(Written for the rant column of io9: science fiction website)One of the frustrating things about science fiction films and television shows is that they’re often accompanied by bad acting. You would think that someone who’s gone to enough trouble to creating aliens, new world, galaxies, (if they’re not dead and they’re wives haven’t taken to producing instead) can take the time to find decent actors to fill the important roles.
This is likely impossible, as the over-cooked performances of Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman (Star Wars), and the starry-eyed Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson (Harry Potter) can attest. There’s a simple solution: make everything into animation. It worked for the Clone Wars, it worked for Star Trek: The Animated Series, and it can work for all science fiction given a bad rep because of shoddy actors.
This isn’t saying that all sci-fi acting is crap; I could drool on about Ewan McGregor, Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner’s unacknowledged brilliance playing Data. It’s the big-budget movies that tend to draw in the bad with the good: we saw it in Star Wars I – III with a sulky representation of Anakin Skywalker by Christensen and a pouting Portman as the regal, sharp-shooting Padmé Amidala. George Lucas would have been much happier with Anakin and Padmé in the Clone Wars—there, at least you can expect stiff-lipped facial expressions and wooden love scenes.
While Daniel Radcliffe managed to pull of a wide-eyed Potter and Emma Watson a particularly haughty Hermione, it’s hard to think these two actors were the cream of UK’s young aspiring. With one movie to go, the Potter rep has already been concreted: yep, the movies weren’t as good as the books. An animated Potter series could turn this on-screen stagnancy around. Magic and adventure has always had a fantastic animated screen presence, think 1977 The Hobbit or the 1967 Disney take on King Arthur, The Sword in the Stone. Here’s to hoping the planned 2011 release of a filmed Hobbit, produced by Peter Jackson and directed by Pan’s Labyrinth Guillermo Del Toro, can live up to the animated 70s classic.
In spite of being declared anathema by trekkies worldwide, I’ll put it out there that the acting in Star Trek: The Original Series wasn’t particularly first-rate either. Will Shatner’s cowboy cock-ups and beetling brows had to be offset with the warmly chaotic Jackson DeForest Kelley and a smattering of great acting from Leonard Nemoy. Star Trek: TOS and the movies starring original cast could have been bypassed with an animated Star Trek right from the beginning; that would take care of those pesky low-budget sliding doors and shaky cameras. Star Trek: TAS offered the writers far greater creativity and opportunities than the original live-action series. You can imagine that getting an animated humpback whale on board the Enterprise could be more convincing than it appeared in The Voyage Home.
Animated series can be just as successful in creating a sci-fi multiverse as live films—they’re blessedly free from bad acting and give a badass panache to phasers and lightsabers. There are so many possibilities still waiting for the animate world: just imagine an animated Picard rolling his R’s and sipping Earl Grey, or a lithely caricature of Sarah Michelle Gellar plunging stakes into dusky vampires.
