MovieChat Forums > Legend (1986) Discussion > Gump speaking

Gump speaking

posted 12 years ago by Aidan_Keller
9 replies | jump to latest

I wish that Honeythorn Gump's spoken parts had not been dubbed. I would have liked to have heard him speaking with his own voice. I think any accent that he would have had would have made the character even more interesting. Instead the dubbing of the character and his resulting voice to me seem's to feminine. Maybe nobody else had a problem with it but to the voice just didn't match the character. I know he was an elf and you could say that maybe the dubbing effect made the character more ethereal or something but I still would have preferred hearing the character speak with his own voice. Or maybe if a version of the film could have been found with David Bennent speaking we could have a debate about which version is better. As if there aren't enough versions out there to debate which is the best.

[–] GiricNS 12 years ago

I know what you mean. I was watching the blu-ray of this just last night and was thinking the same thing I have been thinking for years: the dub is horrible and it sounds too similar to the voice they use for Blix.

edit: was just over at the page for Alice Playten and someone posted that she provided the voice for both Blix and Gump...so that is probably why I always thought that.

"Like German tourists…the stupid are everywhere!"

Arnold Judas Rimmer, Red Dwarf

[–] zyggums 12 years ago

I liked the voice a LOT. It seemed like a unique idea. It seemed.. elvish.. to look eternally childlike but with a very very old voice. I respect your decision no to like it but I think the simple dubbing had more "efect" than 100,000,000 of cgi secial fx.

[–] Burning_Sosobra 12 years ago

I was actually listening to the commentary by Ridley Scott and speaking of David Bennent(Gump), Ridley said the reason why his voice was dubbed over is because Bennent is German and has a thick German accent, and someone from the studio was watching the original version of it right after it was filmed and made a comment about his German accent by saying, "We can't have a damn Nazi in the movie." All because he was German, the studio didn't want a "Nazi" sounding character. Absolutely ridiculous So Bennent was dubbed over by a female who also was the voice of Blix. Even Scott himself said he wished that he had not been forced to dub Bennents' voice because he thought his German accent actually accentuated the character and that he sounded better with his own voice rather than being dubbed by a female.

Just an odd tidbit about Bennent, he was around 19-20 when he did Legend and had not yet really gone through puberty, which is why he looks like he's 12 years old; but strangely enough, in his 20s, he finally matured to a man and grew to an average height. Being that short and pre-pubescent at the age of 19, I would think he'd have that Webster disease and would always be short and look like a child. I guess he just took a lot longer to hit puberty, by about 7 or 8 years longer than when it is normal for an adolescent to go through puberty.

"This is the end, my only friend. The end."

[–] 12 years ago

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[–] magolding 10 years ago

Just an odd tidbit about Bennent, he was around 19-20 when he did Legend and had not yet really gone through puberty, which is why he looks like he's 12 years old; but strangely enough, in his 20s, he finally matured to a man and grew to an average height. Being that short and pre-pubescent at the age of 19, I would think he'd have that Webster disease and would always be short and look like a child. I guess he just took a lot longer to hit puberty, by about 7 or 8 years longer than when it is normal for an adolescent to go through puberty.

He was born in 1966 and Legend was firmed between 1982 and 1985, so he was aged somewhere between about 16 and 19 when he looked about 12.

In a story anthology I once read an introduction to a story in which the writer said he did not reach puberty until 18 or shave until 19.

There are many actors in the IMDB who were very short for their ages and sometimes played kids a lot younger than their ages. Of courses the reasons varied.

[–] magolding 9 years ago

I was actually listening to the commentary by Ridley Scott and speaking of David Bennent(Gump), Ridley said the reason why his voice was dubbed over is because Bennent is German and has a thick German accent, and someone from the studio was watching the original version of it right after it was filmed and made a comment about his German accent by saying, "We can't have a damn Nazi in the movie." All because he was German, the studio didn't want a "Nazi" sounding character.

The studio executives sound like jerks.

When I was a child my eye doctor was a Doctor Kurber who had an accent, and I was told by someone that he was German. I didn't wonder if he was a Jewish refugee from Hitler or an ex-Nazi.

I just accepted that he had been born in Germany and had moved to the United States sometime before, during, or after World War II.

As a kid I didn't think that it was my job to go around finding out if German-Americans were ex-Nazis or not.

David Bennent was born in 1966 and in the 1980s he looked a few years younger than he actually was. If his parents were exactly 27 years older than him they would have been born in 1939 and would have been only 6 when Nazism was banned forever - and the minimum age to join the Nazi party was 18.

So the executive was claiming that audiences would assume that all German-speaking kids sounded like Nazis, even kids so young that their parents were too young to have been Nazis.

[–] Burning_Sosobra 9 years ago

You're absolutely right magolding. It's ridiculous, isn't it? Hollywood execs can be so stupid sometimes.

I look at my red hands and my mean face, and I wonder about that man that's gone so wrong.

[–] 9 years ago

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[–] WeAintFoundShin 9 years ago

I love how Gump's voice sounds.

So otherworldly.

It somehow just makes perfect sense for him to sound that way.