Brian Cox, who will do anything for money, is the narrator of the new story trailer for Tekken 8. All I can think about while watching this commercial is that Logan Roy should be in this game.
If you don’t know Cox from HBO’s Succession, a show about fathers and their children throwing each other into metaphorical volcanos rather than literal ones, you may also know him as the current voice of McDonald’s, among many, many other roles. The man has simply been everywhere: he was William Stryker in X-Men; Hannibal Lecter in Manhunter; Samara’s adoptive father in the American remake of The Ring. He was in Braveheart, he’s the voice of Death in Good Omens and he was in both Super Troopers and Super Troopers 2.
Brian Cox is a great performer, though not always a discerning one. It’s no surprise to see him in an advertisement for a video game, especially one that he appears to know nothing about, given the surprise you can hear in his voice each time he says the name “Heihachi Mishima.”
While Cox’s work in this five minute short is evocative of Krusty the Clown in the recording booth, it did put an idea in my head. With all the talk of rivalries between fathers and sons, Logan Roy, the patriarch from Succession, would be a perfect fit for Tekken. And so would the rest of his petulant little family.
Succession is a television show about a family that simply hates everything about each other, but also covets each other’s power. The story revolves around the Roy family, who own a media empire, and the conflict that arises when it becomes clear that father Logan Roy needs to declare his successor. His son from another marriage, Connor, is a dipshit libertarian who’s running for President. Logan’s sometimes favorite son Kendall crumbles under the pressure and descends into addiction and vehicular manslaughter. Logan’s daughter Siobhan is smart but inexperienced, and Logan doesn’t respect women anyway. Roman Roy, the youngest son, is the most loyal to Logan but also the most volatile, with a tendency for self sabotage.
Like the Mishima family in Tekken, the Roys are all constantly at war with each other, but rather than fight with fists, they fight with words and money. If Logan and Kendall had the option to drop each other off a cliff or into a volcano, they would do it. Unfortunately, the devil gene does not exist in the universe of Succession and this would be considered murder.
Hell, sometimes the characters do break out into real violence, like this sibling slap fight in season one:
Or this scene, where Logan Roy slaps his son so hard that he loses a tooth:
Or this scene, where one character pelts another character with water bottles for displeasing him:
Or this this scene late in the show, where one of the Roy sons begs a protestor to beat him up because of his daddy issues:
The threat of violence is everywhere in Succession — the Roy family mainly interacts with each other by causing each other pain. Why not let them let it all hang out in a fighting game? They want to fight each other, and their particular character quirks would make for fun fighting game move sets. Can you imagine: Logan Roy as a grappler, bear hugging his children into submission, while Kendall counters him as a zoner, pelting him with designer sneakers and cocaine. If nothing else, it’s clear that Brian Cox is available for voice work.
