Fan Rant: Unnecessary Accents
Filed under: Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Fan Rant
Maybe the most irritating thing about Roland Emmerich's generally unwatchable 10,000 BC was leading man Steven Strait's bizarre accent. Totally indeterminate -- he trilled his r's and drawled occasionally -- it was clearly meant to indicate in some uncertain way that what we're watching takes place a Very Long Time Ago. Hello? The movie is called 10,000 BC and the characters are already speaking English. Making them speak weird English isn't exactly adding verisimilitude. I don't know who Emmerich thought he was fooling.
I always find this sort of thing annoying, and sometimes vaguely insulting. I'm perfectly fine with characters who speak English even though they're not supposed to -- it's easier that way, and I can suspend disbelief. But if you're going to go that route, why add constant, pointless reminders of the very fact you're trying to dodge? Part of the reason I admire The Hunt for Red October is that John McTiernan said "screw it" and let Sean Connery keep his Scottish brogue as a Soviet submarine captain.*
My favorite example of this is K-19: The Widowmaker, where Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson play Russian submarine officers who spend the entire movie speaking to each other in English with Russian accents. Did director Kathryn Bigelow really think we'd forget that they're Russian? Come on now: their names are Dmitri and Mikhail, and the damn submarine is adorned with an enormous hammer and sickle. Another example is Before Night Falls, where a bunch of Cubans, including one played by Sean Penn, speak Spanish-accented English.
I can deal with the convention that people in fantasy movies (The Lord of the Rings, Eragon, etc.) tend to be British; Americans are accustomed, for whatever reason, to British dialects accompanying sword-and-sorcery settings. (For the most part producers of these movies have learned to save everyone the trouble and just cast British actors.) But the inexplicable accents in 10,000 BC and K-19 strike me as just stupid and distracting -- as well as awfully patronizing to the audience. Maybe this is a nitpick that didn't merit a full-blown Rant, but it's something that always bothers me.
Does it bug anyone else? And are there instances of this phenomenon I'm overlooking?
*Incidentally, if you happen to be a native Russian speaker, you must check out Red October solely for the few phrases that Connery utters in Russian at the beginning of the film. It's a truly incredible spectacle.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
3-27-2008 @ 12:24PM
rex said...
Enemy at the Gate was like listening to fingernails on a chalk board to me. The various accents none of which made any sense just highlighted all of the glaring historical inaccuracies in the movie. It was appallingly bad.
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3-27-2008 @ 12:22PM
Kevin said...
Hmm, I'm not a native Russian speaker, so I can't attest to how good or bad Connery's russian is. But I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed the way they handled that situation in Red October. The way they started the movie with everyone speaking Russian and then zoom in on the Political Officers mouth as he switches from Russian to English was pretty creative. It reminded the audience that yes, of course they're speaking Russian but we know the audience in going to be english so we're going to make it easy for the viewer. A pretty cool trick.
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3-27-2008 @ 12:45PM
Eugene Novikov said...
I loved that too -- another reason to cite Red October as an example of dealing with this kind of thing well.
3-27-2008 @ 2:04PM
Akbar Fazil said...
Star Trek VI had a similar language switch during Kirk and McCoy's trial that I always thought was nicely done.
3-27-2008 @ 12:56PM
kel said...
How about when Kevin Costner didn't even bother with a British accent for Robin Hood?
Here's another language pet peeve: How is it that Spanish speaking characters can speak perfect English with the exception of "thank you" and "friend?"
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3-27-2008 @ 1:01PM
Matt said...
The fake accents, as cheesy as they might be, are just trying to set the mood. I think it would be even weirder if they spoke normal english. I mean, would you prefer 10,000 BC if the actors spoke with a mixture of mordern accents. Maybe a nice southern drawl or a hard New Jersey accent? Would that make the movies a little better for you?
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3-27-2008 @ 1:13PM
Eugene Novikov said...
That's a fair point, Matt, and probably what Emmerich was going for. But I think to "set the mood" with a totally arbitrary "accent" -- given that, as I keep insisting, they're already speaking English -- is bizarre. My reaction to almost every line of dialogue was, "why are they talking like that?" Of course I may not have had that reaction if the dialogue wasn't also terrible in its own right.
3-27-2008 @ 1:53PM
Liam said...
Roland doesn't care. The movie worldwide has made over $100 million. Accent or no accent.
