Yes. And after the fourth film he was in, Monsters Inc as the Agreeable Snowman, they realised he was a tradition and a good luck charm, so they’ve never faltered in including him in every one of their films since.
Brad Bird was reluctant to have him in The Incredibles, because he thinks that kind of superstition is silly, but then the role of the Underminer came up, he got cold feet on his doubts, and cast John again.
I think you’re right and that is does sound more like his real voice in the Leia scene. The only thing I can think of is that his line reading may have betrayed a more distinct or distracting accent or inflection in the first scene, while simply shouting some instructions amidst the bustle (plus hangar noise and music) was not as conspicuous.
Also, part of the first scene (about closing the shield doors) has his back facing the camera (it’s an over-the-shoulder shot of Leia), so it’s possible there was a change in the script for his character and they needed someone onhand after-the-fact (in post-production) to say the new lines, so they ADR’d that entire sequence with a new voice.
I am not particularly sheltered, and I just came into this thread to say this is the first I’ve heard of this John Ratzenberger person.
Hilarity, you’ve never seen Cheers?
John Ratzinger was already ‘famous’ as a character actor before he was on Cheers. He was one of those guys whom you knew by face but rarely by name. I recognized him the first time I saw him on Cheers. I guess there are no character actors any more.
I think his big line is “Function negative, sir!” when they try, and fail, to trigger the missiles’ self-destruct.
Okay, maybe I am sheltered. When I was a kid my mother had the tv on constantly. All. The. Time. I hated it.
As an adult, I owned a TV my mother (ha!) bought me from 1977-1988, then didn’t have another TV until 2001. So I missed a lot of popular culture.
One thing that I noticed was that when I wasn’t watching TV regularly and then did, at somebody’s house, it mostly really sucked. Very bad stuff. Which my friends seemed to think was good stuff. Cheers was one of those things. So maybe I saw an off episode, or maybe it was an acquired taste, or maybe in order to appreciate it you had to know who the characters were. Okay. I was not impressed. (Same thing with Seinfeld.)
So I have this big TV gap. I never saw Laugh-In or All in the Family–or probably, more accurately, I saw a couple of episodes, or maybe just a scene. Even now I mostly use my TV to watch movies, when my son isn’t using it to play Mario Kart.
Oddly enough I have seen most of the movies people are mentioning, but without having noticed this Ratzinger guy. Well, he’s ubiquitous, I’m clueless, what can I say.
Hilarity, you owe it to yourself to rent season 8 of Cheers and watch the episode called “What is … Cliff Clavin?” This is the episode in which Cliffy the mailman, who considers himself one of the greatest living trivia experts appears on the game show “Jeopardy.” Not to spoil it, but Cliff makes a name for himself, only not in the way he envisioned. To this day, Alex Trebek still talks about that one. Even if that is the only episode you watch, it is still considered one of the all time classics of comedy.