It has now been a trend for the filmmakers to bring in pan-India stars and impactful actors into their films (which are in non-native languages of the actor), to bring in more star power and increase the chance of the film’s success. But in most of the films, as the actors are non-familiar with the language of the film, they are often dubbed for their dialogues by another artist while they just enact them. A very few actors have voiced their dialogues themselves. This makes the character lose continuity and the actor’s potential too remains unexplored.
Actors’ main purpose while doing a film is to commit completely to their character and do their best to live the character. Dialogues are one of the most essential part of a film and if a character is taken back from his/her dialogues, more than half of the impact is lost. To allow an actor to properly portray his/her character, it is necessary for the actor to speak the dialogue by themselves. Of one people give voice and another acts, the character lose impact as has been seen in many films like Saaho (Prabhas), 2.0 (Akshay Kumar) etc.
Recently we heard of the news that AI will be used to imitate the voice of Amitabh Bachchan while voicing his dialogues for Vettaiyan, as fans backlashed the Prevue where Prakash Raj was dubbing for the actor. People said the voice of Prakash Raj is far from the actor’s original voice. Instead of relying on a completely new way of inducing AI, the actor should have volunteered to speak his dialogues himself. When he did so last in Kalki people really cherished the role. AI can only imitate his voice, not his character.
RRR became a global hit, because the actors themselves dubbed for the movie in other languages like Hindi and English which led to the film’s impact being elevated. Same was with the case of Kalki 2898 AD as well. Though the actors will have the tough job of familiarising themselves with the language, speaking fluently, embedding feelings in a language they don’t know; but succeeding in such things is what makes a great actor. And if the actors indeed follow this, the experience of the audience while watching the film and the film’s impact both will have a significant increase.