I'm watching one of those HBO First Look deals concerning Gods and Kings, and I'm like, oh, yeah, this biblical movie, and of course, everyone has (or must fake) some flavor of British accent, because biblical movies must always have British accents. Actually, any movie that takes place in the long ago, Classical Period of Eurasian Civilization must all be very, very British. Why? When did this happen? I was thinking about a similar silly Hollywood production trope the other night. The idea that everything occult, angels, demons, all those kinds of being must always speak Latin as their de rigueur language. Even that terrible sci-fi movie, Event Horizon, has the "rescue crew" find recordings of the prior crew that went bat-shit crazy on the ship speaking lines of Latin. Why? Because the Vatican is in Rome? So this means Latin is the holy or unholy language of Hollywood? Stupid. *insert rude fart noise* Discuss.
I like the commercial that makes fun of the teens running from the chain saw murderer. Girl with shaky voice: "Why don't we get in that running car?" Guy: "Are you crazy, let's hide behind the chainsaws." Group: "Good idea."
Didn't you know? All of us Brits are either Biblical characters, criminal masterminds, or foppish upper-class twats.
It's a well known fact that everyone in the classical world spoke English with British accents. Where do you think the British accents come from? Oh, and Dwarfs are all Scottish, as is everyone in Middle Earth, except when they aren't. Latin has long been the language of incantations, it goes back to Roman spells and rituals being considered by the church pagan and evil. Romans were inspired to do so because of Greek magic spells. Also, a lot of this comes comes from medieval books, which where always written in Latin. Latin is a good language for magic anyway, most people don't understand it, outside of guessing at one or two words correctly so it sounds alien. Things in Latin can almost never translate exactly into English - so there is always a sense of interpretation and mystery to things, even if you do understand it. This feeling of things not being quite exact and right feels into the mystique of the image of someone using magic.
And then Pacific Rim makes the choice of letting everyone have their own natural accent (pretty much) except for the lead, Charlie Hunman, who barely manages throughout the movie, slipping in all kinds of places... And this guy, Rob Kazinzky, who's a Brit, but they have him do an Ozzy accent that's so exaggerated I was waiting for him to say "Maybe the dingo ate your Kaiju." Must be all the time he's spent on True Blood, the Ozziest show since Home and Away.
Yeah, I remember thinking when watching that Troy film 'Since when did Hector have an American accent?' Also, is the main accent of Middle Earth really a really forced Scottish accent? Is that really what Tolkien had in mind?
'Alexander' (as in Great) threw me. The Greeks were Irish, the Macedonians (kind of Greeks?) were American. Except for Angelina Jolie, who was supposed to be Olympian (another kind of Greek you'd assume) sported a Transylvanian accent.
Talking of accents, you know Barry Van Dyke, the cop in Diagnosis Murder? Apparently he has quite a famous dad who did a terrible cockney accent once. But one of my favourite misplaced accents is Michael Cane as a Nazi in The Eagle has Landed.
Angelina Jolie is actually really awful doing accents. I don't even know what accent she was going for in her depiction of Grendel's Mother, but whatever it was, it wasn't from our planet.
Listening to John Malkovich doing Russian just once, is enough for me to wish I were deaf. And why is it that the FBI can operate within any country it chooses? They sort of arrive and the local police step aside and let them operate. What a bunch of shit.
I'm actually surprised biblical characters and such never speak Aramaic given that's the original language of the bible (you'd think AT LEAST the angel characters would speak in Aramaic )
I can't do a Roman film but everyone in The Odyssey had the correct accent. With the exception of Bernadette Peters as Cerci, but she is too teh sex for accents. Here it is (in horrible quality)
I saw her trying to say 'Ay up me duck' at an award ceremony- can't remember the guys name but he's from Derbyshire. Everyone, including Angelina Jolie, looked puzzled. Sean Bean weirdly did an American accent in Silent Hill, and not very well. I didn't realise it was him.
^I agree. One really weird one in horror films is when someone is running away from a crazy axe murderer, only when they get in the car they plan to escape in do they search for their keys ... why?