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3-27-2008 @ 2:01PM
Eugene Novikov said...
I'm always skeptical of arguments to the effect of "movie X was a huge box-office hit, therefore any criticisms of it are irrelevant." But at least people usually make those arguments regarding movies that are actual, you know, box-office hits. That $100 million worldwide figure is barely enough to cover the $105 million (according to the IMDb) production budget.
3-27-2008 @ 1:53PM
Ray said...
Oh, where are the fanboys?
Princess Leia couldn't decide if she was British or American.
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3-27-2008 @ 2:02PM
Paul Nicholson said...
Not to jump to her defense, but i think she was just trying to pull off an aristocratic accent. The Imperials all had British accents (except Vader). The Rebels all had American accents. Her's was just supposed to be upper crust i think.
On the topic though... George Lucas always makes his bad-guys have British accents. Star Wars, Indiana Jones (Nazi's with British accents?!)...um...ok that's all he's really done.
But still...
3-27-2008 @ 2:08PM
DAVID F said...
It was when I saw Star Wars as a child that I realized that all old British people are eeee-ville!
D'oh! Except Obi-Wan!
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3-27-2008 @ 2:14PM
Liam said...
10,000 B.C. is still in the top 5. That means it's still gonna make alot more moolah. When it goes to DVD that will be another goldmine. More will probably see it on DVD than in the theaters.
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3-27-2008 @ 5:04PM
Ethan Stanislawski said...
This is a much larger problem in Hollywood handling foreign subjects that drives historians crazy, and it's part of the reason I can't take even Schindler's List seriously. The playwright Tom Stoppard has one of the better solution: he has actors use their normal accents when they're speaking their native tongue (Russian, Czech, whatever), and has them speak in a heavily accented manner when they actually are supposed to be speaking English. He'll often do this very early on as a manner to distinguish which language is supposed to be spoken.
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3-27-2008 @ 7:59PM
mike green said...
or everyone could speak their natives tongues and americans can learn to read subtitles
the scene on red october near the end with the russians and americans on the same submarine and everyone speaking english but unable to understan each other is on of the most stupid things in movie history
but I guess if people are dumb you have dumb down your movie, studios don't make them to be hang on museums
I wonder how many people got that Orlando Bloom's character on Kingdom of Heaven was french?
and regarding LOTR they're speaking english on the original story, it's not a movie thing, Tolkien wrote middle-earth as an alternative medieval europe
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3-27-2008 @ 10:42PM
Eugene Novikov said...
>>>>the scene on red october near the end with the russians and americans on the same submarine and everyone speaking english but unable to understan each other is on of the most stupid things in movie history
See, I disagree with this. Seems to me as long as the movie's consistent, it doesn't matter what language people are using -- the movie was careful to establish that the characters were "speaking" their native languages even though it "sounds like" English to us, and so by the time we got to the end I was comfortable with that concept. It made logical sense.
5-07-2008 @ 3:46PM
Kevin said...
My recollection of that scene (if this is the scene you are referring to) is that they enter the Red October and the Americans speak English and the Russians speak Russian. Then Ryan demonstrates some knowledge of Russian (which is all subtitled) and Connery's character demonstrates that he speaks English. At this point the characters switch to all speaking English, not to satisfy the audience, but because the Russians can speak English and actually do so. Am I wrong about that?
3-27-2008 @ 8:48PM
Jessica D said...
Don't forget the fact that many anti-heroes or evil doers tend to also have a British accent.
Speaking of 10,000 BC, with all the funky geographical errors and now, pronunciation/enunciation errors, while I was watching the movie I was just waiting for it to turn into a Stargate prequel at any minute.
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3-27-2008 @ 9:30PM
Allie said...
I liked cold mountain but found it quite interesting the accents used by the Nicole Kidman and the Britsh fellow - I should remember his name LOL
But then again Renee Zelleweger wasnt that bad in Bridget Jones doing an english accent per se.. but since I am american I guess that I really can't speak for the british! But watching Nicole Kidman speak with american dialect in movies she is pretty OK at it!
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3-28-2008 @ 11:37AM
Xoriat said...
What I most hated about Zorro was when British actors are cast as Spanish characters...not for one damn minute did I buy Anthony Hopkins (Diego de la Vega) and Stuart Wilson (Rafael Montero) as Spanish. Not to mention Spanish characters with BRITISH accents!
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