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Originally Posted by ender098
BBQ was a treat! His accent was pure stereotype Boston!
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Heh, I agree. It was so bad that it was good!
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Originally Posted by ender098
Destro's voice would have suited him if he wasn't supposed to be a Scottish Lord! But he sounded like James Earl Jones with cotton mouth!
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I understand what you're saying here, but I don't entirely agree. Actually, I never even realized for many years that Arthur Burghardt was African-American (until I learned that he played Stalker too!). I just figured they wanted a really deep voice (which fits the character), but I think he tried to throw a little Sean Connery accent (or something similar) in there, which I'm guessing is where your problem lies. I do think the voice suits him, but I also feel that as the series goes on, he goes a little too deep and it becomes hard to understand him sometimes. As a kid, due to the abnormal deepness and the increasingly muddled accent (which reached its peak here), I could not for the life of me understand his first line in G.I. Joe: The Movie (all I could hear was "(throbbing bass) Cobra Commander (throbbing bass) world class
buffon!")(and my TV back then didn't even
have bass!)
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Originally Posted by ender098
(Cobra Commander) talked like pee-wee Herman with a lisp after sucking helium! What person in their right mind would follow someone with a voice like that? How can you take that sniveling, high pitched voice seriously?
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Like Destro, I think Cobra Commander's voice started out okay. Yes, it was scratchy and he was always prone to shrieking tantrums... But listen to him in the very first episode -- part one of the M.A.S.S. Device (and the rest of that mini-series too). To my ears at least, his voice sounds pretty deep and menacing. But later on, I think Latta starting mixing his Cobra Commander voice with his Starscream voice (who was always whiny from day one), and we got a sniveling Cobra Commander. However, I also feel that it sort of fits the "James Bond Villain" persona he was given on the cartoon. It was somewhat Blofeld-esque (classic Blofeld from "You Only Live Twice," of course). To use your analagy, I couldn't see a character played by Gary Oldman trying to draw a picture of himself on the moon, but I could totally see Donald Pleasance doing so! The voice was simply an extension of the over-the-top nature of the TV show Cobra Commander -- which though it may not be the way we all think he should be portrayed, certainly appealed to kids (the kids I knew, anyway).
That said, I will say that I tend to like Cobra Commander's portrayal in the comics better than on the show. He was far more cunning and ruthless, and you could buy him as the leader of Cobra -- but that doesn't stop me from still hearing the cartoon voice when I read his dialogue (and I actually think that voice enhances him in the later issues when he became super verbose and prone to using gigantic words for no reason).