That Nottingham was pretty multi-cultural in ye olden days.....Scottish, Welsh, Irish, various regional English Accents, all fighting for England....Robin himself was Irish one minute, Scottish the next.....I see a drinking game coming out of this...
shareHe was trying to be Liverpudlian, for someone living 26 miles form Nottingham, his accent was annoying. Cate Blanchett was quite good,
Only those with no valid argument pick holes in people's spelling and grammar.
That was one of my major problems with the movie. A weak accent is unbearable enough, but it's even worse when it's bouncing from one to the other. He really had no clue what he was doing.
shareOh God yes, Crowe was all over the place, it was hilarious
shareWhat annoyed me more was the placing of accents. Sure, a Welshie in the English army makes sense. But Little John as a Scot? The English fought the Scottish just as much as they did the French, if not more.
And then you have the band of runaways in the woods being lead by... AN IRISHMAN?!? Sure, I know it's nice to stereotype the childish rogue as a cheeky little Irishman, but those kids are meant to be from Nottingham. What the *beep* is an Irish kid doing there.
Jesus.
And Crowe's accent(s) were bloody awful. Cate did a good job though,
Similarly, why the *beep* do the inhabitants of the village of Nottingham (that really bugs me; Nottingham had been an urban centre for more than three centuries and was a county town - which was of course the only reason it had a Sheriff) play only Irish music at dances?
shareBecause Hollywood doesn't know that there is such a thing as an English folk tradition and think "Oh bugger it, Irish is near enough".
The church may shout but Darwin roars
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Crowe famously walked out of a BBC radio interview with Mark Lawson after Lawson suggested he sounded Irish in parts, to which Crowe responded "you got *beep* dead ear mate!"
It was Irish, Scouse, Yorkshire and maybe even Scottish.
Apparently one of his inspirations was Michael Parkinson. That's because when selecting someone from Yorkshire to copy when playing a tough swashbuckling type most people immediately of the retired TV chat show legend rather than- Sean Bean?
His inspiration
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdA7eGeXudQ
Man, if they wanted to go this route with Robin Hood Sean Bean would have been perfect.
shareYeah, every time he slept into his Parky inspired Yorkshire accent he sounded like Sean Bean.
shareWow. I hate this movie but suddenly the exact same movie with Sean Bean seems sooooooo much better! Maybe even KINDA good!
share...Hollywood doesn't know that there is such a thing as an English folk tradition and thinks "Oh bugger it, Irish is near enough"
I realise there is a debatable point about what kind of accent these people actually spoke with back then, but movie goers would surely be expecting predominantly English accents. It then stuns me that Ridley Scott did not cast many English folk in this! We've got 3 merry men from North America, 2 Australians in the lead roles, an English prince who did well with his speech but had no right to given his guatamalan and american background, and we've William Hurt advising him. That's 7 parts that could have gone to Brits - basically half the main cast is not from the 'right' country!
Ridley falls into this same trap in Prometheus too, casting people from UK to be Americans etc. WHY?? Surely there are enough actors from various countries around the place? It's just distracting to viewers, and I spend half the time trying to pin down the accent rather than truly listening and comprehending what is being said. Can't be easy for Scott either, it's just extra time to 'coach' up the actors on how to talk, rather than spending that time elsewhere.
True to form though, the Sheriff of Nottingham was played by an Englishman.
shareWe watched Meryl Streep play Margaret Thatcher and Daniel Day-Lewis play Abraham Lincoln--both doing a fantastic job. Seems like it makes no difference where someone is from--just whether they want to put enough work into the accent they need to portray? Cate Blanchett being another great example.
shareRidley Scott happens to be one of THE most successful film makers in the world. You should have written him to tell him how to cast.
omg...it's JUST a movie! Everyone hung up on accents. Who gives a *beep* Were you this pissed off when Maximus had an American accent in Gladiator? Only one of the greatest films ever made?
Maximus was American? Sounded like an antipodean doing his best RP to me.
Yes of course it's just a movie and the fact is nobody would have given a *beep* if Crowe and co had stuck to that Aussie/NZ/RP/American generic accent whatever it was. The fact is they made a point of telling people that Crowe's accent was in some way going to be 'authentic' and we'd get a Robin Hood with an appropriate (in some vague unspecified way) English regional accent.
He then signally failed to deliver on that promise in rather spectacular style. It's called shooting yourself in the foot.
