We’ve written in the past about why it is a very bad idea to think that live-action actors are the same as voice actors, and why casting celebrities for animated movies rarely works (the ball’s in your court, Chris Pratt).
Different media requires different skills. Jack Nicholson was a great live-action Joker, but it’s hard to argue against the iconic work Mark Hamill did over the years. Same thing with Kevin Conroy, Tara Strong, George Newbern, Clancy Brown, and countless others DC animated voice actors.
We’ve seen characters like Batman reinterpreted over and over the past few decades, from video games to animation. Each one offers something new and unique, whether it’s Kevin Conroy’s emotion and excellent gravitas and Benjamin McKenzie’s naive yet hungry Caped Crusader, to Diedrich Bader’s light fun take on the character, or Troy Baker’s chameleon-like ability to voice every creature and person on the planet.
Hiring live-action actors just for the sake of being recognizable is a detriment to the animation industry and an insult to the voice actors’ ability to do the same work, but it also may be a bad omen for the future of the entire DC animation department.
That’s because, even in the darkest moments of the DCEU, animation kept the franchise afloat with some fantastic animated stories, including a combination of original and rather faithful adaptations of classic comic book storylines.