Roiland, whose exit from the Adult Swim series was announced in January in light of domestic abuse charges, had voiced the title characters since its 2013 launch.
I personally think it was the wrong call to drop Roiland before his court case for domestic abuse was reviewed - innocent until proven guilty.
Remember how at the start of the Depp/Heard trial everyone labeled Depp a monster? Then in court, Heard revealed herself to be a liar.
However, the texts he sent to minors were disqualifying in their own right. As a form of risk mitigation, you can't continue to employ the star of a show teens love, texting underage girls about how they should hurry up and turn eighteen.
I believe he actually wanted to leave. He's a Co creator and will still win money from Rick and Morty. But not if people stop watching as protest or something like that. And at this point it's all 100% an image issue and it doesn't matter if he's guilty or not. He knows his image is already fkd. Most of his "friends" and coworkers cut relations with him to protect themselves.
The Roiland DV case is very different from the depp/heard defamation case.
1: the Roiland case was about whether or not he was found to be committing DV. and it was inconclusive evidence. He might not be found guilty but he’s also not found innocent.
2: His accuser was not to be found guilty of perjury. the case was about finding evidence of DV. Not perjury of his accuser. the depp/heard case was explicitly about what heard gave to the media is what she was found guilty of.
3: Roiland and his accuser didn’t sign a non-disparagement claus. and his accuser didn’t then go talk to Washington post without any conclusive evidence on the outcome of the case. And probably a good thing roiland didn’t sign such a non-disparagement claus as he did post misinformation meant to publicly harm his accuser with that misleading Twitter post about what his case was actually about.
What's most egregious is that Adult Swim are owned by WB and look how many chances they gave Ezra Miller and he still got to be The Flash. Roiland had one set of dropped charges and he got sacked.
The number of people in this post that don't understand the difference between a private company's HR/PR decisions and the actual legal system is shocking.
Honestly the customer doesn't even have to dislike the shirt. It's incredible the lack of rights that Americans have in the workplace. Especially when we also have very weak safety nets in place for people who are out of work.
No one said they couldn’t fire roiland because it violates laws. They said he shouldn’t have been fired because of the concept of innocent until proven guilty. That’s separate from the law.
But the text messages to minors should be enough for anyone to want him fired.
Not sure any AI could handle voicing the two main characters of a show (yet), but the ongoing strikes and all do have me worry for the future of the profession.
This is why you don’t short yourself on voice actors and make only one do them all. Hinging your entire success off of one and only one person brings and creates it’s own risks.
It shouldn't be a problem, there are some really good Justin Roiland soundalikes, and it's not like Rick's voice hasn't changed over the course of the show anyways.
The harder part will be finding someone with the right comedic timing. That's Roiland's bigger contribution to the show
Absolutely pointless trying to keep the show going at this point. Just make something new, I’ve got enough confidence in Harmon and the rest of the writing team that I feel like they’d be able to create something great regardless of Roiland being a part of it.
It has been pretty clear that Harmon is the creative talent behind the show and Roiland had made himself replaceable. Harmon probably feels he can continue the show, so why not?
I don't think it's that simple. Stuff Harmon works alone on can still be great, but it has a tendency to collapse under its own self-awareness. Whereas Roiland alone is just lulrandom and unhinged without Harmon's storytelling skills pulling it together.
The two together had this amazing mix of self-awareness and chaos energy. Prime example being the Meeseeks episode. Remains to be seen if Harmon can pull it off on his own.
We left them all behind in the migration and have an opportunity to set our own direction here. I, for one, vote that /s is not required on lemmy and people should be shunned for using it, like emojis on reddit.
We are all sarcastic all the time. There's always sarcasm.
Of course I know this info because as a Rick and Morty watcher, my brain is clearly capable of such things.
I'm all for rooting out the predators I'm our society, but what are we doing when we take a franchise away from it's creator based on accusations that don't even have enough weight to warrant a trial?
A core tenant of our justice system is "innocent until proven guilty". Was there even an internal company investigation that justifies punishing him?
This exactly. Just because the charges dismissed against somebody doesn't mean the internal investigations didn't make it clear they'd be better off without his influence, and it also doesn't mean the person is innocent of being deeply toxic and likely to run into issues again, it just means a prosecutor wasn't willing to risk anything other than a clear win as so often happens with these types of cases.
Yes, but there was also a ton of leaked texts of him speaking inappropriately with underage girls and it also surfaced past instances of him defending pedophilia on podcasts.
He's a liability to the IP and the people that work for it.
Holy crap I read the whole thread and article to find out there’s no new thing here - its the same news as earlier this year.
I misread the title as “‘rick and morty’ gives up on recasting process . . “ and thought they were going to kill off the characters or something. Nope. No news.
I think the new part is the confirmation that they're seeking soundalikes and not recasting with someone who sounds totally different like in Solar Opposites
It's interesting that the charges were dismissed, but I didn't follow the case closely. Regardless what he did is bad news and best to severe ties to Roiland
The quality of Rick and Morty fell off a cliff two seasons ago, and I chalked it up to everything being fucked up by the pandemic. Then I figured there was turnover in the writers room, and stories about how Justin was working on other projects more. Then after the news came out about Roiland, and the court case, it all finally made sense. Rick and Morty sucked shit the last two seasons, and I fear that Roiland was THE essential piece that made it all come together so perfectly. I'll tune in and check it out the next time they roll our new eps, but going by the last two seasons, I think we had our shining brilliant perfect moment in the sun, and I'm not sure it's coming back.
Justin's humor was unique but was really dry when he was in his own. The other writers really brought his voice to life, IMHO. On that note, I think he was only a writer on one or two episodes of R&M.
Yeah I think if you only have to watch Solar Opposites to see that... his writing touch isn't really crucial to R&M! Good riddance! Someone else can make their mark with the voice acting!
Allegedly Roiland hasn't been very involved in the creative process of the show since season 2. He just mostly showed up to the record booth (like Family Guy's Seth MacFarlane).
Dan Harmon (the other co-creator and) and the remaining writting team were responsible for it.
Do you sit in the writer's room? What information do you have that contradicts what actual writers and actors on the show have said about Roiland's (lack of) involvement in later seasons?
I think we're definitely going to lose quality with the voice acting and energy that Roiland brought to the character. Plus he was great in the improv skits from intergalactic cable/Morty's mind blowers. But as long as Dan Harmon is in creative control, I think we're set with the good storylines
“Soundalikes” never sound alike enough. It would be easy to write a story where their voices are permanently changed. Maybe I’ll be proven wrong, but as of now, I’m thinking they should have just worked with the change instead of trying to pretend it didn’t happen.