So Gyllenhaal is playing a persian; did he spend a few summers in modern-day England in his youth or something?
I hear a very lazy, very distinct english accent from him, at least in the commercials...
About the same time as the Empire adopted the English accent in Star Wars.
What do they have in common? They are both fiction and they are both movies, spoken in English so the punters understand them without subtitles.
They had American actors faking English accents in the Star Wars films? I don't remember Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fischer, Billy D. Williams, James Earl Jones, etc, etc, speaking in an English accent in those films.
They spoke naturally, and it was fine.
Casting an American as the "Prince of Persia" and then having him conjure up a fake English accent (not only him, but everyone in the movie is speaking with the English accent) is stupid and it annoyed me immediately.
It is a distracting affectation.
Well..seeing as practically everyone else in the film is British maybe they thought that Gyllanhaal speaking in his own (American) accent would 'jar' on the ears (think Kevin Costner in Prince of Thieves). So he did a (very passable) British accent as well
Also..if they had Gyllanhall doing some sort of Persian/Arabic accent there would bound to be people claiming that having a white American doing an Arab accent is 'offensive' and ask why a middle eastern actor wasn't given the part.
Speaking of which..anyone else surprised that, given the setting and the fact 95% of the cast were British, that Omid Djalili wasn't in this?
Then the movie was casted poorly. If Gyllanhaal was the center-piece then cast some non-Brits so his American lilt doesn't "jar" the ears.
Having an American actor fake an English accent for a Persian period piece is inane.
For the common-denominator target audience (American kids and Middle-American families with an average 8th-grader intellect) a British (in this case English) accent will do for just about any "foreigner" in an English-speaking role. And remember it's not just Holloywood this time, it's Disney (and Jerry Bruckheimer to boot!)
Sheik Amar's accent (Alfred Molina) is the most conspicucous. Rather than keep it subtle it seems they asked him to really lay-on a blatantly English-Pommie accent. LOL
He said he underwent some vigorous training to keep up with the physical aspects of jumping from roof top to roof top like in the game, he did a good job tooSource:Prince of Persia sands of Time Reviewhttp://moviereviews.noskram.com/2011/06/prince-of-persia-sands-of-time -review
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You guys are all idiots. This movie, like so many about other cultures, assumes a the audience understand that the characters are speaking their native language, and that the audience understands them.
As for Jake's accent, the assumption works better if all the actors share a similar accent.
Jesus you guys need to learn to enjoy movies again
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As for Jake's accent, the assumption works better if all the actors share a similar accent.That's all well & good except Jake's British accent sucks, and I think that's what most people are noticing. There's nothing that gets under my skin more than an American actor who slips in & out of their British accent throughout the movie, or who starts off doing one & by the end of the movie seems to have forgotten all about it. Jake's fake accent is almost as bad as both Keanu Reeves & Winona Ryder in Dracula...almost.
Would you have rather preferred the entire movie to be in Persian? This is a Hollywood movie. Do you expect him to speak in Persian then?
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