ThePodcastOfSteel Episode 41 - Speaking with Voice Actor David Kaye.

An interview with David Kaye covering how he came up with the voice for Megatron and his views on a Transformers Animated fourth season, specifically for Transformers, but lots more about his other roles.

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On this episode of #ThePodcastOfSteel I was joined by dozens of guests! Superman, General Hawk, Megatron, Vandal Savage all joined me, and a few more!

Well, just one really but over the years David Kaye has voiced so many characters in cartoons, films and video games that it felt like I had a whole gang of guests joining me. We talked all about how he got into voice acting, his most loved roles and how bringing a character to life with just your voice is challenging but so rewarding. It was fascinating to listen to David’s answers and exciting when he suddenly became the character he was talking about. I could see him physically change into someone else! I am fascinated by the work of voice acting and speaking with David was interesting and insightful. I can't wait to see what characters he brings to life next!

Timestamps:
2:40 Finding his voice(s).
7:05 Working with Mickey Rooney.
9:00 Becoming a voice actor.
10:00 G.I Joe.
14:00 Creating Megatron’s Voice.
18:20 Favourite characters.
21:22 Accents and dialects.
28:23 “The voice has a soul”.
31:00 Taking on the role of Vandal Savage after Miguel Ferrer sadly passed away.
34:32 Dream job.
41:00 What is coming next.
44:00 Transformers fourth season.

 

An iconic role he can't talk about?
Well, there is the rumored Beast Wars Movie.
If they do make this movie, the ONLY person who should voice Megs is David Kaye.

I also completely forgot he voiced Animated Prime.
I'd love one more season, just to wrap everything up.

 

We've been begging for a 4th Season for a long while now. But Hasbro and its affiliates (minus Takara) have repeatedly gone out of their way to either bash TFA, or try to sweep it under the rug and pretend it never existed.

 

They have?

 

I haven't heard anything on that level. Lots of people loved Animated. A great number of characters and concepts from Animated have made a jump from that continuity into others.

The problem with any form of official Animated continuation is that the series is partially owned by Cartoon Network. Until Hasbro regains full ownership of that particular brand, then nothing can be done with it without CN's consent.

 

A noteworthy example is when IDW was revealing their Regeneration One comic. They asked the audience which they would rather have: an Animated comic for season 4, or a new G1 comic. The mention of a season 4 comic drew a huge cheer, leaving the IDW reps thoroughly embarrassed when they revealed Regenration One instead.

And since Prime, Hasbro's been insistent on washing away everything that isn't related to G1 or the Movies. We see this with the push for Evergreen, and the Cyberverse writers experienced significant pushback from Hasbro for wanting to include non-G1 characters in the show.

And @mx-01 archon, I'm not sure the thing with Cartoon Network partially owning the rights is altogether accurate, since The Hub played Animated reruns for a while, until it was shut down.

 

Did the toyline sell? There has to be a corellation with the length of the "advert" aka the show.

That and, Hb doesn't have the financial "incentive" to run a 20 minute advert of a product no longer being sold right?

 

Really? I'll definitely have to look into this, if you could provide me any sources I'd really appreciate that if you have them on hand somewhere, you can send them through a DM if you wish.

The thing is, I can see both Animated's season 4 and a continuation of the US Marvel run would both be desirable things to fans, and it probably wasn't the best idea to ask them for one or the other, as they both have strong potential and that just sounds like prime flame-war bait that will pit two camps against each other. As someone who's read ReGen one and had the knowledge of the original run to actually critique it properly, it had great ideas and a few really great story elements, but it was definitely not Eugenesis or even Alignment.

It would have sucked if Animated DID win and they bungled up the story somehow. :/

If my theory is correct, which seems to fall in line with as much as we've heard from behind the scenes regarding Prime and the nonsense behind the scenes: we can basically thank the team that made Prime for Hasbro's over-reliance on G1 and reluctance to take risks, because of their inexperience and frankly idiotic decisions, rejecting resources that would have made their story better all because they didn't want to be 'held to anything that came before'. They aren't solely to blame of course, Hasbro clearly should have tightened the screws and perhaps been more invested in this show since it was meant to launch a whole universe (up to and including a big-ass crossover with their other brands.)

