Earlier in the month during The Game Awards, voice actor Christopher Judge took the Best Performance award for his role as Kratos in God of War Ragnarok. Via a couple of tweets from its official account, the award show says that Judge’s speech lasted seven minutes and 59 seconds,making it the longest speech in the award show’s history. Though a second claim, that it’s a world record setter as the longest acceptance speech, is a little dubious.
To start, we’ll be taking the recorded length of the speech during the event, or it being the longest one in the history of The Game Awards, at face value. But for the claim that it beat the record set by Greer Garson at the 1942 Oscars, that’s where the devil is in the details. If we look at the official Guinness World Records entry, the record is for the “longest speech accepting an Oscar award”, and specifically an Oscar award. So that one still stands.
At 7 minutes and 59 seconds, Christopher Judge holds the record for the longest speech in #TheGameAwards history.
He won for his performance as Kratos in God of War: Ragnarok. pic.twitter.com/9AMPYHF8Vp
— The Game Awards (@thegameawards) December 25, 2022
Then there’s the part about the speech by Judge being the longest awards show acceptance speech in history. The internet has a clip of Judge making a slightly longer speech – by about 20 seconds, albeit with less coherency – at the DICE Awards all the way back in 2019. So not only was his speech at The Game Awards earlier this month not the longest ever, it’s not even the longest acceptance speech Judge has given.
Leave it to Kratos to set a world record.
The longest awards show acceptance speech in history WAS actress Greer Garson at the 1942 Oscars.
She spoke for 5 minutes 30 seconds.
Christopher Judge’s speech at #thegameawards was 7 minutes 59 seconds.
Time to call @GWR pic.twitter.com/z78Uil20fe
— The Game Awards (@thegameawards) December 25, 2022
None of this is taking away from his incredible voice work as Kratos, both in the first rebooted entry of God of War and the sequel Ragnarok. Christopher Judge earned the spotlight for the Best Performance category at The Game Awards 2022. It’s just that maybe it’s not breaking any world records as the awards show makes it out to be.
(Source: The Game Awards [1], [2], Guinness World Records, YouTube [1], [2])
