In a world of memorable movie trailer voices, you have definitely heard this one before...
Back in the 2000s, Don LaFontaine was known as THE voice when it came to movie trailer voice over. His trademarks as a voice over artist were his deep, bass-y voice, and his tendency to begin trailers with "In a world..."
Back in his heyday, I had heard his voice in a wide variety of trailers, but I only really became familiar with his name when Geico had their ad campaign featuring popular actors and celebrities helping "actual" Geico customers tell their stories, and he was featured.
Don LaFontaine's Geico Commercial:
Over the course of his career, LaFontaine recorded trailers for over 5,000 movies, and the spots he did for television, video games and network promotions number in the hundreds of thousands.
His prolific career earned him several flattering nicknames: "Thunder Throat," "The King of Movie Trailers," and perhaps most audaciously of all, "The Voice of God."
The movie trailers that utilized his voice included Robots, Pokemon: The First Movie, Stuart Little, The Terminator, Die Hard, The Hunt for Red October, Home Alone, Backdraft, Batman Returns, The Mask, Pagemaster, Speed, Rush Hour and Toy Story.
Trailer for The Hunt for Red October, featuring LaFontaine:
LaFontaine passed away after complications from a pneumothorax on September 1, 2008. He had turned 68 years old nearly a week earlier, on August 26. Leading up to that, LaFontaine had been previously hospitalized with a pulmonary embolism.
LaFontaine's career also included working as a recording engineer. A short video about his career can be found on YouTube, with interviews courtesy of LaFontaine himself, Paul Pape, Greg O'Neill and Melissa Disney.
To save everyone some searching, I'll include that video right here:
One unfortunate thing about LaFontaine's passing is that since then, very few movie trailers have had narration of any kind - instead relying on music and dialogue from the movie to illustrate what moviegoers can expect. I don't know about my readers, but I personally think that while no one can replace LaFontaine, it is a pity that we don't have someone new that we can remember as THE voice for movie trailers and look forward to more of their work. Although, Jon Bailey, who we all know from the Honest Trailers YouTube video series comes pretty close in terms of vocal register.
But I think we can all agree that the real pity is not being able to hear his voice in the trailers for all of our favorite movies. Just imagine what some of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movie trailers might have been like with LaFontaine's involvement.
More information about Don LaFontaine's career can be found on his Wikipedia page below.
If you would like to leave a comment on the embedded videos, you can find them here:
Oh that was awesome. He is missed.
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