Talk:Rik Thomas

I also so busting out my DVDs when I get home and cataloguing everyone I can that was him. I don't have Victory, though! - Chris McFeely 06:51, 25 November 2011 (EST)

Formerly a soldier in the British Special Forces, Thomas settled in Hong Kong following a tour in Vietnam Um, what? This makes it sound like he fought in the Vietnam war, which the UK didn't participate in? Or did they? --KilMichaelMcC 13:15, 25 November 2011 (EST)

I'd quite like to read the interview with Rik Thomas from Giant Robot - I'm sure it'd shed more light on this, but I haven't been able to find a copy online and issue 30 isn't available as a back issue on their web site. --abates 18:28, 25 November 2011 (EST)

I found some on eBay, and Interrobang's bought one. :) - Chris McFeely 04:57, 26 November 2011 (EST)

Excellent! Maybe it'll point us to some of the other actors too. --abates 05:05, 26 November 2011 (EST)

You can be stationed in countries without there being a war there. --ItsWalky 18:32, 25 November 2011 (EST)

Giant Robot article

I'm skipping sections that aren't relevant to Rik (it's mostly the writer reminiscing about kung fu or explaining what dubbing is). —Interrobang 17:25, 5 December 2011 (EST)

SHAOLIN DUBBER

words | Daniel Wu

[...]

SLICK RIK

Rik Thomas is a hardass, maybe even harder than the characters he voiced in kung fu movies. Even at 60, one look at Thomas' meaty hands reveals he is not some geeky anime voice actor. Formerly a lieutenant colonel of the British Special Forces who served in Vietnam and the Congo, Rik was discharged and settled in Hong Kong in the early '70s. In 1972, while tossing back a few pints in a pub, a stranger aksed Rik if he wanted to try dubbing. He said, "Why not?" and his second career began.

[...]

TOUGH GUYS

When Rik entered the world of dubbing, Golden Harvest and the Shaw Brothers studios were the top kung fu movie makers in Hong Kong. At the same time, urban Americans were eating up kung fu movies and the competing companies responded by furiously pumping out English versions of their products to pad their profits.

The ex-solder and his colleagues had no idea how many peopel were religiously watching the films—to the voice actors, the industry was just a way of making some extra cash. As they furiously dubbed every kung fu feature that made it to America, their voices buried themselves into pop culture fans' subconscious. Any movie with "One-Armed Swordsman." "Wu Tang," or "Shaolin" in its title probably has Rik's vocal stamp on it. As his eerily familiar voice recounts stories, I keep expecting him to blurt out in a warbly voice, "My Wu Tang sword will destroy you!"

Rik met Bruce Lee on the set of Game of Death. Bruce would show off his speed and accuracy by snap-kicking Rik's tie and flipping it up in the air. Rik, who was an extra, finally got tired of being treated as the gweilo guinea pig and told Bruce, "You're very fast, but all it would take is for me to land one punch in the middle of your chest and both your arms and legs would fall off." After recalling this moment, he adds, "But, man, he was the fastest guy I've ever seen in my life."

The golden age of kung fu movies died out, but Rik's highly developed and specialized skills allowed him to keep working. Eventually he stated his own company, Omni Productions, which has dubbed everything from Communist propaganda films to Japanese TV dramas to the latest Hong Kong cinema for English-speaking markets around the world. With 15 to 20 voice actors working for him, he directs every project and considers himself "a big fish in a tiny drop of water." There are simply very few people with his expertise or experience in the field.

This page almost makes it look like Rik established his own company as soon as he settled in HK, but that's fine, 'cuz I appreciate the backstory here. Judging from the many, many kung films I watched (understanding that film/video release timelines of English dubs didn't necessarily correlate with those of original theatrical releases), Rik had a long career working under the likes of HK voice legend Teddy Thomas and possibly others, at least a decade before Omni was founded. Speaking for myself, the specific quality of his voice seems to have changed at around the 90's; can't describe it, but for a while I actually didn't recognize several voices as Rik's looking at Omni's G1 output. It didn't quite match the stuff from his "heyday". FWIW, the "heyday" I refer to is the stuff us kung fu mavens remember about Rik most of all, long before we even knew his name. Easily the two most memorable characters are the infamous "Ghost-Faced Killer" from "Mystery of Chess Boxing" and the "Tai Chi" master from "Born Invincible", with the high-pitched "eunuch" voice. To me, that's classic Rik. JoseBxR (talk) 19:47, 24 July 2024 (EDT)

SECRET HISTORY

Rik is not exactly impressed with the work that comes form the Hong Kong film industry these days. "Hong Kong is about manufactured packaging of pop stars," he says. "Back in the old days, people had real skill and talent.Today, we have people like Edison Chen. He is a talentless, arrogant little bastard who thinks he's Leonardo DiCaprio. But you know what? It doesn't matter, because it sells! People out there are buying it. It doesn't matter if the movies are no good because they are making money, and that's the bottom line."

The bottom line about Rik is not his mountain of work, infamous voice, or encounters with Bruce Lee; it's the fact that he is a non-Chinese who has racked up an impressive 30-year career in the Hong Kong film industry. It just doesn't seem fair for someone liek that to be left out of the cinematic history books, but Rik is fine with it. Come to think of it, I don't give a shit about the guy who dubs David Hasselhoff's voice into German for the Euro version of Baywatch, either.

That's pretty awesome! I wonder if there are any good shots of him to be had in Game of Death. --abates 18:07, 5 December 2011 (EST)

Unfortunately, the only image of Rik Thomas in the article is a tiny picture with the author. The other images are of random kung fu characters that I couldn't even begin to identify. —Interrobang 18:17, 5 December 2011 (EST)

If he's visible in Game of Death, then it's be in Clouse's footage, which means he wouldn't have even met Bruce to begin with. If he was involved in the original Game of Death concept, then he was never on camera because footage only involved Bruce, James Tien, Chieh Yuan, Dan Inosanto, Ji Han Jae and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Doing a bit of research, I'm starting to think he made that up. Here it's said the incident happened when he was auditioning for Way of the Dragon and issued his threat, which resulted in him not getting the part. It also claims he'd "known Bruce for a while". Then again a lot of the other "mythbusting" in that article just comes to "this one guy says otherwise", regardless of the validity of his claims. --Detour 21:09, 4 October 2012 (EDT)