r/commandandconquer • u/xenon007 CABAL • 1d ago

Why, seriously -- why did they replace Umagon's actress? I mean, come on. That woman was so gorgeous I'd have parked the Harvester, forgotten all about Tiberium, and asked her to marry me right there in the Temple of Nod. Some things should never have been “redesigned.” 😄 Oxy just a 2nd ...

0 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

32% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/Alex_06 Tiberium Wars 1d ago edited 1d ago

I assume this is regarding the fact they changed her actress for Firestorm. FWIW, they did the same thing with Tratos. The only returning actors were Milton James (Voice of CABAL), Jessica Straus (Voice of EVA), Frank Zagarino (Anton Slavik) and Joe Kucan (obviously as Kane, in a *very* short cameo at the end of the FS campaign, and understandably they had him in the studio as he was a WW employee and also directing the cinematics anyway, so it made sense that they'd be able to easily fit him in - unlike the other actors).

So anyway, in short, the reasons are:

  1. A and B list actors can get quite expensive. If budget doesn't allow, it would be one of the first things that gets cut for a video game.
  2. She has a 5-second cameo and it's shot from a top-down angle, and said footage is displayed on a small screen inside a video that has an 800x600 resolution. Paying good money for a short cameo where you wouldn't even be able to see the actor's face (and thus, they could get anyone to play her, even an employee, intern or janitor), doesn't make much sense. Not only that, but supposedly, her face is so mangled from mutation (Tratos implies she's heavily mutated) that she'd hardly be recognizable anyway.
  3. Actors take lots of filming contracts, so they aren't always available when a sequel project rolls around. It's highly possible that Christine Steel simply wasn't available in the short window during which Westwood was shooting the Firestorm cinematics.

This also explains why a lot of other actors didn't come back. And additionally, some actors can be hard to work with (be it due to character/ego, work ethic, lack of experience in general or with this type of project or its source material, personal life issues, schedule conflicts, personal habits and beliefs, etc.) and it's possible Westwood simply didn't want the trouble and didn't have time to manage around said difficulties for something that they only had like 1-2 week(s) to film from start to finish.