Sleekit said:
Jamash said:
Besides, it can't be any worse than Highlander in which you have a Frenchman proclaiming he's Scottish to a Scotsman who claims he's Egyptian. Would it have really been better if Christopher Lambert had tried to speak like Sean Connery who in turn tried to affect an Arabic/Middle Eastern accent?[/spoiler]
but the line "I am Juan SĆ”nchez Villalobos RamĆrez, Chief metallurgist to King Charles V of Spain."...delivered by Sean Connery...in a broad Scots accent...is just...too awesome...
:->
...go on Sean...
...say "Juan SĆ”nchez Villalobos RamĆrez" again...
hehe
;P
i really like The Musketeers too. good stuff.
in the round i thought the whole series was very good.
Yes, that is too awesome to have a serious problem with, like his cameo at the end of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
"I will not allow thish wedding to prosheed... unlesh... Lord Loxshley".
I suppose in a film with Kevin Costner, Christian Slater, and Mike McShane as the the main English leads without any attempt at not being American (and in Mike McShanes case, also a failed attempt at sounding British), then a Scottish King Richards is the least of your concerns.
Still, Brian Blessed Alan Rickman and Nick Brimble as Little John of Bristol helped redress the balance, and at least Morgan Freeman attempted to use cadence to speak in a more Middle Eastern manner for his character, even if he didn't try to disguise his accent or mimic another one (which could have been worse).
I suppose the more we think about it and the more we trawl our childhood memories or TV and film for examples, the more well remember examples of terribly misplaced and horribly hilarious accents in things we watched and accepted as normal when we were younger (I know when I first saw
Highlander and
Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, I just though they were awesome and didn't think anything was amiss).
I have to admit
The Musketeers did grown on me. At first appearance, I dismissed it as some cheesy pretty boy shit that wouldn't be up to much, but then I gave it a go (mainly because of Peter Capaldi) and it grew on me, once I got over the initial shock of the accents and accepted it for what it was (a product of it's times, but not necessarily bad). It was certainly entertaining enough to keep me watching for 10 hours and still want more (although I'm happy to wait until the second series, I don't think I could handle any more of Constance and her accent for a while yet).
It's interesting how as English speakers, it's only really misplaced accents and dialects from within the English language that we'll pick up on and be critical of, but well give a free pass to actors affecting other accents from other languages which could sound terrible to native speakers of that language, like Arnie in Terminator, who to us sounds like a badass German killing machine, but to Austrians sounds like a dumb country bumpkin with the same kind of amusing accent as The Wurzles sound to us.
On a slight tangent, I see the terms "British accent" and "American accent" used a lot in this thread in a very general and almost meaningless manner, but have you ever heard a real "British-American" accent?
I have family Cornwall and Devon and have spent a lot of time there, so while it sounds like gibberish and full of the stereotypical Hillbilly twang, I can certainly recognise the West Country inflections and mannerisms in the speech and it almost sounds familiar, at least a lot more familiar that other, more normal "American accents".