We’ve written in the past about why believing that live-action actors are the same as voice actors is a very bad idea, and why casting celebrities for animated films rarely works (The ball is yours, Chris Pratt).
Different mediums require different skills. Jack Nicholson was a great live-action Joker, but it’s hard to argue against the iconic work Mark Hamill has done over the years. The same goes for Kevin Conroy, Tara Strong, George Newbern, Clancy Brown and countless other DC animated voice actors.
We’ve seen characters like Batman reinvented time and time again over the past few decades, from video games to animation. Each offers something new and unique, whether it’s Kevin Conroy’s emotion and excellent gravity and Benjamin McKenzie’s naïve but hungry Caped Crusader, Diedrich Bader’s fleet-footed take on the character, or Troy Baker’s chameleon-like ability to give a voice to every creature and person on the planet.
Hiring live-action actors just to be recognizable is a detriment to the animation industry and an insult to voice actors’ ability to do the same work, but it can also bode badly for the future of DC animation as a whole Department.
Because even in the darkest moments of the DCEU, animation kept the franchise afloat with some fantastic animated stories, including a combination of original and fairly faithful adaptations of classic comic book storylines.