How ‘Star Wars’ and ‘The Lion King’ Made James Earl Jones the Voice of Generations
variety.comPeter Debruge Chief Film Critic The phrase “voice of a generation” gets thrown around a lot, but if that label were defined by sheer recognizability, it would be hard to find a better fit than James Earl Jones, who died Tuesday.
The real question is: which generation? Depending on whether you were born before or after the year 1990, chances are good that the sound of Jones’ roll-of-thunder baritone instantly conjures one of two characters in your mind: “The Lion King” father Mufasa or “Star Wars” villain Darth Vader.
That means, Jones speaks, and you think either of a cosmically wise patriarch, whose ghost returns to offer his self-doubting successor an encouraging “remember who you are,” or the most malevolent dad in all the universe, a destroyer of planets determined to lure his son to the Dark Side.
Those two projects were such pop-culture monsters — Disney’s Hamlet-on-the-savannah riff grossed nearly $1 billion, while George Lucas’ sci-fi saga spawned an almost religious following — that it hardly needs to be said that Jones made his mark without actually appearing in either franchise.
Read more on variety.com
