What's wrong with American accents?

I think both Rey and Finn's accents sounded fantastic in the trailer. Only leaves me wanting to hear more! Heh, can you imagine how much more people would have freaked out over Finn using his natural British accent? The black stormtrooper "issue" thing was silly enough.. throwing a British accent on top of that would have really gotten people riled up. Almost makes me wish they did it.

 

Yes, I guess that's what I was trying to get at when I told @ig89 that it's rare to hear the incessant use of "like" outside of young and/or uneducated Americans. There is a very big difference among Americans regarding how they speak- when the Brits talk about a "posh" accent, we do have our equivalent here. (Though, regrettably, the word "posh" is underused in America). The less-posh sound here consists of every regional dialect, of which there are many- plus lots of slang. I've been speaking two languages ever since I was in high school (my high school counselor told me I would switch back and forth depending on the situation), but both of them are American. I definitely sound different when I'm at the coffee shop (not a place that serves espresso in any form) vs. in a board meeting, that's for sure.

 

This is just my interpretation. But I feel the british 'posh" accent is anyone born form beauracrats, generals, and anybody else on top of the hierarchy. While American is just someone who is born below that high class. Remember there is no Britain and America in Star Wars, so i just see it as one accent determining the person was born with some type of privilege, while the other accent is everybody else.

 

Its weird how so many Hollywood movies have a token British chick now.. and I say this as someone from England

Edit: Not to say I think this about TFA though.. but "British sidekick lady" has become the new "black guy dies first"

 

Or it tells us more about whomever is making the creative decisions. I heard similar concerns over Jar-Jar's quasi-Jamaican accent, too.

I'm not sure it will get better, either. Disney also has a long history of stereotypical voice casting, from the hyenas in Lion King to the crows in Dumbo. I try not to judge people in the past and hold them to modern standards, but wow, those crows are just horrible. Really bad.

--- Double Post Merged, Oct 29, 2015, Original Post Date: Oct 29, 2015 ---

LOL!
And that reminds me, an article came out just the other day that discussed the huge regional variations in swearing throughout the US. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...howing-where-we-try-really-hard-not-to-swear/ I live in the part of the country where people hardly ever swear and the favorite curse word is "darn". But on the coasts, people use f@#k as much as The Dude in The Big Lebowski and no one bats an eye. I don't think they know how shocking that is to the rest of us.

So I like Star Wars for that reason, too. The language is so clean it doesn't offend even my delicate sensibilities!

 

Please stop saying "British Accent", as it doesn't actually exist as a singular accent.
The island of Great Britain has three different countries on it, England, Scotland and Wales.
The accents are either English, Scottish or Welsh. Never "British Accent".

 

thank you for this post

 

Though I really like John Boyega's accent and I was expecting to hear it in the movie, it really didn't bother me that he used an American accent in the film. Now Greedo does bother me! He didn't use a Rodian accent and that angers me cause we all know how they talk in Rodia cause we've all been there!

 

I think that Rey having an american accent would have made more sense because everyone thinks she's Luke's daughter...

 

Yeah that's true but we still have to see if that turns out to be true. You know, I for one would love it if Rey turned out being the daughter of somebody that no one expected. Sure, many are expecting her to be the daughter of iconic characters like Luke, Han or even Kenobi but for me it would just be awesome to find out that Rey was the daughter of Snoke or Bossk or something. Hearing the iconic ''I am your father'' from someone totally unexpected would be really cool than just hearing it come from someone like Luke where it will be like meh we already knew that.

 

There's no such thing as an 'English' accent either. Different parts of the country sound vastly different.

Geordie, Brummie, Scouse, Manc, Cockney, Yorkshire, etc.

 

In different countries I don't think they call the way they talk an "Accent" because we think that WE are the normal ones if we've lived in that one country our entire lives.

 

England alone has over fifty very region-specific dialects and accents, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have theirs too. The huge number of accents and their close proximity to each other comes from ancient times when travel was limited by how far you could walk or travel by horse in one day before it got dark. Cars, trains, planes, telephones had not been invented, meaning towns and cities were very compact, with shops and services centralised in their centres and in managable walking distances of their residents. This lead to people not needing to travel very far and strong unique local accents developed in all of England's different towns and cities.

 

Basically, especially in ESB, the British accent works as a class-accent for stiff elite Imperial officers, and also it gives a flavour of “Empire versus colonies” feel. I think that works well, and we are so used to have Brits accents for Roman soldiers (Masada, I Claudius, The Caesars, Rome), or just many Germans in old WW2 movies (speaking either with a very British accent like in “Inside the 3rd Reich” or with terrible fake German ones - and The Dam Busters was an obvious reference for Lucas for ANH). Anyway, for good or bad reasons, this high class snobbish accent is easily associated with scheming militaristic generals and I think that's just it ! Then of course consistency of this was not 100% ensured... But for instance even Darth Vader voiced by James Earl Jones sounds quite British to me (and David Prowse real voice sounded quite... from Bristol or something ???). So this kind of demonstrate that it was not only a British accent that was sought for but the "militaristic Centurion Lord of the Admiralty one" My 2 cents…

 

I'd like to see Imperial officers like this....

 

Important Question:

Is the reference to 'Coruscanti accent' made in-canon thus far? That would go far to credit or discredit the Rey Kenobi Theory.

I'm anticipating some sort of novel-film discrepancy in one of the novelizations. Does anybody know of a "Coruscanti" accent reference in the books?

 

Boyega is the first, and so far the only, non-American actor to actually fool me with his American accent.