That was unexpected.
Summary:
- The dub cast for Miyazaki's The Boy And The Heron was pretty surprising.
- Robert Pattinson's performance as The Gray Heron in the trailer left people amazed.
- The movie seems like an amalgamation of different Ghibli movies and hits theaters on December 8th.
When the news about the star-studded dub cast of Hayao Miyazaki's latest movie, The Boy And The Heron, dropped, people had very mixed emotions. The cast seems a little bit too much and features seasoned actors but inexperienced voice performers. The list includes Christian Bale, Florence Pugh, Robert Pattinson, Dave Bautista, Gemma Chan, Willem Dafoe, Karen Fukuhara, Luca Padovan and Mark Hamill, but initially it wasn't announced who'd take whose role. Yet now the dubbed trailer was released, and it left people either speechless or pleasantly surprised.
The surprise comes from the fact that Robert Pattinson made his voice acting debut in this movie by voicing The Gray Heron — a bird with a screechy and low, menacing voice, one that is pretty uncharacteristic for Pattinson. And people in comments on Twitter went a little bit wild. A lot of them said that the time Pattinson spent with Dafoe during the filming of The Lighthouse rubbed off on him, because Heron sounds like someone Dafoe would voice, or maybe Hamill. Dafoe, however, voices another bird in this show — The Noble Pelican.
A lot of jokes focus on Pattinson gathering various animal familiars: "First he was The Bat, now he is The Bird". Some fans who've been following his career pretty closely note that he's known for using crazy voices in interviews for years and are not that surprised by this stellar performance. And the majority of commentators wish for him to do more voice acting roles in the feature, as this debut shown in a short trailer convinced them of his talent.
Pattinson's performance made people once again believe that he's on a roll after Twilight movies and that casting him as Heron was the right choice. The trailer itself, aside from Pattinson, shows a very grim story, one that feels much deeper and darker than previous Miyazaki works. It's a story of maturing and growing up, dealing with psychological difficulties in the fantasy setting. Judging by the reviews from those who watched it at the festivals and other places with the subs, the movie is something like Alice in Wonderland but with a Ghibli filter on it, filled with references to the older works of the studio.
It hits the US theaters on December 8th, while the Japanese version was released on July 14th.