WI:Judith Barsi lives

samcster94

Banned
All Don Bluth fans know Judith Barsi was murdered in 1988 by her father at the age of 8. What if she had lived and she was taken to a foster home??? I also would like to know what would happen to his quasi-Disney movies, as she would be alive then. I do think it is too late to keep him commercially successful as the Little Mermaid is still going to debut in TTL.
 
It's certainly hard to say which direction Bluth would take. He certainly tried his damnedest to compete with Disney in the '90s, but he also was responding to studio and concerned parents' pressure as well. But when Fox gave him free rein with Anastasia, he didn't hesitate, and made a film very much on par with his prime works. As for her, one likes to think that she'd have quite a flourishing career in voiceover work.

P.S. I heard at one point that her murder was partial inspiration for "Janie's Got A Gun" and was thrown in along with Lisa "Left-Eye" Lopes and her then-boyfriend's arson incident for Journey's song "Castles Burning." Any truth to this?
 
How Judith's future career goes would have depended on her physical development and how her voice developed, as she was short for her age and was getting hormone injections to help her grow taller. She was extremely intelligent and loved voice acting and I have no doubt that barring some quirk of fate or sudden change in interests, she would have stuck with it. At the age of 10, I would've ranked her as the best young voice actress in the United States in 1988 (as the only three young voice actresses with more potential/talent at the time, Tara Charendoff (Strong), Cree Summer, and Alyson Court, all lived in Toronto).

As for Bluth, I could definitely see him casting Judith as the voice of Thumbelina rather than casting Jodi Benson as IOTL (though this would've probably been contingent on her being able to sound a bit more mature once she became a teenager). If he couldn't cast her as Thumbelina for whatever reason, possibly he might've had Anastasia made a bit younger in that film so that he could cast her in that.

Judith would've been a spectacularly good voice actress. If her voice had stayed mostly light and young sounding, I could easily see her as a more prolific Lacey Chabert type of voice actress, perhaps landing roles like Eliza Thornberry (The Wild Thornberries) or Gwen Stacy (Spectacular Spider-Man). If she develops some range, the sky's the limit, we could be talking about her in the same way we talk about Tara Strong or Grey Griffin (Delisle) today. Who knows, maybe Mary Kay Bergman takes her under her wing and it ends up saving her life too. I'm not sure she would've broken into live action because of her diminutive size, but who knows: maybe she gets cast as Galinda in Wicked instead of Kristin Chenoweth.

Such an amazing girl with so much potential, killed in a most horrific and tragic way.
 
I actually had my own idea for where Judith could be used.

You see, I created an alternate timeline for Midway Studios (creators of Mortal Kombat), became a first party developer for Nintendo. This is part of my own larger spin on the Massively Multiplayer timeline of the Nintendo/Sony SNES CD ROM and is successors.

Anyway, Midway creates a series of Mario 3D games akin to a mix of Mario 64, Mario bros. 3, and Donkey Kong Country.

Know what? Just read the ideas here....

(Judith would voice the "Cream" idea)
 
Sorry to revisit this but what makes me angry is the hypocrisy of some elsewhere. You keep hearing that there can't be a Poltergeist IV without Heather O'Rourke as "Heather _was_ Carol Anne" but Judith Barsi was replaced on those endless The Land Before Time sequels and she died much more tragically than Heather. Why is Judith seen as disposable?. Probably because Heather was blonde, blue-eyed and All-American while Judith was brown haired and eyed, olive skinned and Hungarian ("ethnic")
 
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