And whoever said petitions in the gaming world are useless? After seeing the Max Mad property wrested away from Aussie culture at E3, the community over at Ausgamers succeeded in convincing the developers – via petition – to give Max an Aussie accent. With all the attention that created, Donal Gibson – a professional voice actor and also Mel Gibson’s brother – wants the role. He’s even recorded a voice demo, and it pretty damn impressive.
There was resistance, at first, to the idea of Avalanche Studios changing their artistic direction. But Ausgamers won that battle, and now they’re on to the next one.
Donal Gibson and Australian director Jamie Blanks contacted Ausgamers directly, in the hopes that their vocal community could take this idea to the next stage. The challenge, now, is to get Avalanche to listen. Again.
It would of course be ideal if an Australian did the work, but Gibson’s accent is just about flawless. Certainly nowhere near Pacific Rim territory. You can head over to Ausgamers to hear the demo, and the call is out to let Avalanche know on their Facebook page and Twitter that they can relax, because part of the casting has already been done for them.
Comments
27 responses to “Mel Gibson’s Brother Puts His Hand Up To Voice Mad Max Game”
They should also cast Doug Pitt for a role.
Good news, I’m keen to give it a crack now with that classic Aussie drawl in there for authenticity.
Mel Gibson’s brother and a professional voice actor? He is literally the perfect person for the role. Why would you possibly cast anyone else?
It’s like a goldmonster just turned up on your doorstep and started shitting out gold bricks. What do you do? *What do you do*? You keep the bricks and pet the monster and say thank you!
I just have a feeling they’ll shoo the monster away :\
If I catch him on my lawn again I will be kicking his golden ass back to Dubbo.
I’d be perfectly happy with Donal Gibson doing the voiceover.
Mel Gibsons American, born in America but raised in Australia, the thing that convinces me is that he had the drawl, the attitude and the look. Donals got the voice, it’s convincing. I don’t NEED the person to be BORN in Australia, that’s just xenophobic, what I need is for the accent to be 100% unabashedly Aussie. It has to not be Pacific Rim Australian, it has to be real life Australian. Hell, even Benedict Cumberbatch in The Fifth State has an oustandingly genuine Aussie accent going on!
tl:dr? Sure, give Donal the job, great voice, great accent, that’s all that matters. He sounds perfectly Australian.
Umm wow, I never knew that Mel was originally from New York. There you go! But yes you’re right, doesn’t matter where you’re from. If you can do an accent correctly then go for it!
It is a useful thing to remember for whenever he does something embarrassing.
At other times, you can point out that he was raised in Australia, so that’s all that should matter.
Yeah, every time a good film is brought up “gotta love that Aussie.”
Every time his recent personal life is brought up “American dickhead!”
It’s all about choice…
Warne bless Australia!
I saw Pacific Rim on the weekend. Jesus tap-dancing Christ. What on earth WAS that? The movie would’ve been so much less grating if they’d either had actual Aussies in the Australian role, or Americans who could do something that wasn’t a tortured, mangled blend of South African and English.
You know who they should have had play the son? Seriously? Because honestly the DAD wasn’t that bad? His accent was pretty much ok, he was tolerable. The son was abysmal.
Sam Worthington. When allowed to speak in his natural aussie tone and accent, Worthingtons a damn good actor, when faking a yank one, hes monotone and dreadful. He would’ve rocked it as the son.
I don’t think the budget would have accommodated Sam Worthington.
180m? Im sure they couldve. Hes not that expensive know after s string of flops.
I think you missed the point. They made a very big homage to a certain genre, tropes and all. The choice of bad fake accents for what was practically the entire cast seemed incredibly deliberate to me. The half arsed accents and hammy dialogue left me with a big ass grin.
Idris Elbas was authentic? Hunnams was fake. Marikos was real wasnt it? The only fake ones i could pick were the aussies and Hunnams but he does a good yank one from soa
Hire this man!
The audio demo is fantastic!
That was excellent. Get this man and you definitely have a buyer here.
Why not Alex Williamson?
Sold to the man with the authentic Max Rockatansky voice!
Still don’t understand why foreign developers seem so adverse to hiring actual real Australians to do Australian voices. The only conclusion is they think Aussies are the only ones who’d notice or care, so they deem that inconsequential, or at the very least not important enough to chase a real Aussie down to do the job right.
Havent you heard? We’re too expensive. We all make a ton of cash so that justifies marking up our games by 50%, also means we want more money for our work.
The accent was a little off, but the connection and similarity to Mel’s voice is too good to pass up.
As for Pacific Rim, I will never understand why they continually hire non-Aussie actors for Aussie roles. It makes zero sense. It’s not like there aren’t plenty of genuine Aussie hopefuls looking for work.
The guy from Eureka was hands down there worst.
I’m sorry but even as an Aussie, that’s just horseshit. Name half a dozen recent, notable examples of Australian roles given to non-Australian actors. The only things that come to mind are the the Julian Assange and Robin Wright movies.
This is nothing compared to the glut of Aussie actors like Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, Hugo Weaving, Cate Blanchett, Eric Bana, Heath Ledger or even that questionably talented Sam Worthington made their international breakouts playing Brits, Americans or even Romans.
good, as long as max himself has a proper voice it’ll be at least tolerable (although the whole cast should be primarily Australian), and while I think mels’ bros’ voice is perhaps a little too deep it fits better then most I’ve heard.
that being said the developers have already proven that they have no idea what the fuck they’re doing with IP, not only did they not think it would be a problem that the entire game was done with american voices (I can’t be the only one who noticed that not a single Mad Max fan likes the american re-dub, and 10 seconds on google would have shown them that if they’d done the bare minimum of research on the topic), but they want to treat it like it’s a brand new IP, which is stupid because it’s NOT a brand new IP, it’s a well known and established IP with three movies and a fourth in production.
change is fine, but what is the point of making a game from an existing IP if you’re just going to completely ignore the IPs prior existence?
I gotta say, I am not feeling that voice demo – its veering to close to parody IMO.
IMHO he sounds just a wee bit too deep/old for the age that Max is being portrayed at. The whole atmosphere though reeked of so much Max I got goosebumps just listening to him.
Great voice, great demo. Perfect casting!