Stars of Batman, Futurama, Animaniacs, and more perform a cold read unlike any other.
Sometimes, it’s not worth coming up with a clever first sentence for a post because the content is going to overshadow it completely. This is one of those times. At this year’s Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle, Washington, seven famous voice actors got together onstage to act out the script to Star Wars. Sounds good, but here’s the twist: each actor read in the voice of a cartoon character he or she had made famous, or a celebrity impersonation, and the characters changed during every scene. If the names Kevin Conroy, John DiMaggio, Jess Harnell, Maurice LaMarche, Rob Paulsen, Tara Strong, and Billy West mean anything to you, stop reading this article and check out the video this instant. If not, here’s a sneak preview: Batman narrates the opening crawl, followed by Bubbles as Darth Vader giving orders to Stormtrooper Pinky. You’re welcome.
Oh, you’re still here? Well, if you insist, here’s how it all came about. These seven prolific voice actors were invited as guests to Emerald City Comic Con back in March 2012. On at least two separate occasions (one of which was filmed), they all gathered together in front of a packed auditorium and an emcee, then proceeded to act out scenes from Star Wars (that’s Episode IV for the young’uns in the audience) while voicing characters from their filmographies. For example, Conroy narrated the script in a way that sounded suspiciously like a certain Dark Knight, while DiMaggio voiced a hilariously flippant Bender masquerading as Luke Skywalker. LaMarche and Paulsen traded quips back and forth as Luke-Pinky and Leia-Brain. Perhaps even funnier, though, were the celebrity impersonations for R2-D2, which included everyone from Bill Cosby to Christopher Walken.
The video is about 80 minutes long, not counting how often you’ll pause it to catch your breath, and well worth the time it takes to watch it. If you have headphones on, it’s relatively safe for work, provided that asphyxiation from laughter or slamming your head on a desk to stifle guffaws are not big concerns. Now, some enterprising fan just needs to make an animated adaptation of some of these scenes, and the circle of nerd pop culture will be complete.
Source: Nerdist
