been a fan of his and it doesn't help that I was already sick of his voice from old 4kids dubs. We need someone like Frank Welker to take his place. Someone experienced and theatrical, with a booming voice who can still sound goofy as hell.
Rouge should be voiced by Estelle or someone similar. Thought of her immediately cause of Garnet in Multiversus but she really knows how to sound smooth and confident without trying too hard, which would already be the total opposite of Karen's performance.
There's just a general lack of theatricality from what should be very theatrical characters. Rino Romano has this casual flippancy in the PS1 Spiderman games I really think would work for Sonic and Max Mittelman sounds great too for similar reasons. Roger probably could do a good Sonic but all of his appearances so far have had an inexcusable lack of 'tude.

 

Idk. Not a dream, but I'd be cool if they just had Ben Schwartz be game Sonic. He does a good job, and he is just a voice actor. He's been in Ducktales and TMNT. So it works. Or bring Ryan Drummond back, that would be cool.

 

We're going in that direction?

In that case, Sarah Stiles as Amy.

 

I'd be all on board with that if Ryan Drummond didn't completely forget how to do his Sonic voice. Either that, or he just doesn't care about it anymore. Every time he does it in front of a camera, he sounds like 90s-00s era Chuck E. Cheese (the one with rollerblades).

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/FF_9RO2NCqE?feature=share

Xenforo doesn't let me embed links to YT shorts like regular videos, so sorry I have to post the raw link.

EDIT: A couple more examples to show I'm not just cherrypicking the worst performance I can find and being a d-bag.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/imTV1YCruPY?feature=share
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/e0lebFIuq5w?feature=share

 

Ryan doesn't seem to be able to do it off-the-cuff anymore but he sounds good in that QnA video to me. Certainly a bit deeper/older sounding but he could probably get the job done for another game or two if they'd let him. His voice is still just so much more natural than Roger's coming out of that character model.

 

That radio drama Ryan Drummond did a few years back sounded good. Like, that made me feel like he hasn't lost his Sonic voice.

 

At least half of these things come down to direction. Ryan off the cuff these days doesnt sound too great, but that radio drama sounded much better since I'm sure he was told to aim for what he did in specific instances of SA2. Roger sounds pretty rough in most of the games imo, but the direction he got for his performance on OK K.O.: Let's Be Heroes! was easily his best. Griffith's direction was rough in basically everything, but amusingly without guidance (at cons etc in the 00s/10s) he seemed to sound a lot more naturally fitting. And Mack sounds great on his own, but too much like RCS in Prime.

 

I will not be surprised if I'm alone on this, but I'm actually fond of the Voice Direction and Voice Work for Roger Sonic in some Sonic media.

To be exact, I'm not sure who does this stuff for the LEGO Media and TailsTube, but I do recall that the recent Twitter Q&A had a seperate Voice Director so if that applies here then whoever it is...they really make him sound better.



(3:37 - Start at)







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I feel the next 3D Sonic game having a story that uses this kind of direction for Roger would be great.

...

As a Side-Note...whatever the hell they told Roger to do in this game? Honestly if he has bars like this, let him use them. Hell I'd say use it as a basis for a new direction for his voice. Less unhinged yeah, but I think it's got "spunk" or something. Whatever, I think it's cool to mention on the side.



Look it's still Roger Craig Smith voicing this character, so it STILL counts to mention.

 

Idk, even a lot of these current characters' best performances never really sit right with me just *as* the characters' voices with pretty rare examples like current knuckles and Silver (he's still the TSR guy right?)
I can't really figure out dream casts just because it would all be people who've already done the role just coming back and doing it the best they ever did. I guess the one interesting conundrum there is that I probably couldn't be able to choose between Jason Griffith and Deven Mack for Sonic, just because I think Jason is pretty talented at this point but doesn't really get enough work anywhere to show it off, but Deven just feels right even if the dialogue is wrong. (But for Chaos Sonic it was all so right and that was an excellent performance) but maybe considering how I'd like Sonic to be Deven would just fit in better and Jason could just be Shadow.
Idk I would just like to live in a world where the really severe miscasts like Robbie Daymond Mephiles didn't exist.

 

I stand on the belief that you can keep 80% of the current cast, but use better direction using their past work to make them sound better.

The other 20% we revise, but it doesn't have to be all of them. Doesn't even have to half of them.

"Since 2010, Fletcher has worked with Sega as a casting director for the new voice roles set for the Sonic franchise and its spin-offs."

We have had the same Voice Director since 2010, and I cannot deny how inconsistent he is with the quality of Voice Direction for this series

You didn't like Frontiers' Voice Direction? That's on Fletcher foremost regarding the English Cast at least.

I believe he views Sonic as a "Kid-Series" so the characters need to sound over-the-top, rather than people.

...

I will also stand on the belief that recasting Dave B. Mitchell as Knuckles is just unnesseary.

This is him in 2019 - 2020 as Knuckles

This is him more...recently? Although his voice in Crossworlds is better.

This is him as Dyne in Final Fantasy

Am I crazy to say he sounds like Dan Green Knuckles?

So unless you just dislike Dan Green Knuckles, what do we have to lose here?

If you don't. The guy's voiced Raiden so I feel like asking him to have a laidback SA2 voice isn't impossible.



(10:18 - 10:22)

Hell, he sounds better in CrossWorlds Character Select so I'm really gonna advocate for him as an example of Bad Direction before anything else.

 

Can we like

talk to Jack Fletcher?

Like has anyone ever interviewed him or anything like that or even tried opening a dialogue about this? Does he have socials or anything?

 

Don't know a lot about voice actors so can't contribute any specific suggestions, just general opinions.
I agree with what some people are saying in that not every character needs a recast, knuckles and tails arent agressively bad enough to need replacing, however I think if you're going to replace one person on the main cast you might as well replace everyone. Like, if they go ahead and replace Mike Pollock then I think they should get someone new for Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, etc.

 

The only two characters I really dislike the current voices of are Rouge and Cream, they're both wayyy too high pitched and grating. Rouge especially, just compare her voice in 2011 generations vs shadow generations. The voice they're going for nowadays just doesn't fit the character at all, I don't know if its voice direction or the actor getting old but I just can't stand it.

Other than that though, I think most of the current voice cast besides the elephant in the room (Pollock) is just fine and I don't really want to see them recasted. Jason will always be my favorite sonic and shadow voice, but RCS and Kirk have grown on me a lot and I'd be sad to see them go, I didn't like Kirk's shadow at first but he really found his groove in shadow gens, he sounds amazing there,