Though I don't exactly believe the part about Cyberverse writers getting pushback, maybe from a minority but I highly doubt from a meaningful number of fans. I gave the show plenty of pushback because it's a subpar, inferior product. Not because of geewun but because it's so lazy and uninspired. They literally took Lugnut's design and slapped a new name and lady bits on it and called it a new character instead of just using Lugnut, they threw in Lockdown who was basically ... nothing like Lockdown, so on and so forth.

 

Creative rights can sometimes be different from airing rights. It may have been in the initial contract that the series would be exclusive to CN during the initial run, but allowed to be optioned to other networks in the future.

 

I've heard that it was basically The Last Knight that pushed Hasbro into doing nothing but G1,Not Prime. Because prior to the Last knight we were still getting some new content and new takes on characters. So really if anyone's really to blame for Hasbro's reliance on G1 it's the Last Knight.

 

Much better than Prime did.

 

I mean Idw published The Allspark allmanacs ao they have some respect for Animated.

 

Prime had how many seasons compared to Animated. Maybe Hb knows more than we do?

 

They had the same. Consult @Protoman on the indepth numbers on Animated compared to Prime (he had a whole graph, it was pretty interesting)

 

Prime had the same amount of seasons, but its first had twice as many episodes.

 

Several people who’ve worked on TFA, including DJW himself, have confirmed that Hasbro owns animated in its entirety, meaning they can air/distribute episodes as they wish, and conceivably return to it whenever they want.

Hasbro hasn’t gone out of their way to bash TFA at all. The IDW thing was IDW, they clearly underestimated TFA’s popularity to hilarious degrees that made them look like tools.

It’s true that Hasbro’s been eschewing anything non-G1, but that’s more to do with their misguided attempts at brand synergy than malice.

 

Maybe Hb knows more than we do?

 

There's no great secret behind why Hasbro has no further plans for Animated at this point of time. It just doesn't fit into the brand strategy, in the same vein as how Beast Wars' popularity hasn't netted it a particularly huge marketing push, either (sporadic MP releases notwithstanding). As popular as these sub-themes are, they're only a small facet of the brand as a whole. A niche market within the niche market.

Right now, their interests are in expanding the brand's "evergreen" potential, trying to put it on similar footing as Marvel/DC. Beyond that, G1 and the Movies garner the most focus because they have the largest built-in audiences and therefor represent the greatest possible revenue streams. Putting more effort into anything else just splits their attention and resources too much.

 

It seems like such a minor thing, but hasn't Hasbro gone hell-for-leather when it comes to the use of the term "Prime"? Like, there's now some kind of Disney-esque "Brand Integrity" thing about who can and cannot be referred to as as Prime and what it can and cannot mean. I'm not sure the way Animated used the term as a fairly common rank would gel with what they're currently going for with their Brand Unification and for whatever reason might make them hesitant.

That being said, I don't really think Hasbro has been dumping on Animated or anything of the sort. Ultra Magnus' signature weapon in practically all continuities has become a hammer because of Animated, Lockdown appeared in Cyberverse and IDW and was even the main villain of the fourth film, Cyberverse used a design of the AllSpark that was very similar to Animated's, Clobber in Cyberverse was renamed after Hasbro specifically said they didn't think she was close enough to Lugnut to have the same name, the HoF canonized Waspinator's name on Cybertron and being Wasp in all continuities and not just Animated... Animated remains a constant prescence in the franchise.

 

At this point, since Hasbro is intent on doing G1 with a few bones thrown in, I would rather they just G1ify RID, AEC, Animated, and Prime unique characters into new toys. With the exception of its unique styling, Animated, as much as I loved it, was “Another G1 universe, but with these changes” much like IDW. So by G1ifying some of the non-G1 elements like Lockdown, Lugnut, Animated Prowl, Slipstream, etc. we can at least get SOMEthing.