Tim Curry Red Alert 3
Image: Electronic Arts

Tim Curry is undoubtedly one of the finest actors of his generation. He rose to fame in the iconic cult hit The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but his talents are on display in numerous other films, including Clue, Home Alone 2, It, Muppet Treasure Island and Legend. He's also a prolific voice actor, having appeared in many popular cartoons and video games.

One such video game has proven to be Curry's most meme-worthy moment and is the subject of an excellent oral history piece over at Vice. That game is Command & Conquer spin-off Red Alert 3, and Curry's performance as the Russian leader is gloriously hammy throughout the RTS's FMV cutscenes.

However, there's one scene in particular which has risen to internet superstardom.

Haris Orkin, who wrote the cinematic dialogue for Red Alert 3, admits that he wasn't aware it had become so popular:

I wrote the line. I just didn’t even know about it. I got to figure out how I can exploit that. That’s 12 million views on YouTube, you know?

What makes the enduring fame of this particular performance so amazing is that it's a largely throwaway line and not part of any of the major cinematics.

Recounting the day when the infamous line was spoken, assistant cinematics editor Joshua Basche explains how Curry approached the dialogue:

It’d be these long takes of them just sitting there reading a teleprompter as lines came up. It was towards the end of the day, and you could kind of tell Curry was tired, he wanted to get out of there. But then that line comes up. And you saw the smile pop onto his face when he read it through first. The first take was that take. It’s so bombastic. It’s so fantastic. I think he did exactly what he wanted to do.

We'd highly recommend you give the full feature a read, as it's full of amazing comments and quotes about what is, by and large, a very silly video game.

[source vice.com]