Legacy Characters and the Actors Who Play Them
 

This is a weird thread, and it may not go that far, but I figured, why not.

Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Kermit the Frog, James Bond, and even our very own TMNT could be called legacy characters. Characters who have been around for years and have passed through many hands. So what are your thoughts on the characters? Who was the best person to play your favorite "Legacy Character?"


To be honest I started this thread because of one in particular: Kermit the Frog. Despite the fact he's been Kermit's voice most of my life, I just don't like Steve Whitmire's Kermit...and I think it's only straying farther away from Jim Henson's. I'm not really sure why I feel so strongly about this, but that's just how I feel. any other Muppet fans feel this way?

I've never been a big enough fan of the Muppets to really care one way or the other, but I will say that after Jim died, Kermit just never felt the same.

In terms of Kermit, I don't even think the voice is the biggest issue. Now maybe it's because I'm an old fogey, and remember very vividly Jim Henson playing that character more than anyone else, but I can tell that it's not Jim Henson doing the puppetry. I do like the new guy, & I do like the more linear plots of the more recent Muppet movies, but no one does it better Kermit than Jim.

The same can be said for any of the Warner Brother characters Mel Blanc brought to life.

The guy who has been playing Fred Flintsone since the original VA died is a pretty good sound-a-like. He's been doing all the Fruity-pebbles commercials and one-off Flintstones movies for years.

The Fred is OK, but the Barney they use these days is the absolute woooooorst.

He was originally played by Blanc too, if memory serves. I want to say I've seen pictures of the Flintstone's Cast recording in Blanc's hospital room after he'd been in a horrible car accident.

Highly recommend Blanc's autobiography: "That's Not All Folks!"

Its actually hard to believe characters created over 70 years ago are still around today in some fashion. Granted they were the earliest cartoon characters created so they all basically became staples of the industry but I like how they've been kept somewhat relevant.

I loved how in the 90's Cartoon Network would play all the old classic cartoons and that's how I grew up watching them when I was a kid. Nowadays they're all on Boomerang and not on CN anymore so less kids are exposed to them.

Nowadays kids probably only know Flintstones from the Fruity Pebbles commercials, rather than the actual show.

I think people without kids in their lives are really disconnected from what modern kids are aware of, especially when you consider things like Netflix and Hulu are a click away for almost all of them. Stuff being around on TV doesn't mean sh*t anymore, because it seems like letting a kid mess around with on-demand stuff is way easier to deal with. My nephew is 4 and he's way into Scooby-Doo, because there's a ton of it on Netflix. I was less exposed to some classic cartoons, like Scooby-Doo, growing up than he is now.

I admit that this is a side thread, but let's not neglect the changes in copyright legislation that have played a HUGE part in these legacy characters not going into the public domain.

Do we really want to see characters like Superman or Batman in public domain? I can't imagine how it would be if virtually any company out there could produce their own version of Superman or Batman without DC's consent. Since they're over 70 years old now its possible.

Yes, actually. I do.
Because it's clear to me that the people who own the copyrights have absolutely no idea what they're doing.

And let's not forget, that this Free-For-All mentality is where the superhero comicbook genre came from in the first place.

Everyone wanted a Superman.

Remember last year when two Hercules movies came out within months of each other? It'd be interesting to see two Superman movies like that from different companies. As long as they're not ******.

I must admit, from a writer's perspective, public domain for some characters would be nice. I'd love to be able to self-publish my Red-Back stuff, but because of current laws, I can't, without consent and backing by Marvel. I'd love to do the same with my D&D novels, too, but again, I'd need permission from Wizards of the Coast /Hasbro to use many of their creatures and other aspects of the game.

And this is where it all falls apart and we realize that modern fiction going public domain basically means low-rent fanfic comes along and destroys everything.

No thanks.

The only place you can get away with publishing stuff based on official properties is Japan, where you can make your own fan-made doujin and sell it without any lawyers coming at you.

And I'm not talking about adult comics either, people can make their own doujin off any anime and sell it at conventions or even online and its perfectly legal. Its funny how different Japan's copyright laws are from the rest of the world.

Yeah I don't know how I feel about certain characters becoming public domain. On one hand I do think that not allowing any more stories or things in the public domain hurts us as companies are happy to put things in vaults and accumulate properties and media for the only reason than not let others use it not to mention we've gotten some amazing stuff based on public domain stuff.

On the other hand we do live in a different era than when stories first started becoming public domain, I don't want dozens of Spider-Man or Batman movies made for the sake of making a quick buck. Stories and characters today are created a for the sake of making money and we'd be flooded by crap of such characters hoping something would stick. That's something you don't see with other Public Domain stuff because they're not as marketable.


:lol:

Well Mickey Mouse should have more tv shows. Not preschool or shorts. It's pretty surprising he didn't stay a relevant cartoon character after the older stuff.

Voices don't bother me as long as they're close enough and recognizable.

Yeah, I take it back.

I've always wondered what would happen if Marty McFly were to become a legacy character. Granted nobody can ever top Michael J. Fox's original performance in the BTTF films, but in TellTale they had a pretty convincing sound-alike voice actor play the part!

There was also a Back to the Future cartoon in the late 80's. In fact there was a cartoon for just about every popular movie back then like Ghostbusters, Robocop, James Bond Jr., Muppet babies, The Mummy, Men in Black, etc.

Man, it really feels like a different era when they used to make kid-friendly cartoons based on R-rated movies. There was even a Mortal Kombat cartoon.

This all happened before the anime boom really hit the U.S. and Saturday mornings had to be filled with stuff besides the usual superhero cartoons. Really takes me back.