Taking painting to the pictures ...
www.thepicturepalace.co.uk
Who really knows if Crowe's accent was authentic because none of us was there. I do not care for him, but would not have noticed his accent if it was not "all over the place" as someone else said. As far as it being Scottish, which it mostly did sound, Sean Connery starred in another version of Robin Hood and he has a very pronounced Scottish accent... but who noticed... because he is a brilliant actor and his accent was consistent in the movie.
shareWho really knows if Crowe's accent was authentic because none of us was there.
nobody would have worried about his accent any more than they did with Connery.
I'm not even English speaker, but when I saw this movie this evening I was quite surprised by the way some characters sound Scottish to me. Since I'm not that familiar to English accents I thought maybe there were some areas where they shared similar accents to Scottland (like the R sound in "glory").
Glad to see this was really an issue and not just my imagination...
It was amazing. He spent a lot of time switching between being Irish and being Maximus from Gladiator.
I don't really get how this happened. He's done accents fine before.
Of course you realise that in the 10th century; the English did not speak with an accent and the the "British" accent did not develop until the lat 18th to early 19th century. One story I've heard on the origin of the accent is that aristocracy tried to mimic Queen Victoria's German-born mother's accented English.
shareOf course you realise that this story isn't set in the 10th century but the beginning of the 13th!
And the story you heard is a fantasy; the aristocratic accent of the 19th century was actually nothing like the speech of Queen Victoria's family, having its roots in the 'Whig accent' of the late 18th century; characteristics were pronouncing Rs as Ws and an affected lisp. (For example, Lady Caroline Lamb, the lover of Lord Byron and wife of Victoria's Whig Prime Minister Lord Melbourne, was once overheard to say on a very cold day: 'Gueth how many pairth of thilk thtockingth I have on? Thixth!')
Do we know the origin of those characteristics? Had they all been off on their hols to Barthelona, perhapth? And thought thothe thekthy Thpaniardth thounded wather thupa?
Call me Ishmael...
Oil'll be havin' a point of Guinness and a potato loike me character Raabin Hood in the fil-um Raaabin Hood (2010) Boi Jeeeeesus be now, what a crack, maid marrion an' that http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rr-6ZjlGuBU
//
Well , as an Arab I see Hollywood has major problems with language & accents ..For example in the Mummy - though I loved that movie , Odeid Feher ( I know from his name & looks he's from Arabian origins but sadly that didn't help much ...) All the extras had funny , laughable accent & clothes ..I am an Egyptian to be specific , and I remember laughing so hard with my brother at the typically Morccon Caftans worn by the extras & the funnier accent of an Israeli actor speaking the strangest Arabic I have ever heard !!..I don't know if Holloywood directors are that ignorant to mistake Israelis for Arabs or just don't have time to take a look at what Egyptians wear in Upper Egypt which is totally different than the Moroccon caftans though they may seem similar ...Please do your Geography homwork ...
shareAh, foton, dream on!
Here is Ridley Scott, born only 160 miles from Nottingham, and he presents the ancient city of Nottingham as a tiny rustic village; shows Midland peasants dancing Irish dances; portrays the glamorous southern French Queen Eleanor as a no-nonsense Englishwoman. If Scott wasn't willing even to consult his native knowledge of his own country when making a film, what hope of anyone in Hollywood doing any homework on the geography and culture of Egypt?
Can't deny you're absloutely right here ...But I love Ridley Scott films.. Any of his movies is just 1000 times better than most of the *beep* we see from Holloywood ..Specially those which tackle plots concerning the Middle East or Arab region ..I can't forget his " Kingdom of Heaven "
shareNeither can I. After watching KoH I really wanted to thump him, even after considering that he's an old man whose brain has been turned to mush by living too long in Hollywood. And watching the windy, self-indulgent, portentous mess he made of Robin Hood, after being handed the most interesting and most fun script on the subject for a generation, I wanted to thump him again.
shareIt's especially depressing, given that he started off so well with The Duellists...
Seingner Conrat, tot per vostr'amor chan
http://www.silverwhistle.co.uk/knightlife
:D LOL , another kind of thump for sure ...
shareAt the time of Robin Hood, England was part of the Kingdom of Normandy and the only three languages used back then were Latin (clergy), Norman-French (nobility) and Middle English. So the relevance of using modern British accents questionable at best, except to some comic effect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_English_language#Middle_En glish_.E2.80.93_from_the_late_11th_to_the_late_15th_century
Here is an audio sample what they might have sounded like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE0MtENfOMU