Recently my friend, Kay Dekker, whom I went to uni with and who recently joined me as a write on the Lost In The Multiplex team, asked if she could be a guest writer for the blog. Seeing as I’m lazy and rarely have the time to write anything for the blog myself, I of course took her up on the offer. No mission statements. No briefs. No word limit.
Picture this, there’s a new blockbuster just released at the cinema. It’s a typical good versus bad guy story and you’re pretty sure the good guys are going to win, so you’re not expecting many surprises. The thing that really takes your interest is the bad guy. Is he going to be close to the good guy? Will he have some sort of secret power? In what way is he going to be different to the thousands of other evil characters that have come before him? I’ll tell you one thing that probably won’t be different. The bad guy, evil dictator or crafty villain, he’s going to be English.
Take a second and think about the four biggest films that have come or are coming out this year. The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, Star Trek and The Hobbit. Now what do these four films all have in common? The Avengers has Tom Hiddleston, TDKR has Tom Hardy, while Star Trek and The Hobbit both have Benedict Cumberbatch. That’s right. English Villains.
Take the character of Loki from The Avengers and Thor. Tom Hiddleston was cast thanks to the persuasiveness and dedication of Sir Kenneth Branagh. The pair knew each other after working on the BBC show Wallander and Branagh suggested Hiddleston audition. Hiddleston did, however he did so for the role of Thor. Branagh immediately stepped in and gave him the part of the mischievous Loki. But would the film have been as good, or made a similar impact in the Marvel world, if the roles were reversed? What would have happened if Thor had been English and Loki was a posh American? It would have totally messed up the films equilibrium right?
But why?
The fact of the matter is, villains need to be English in order to sound truly menacing. During my English Language A Level, I undertook a project that looked into the speech patterns of villains in film and television. The villains I studied were Voldemort from Harry Potter and Sylar from Heroes, two fairly different characters but with many parallels. I discovered that both spoke softly and slowly when talking normally, similar to Loki. This makes them sound knowledgeable, in control and aware of their surroundings. When they became angry their controlling voices became louder and more menacing. They forced attention and respect. Although Sylar was American his speech patterns were astonishingly similar to a typical English villain. He could have easily been cast English, but had he made his accent sound any more American, it would have ruined the whole tone of the character.
But what is it that makes the English accent the go-to choice for villains in film? Is it the politeness? Is a polite villain a scary villain? (Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter immediately springs to mind.) Or is it that the largest audience for films, Americans, find the English accent evil?
It’s a difficult question to answer, and I doubt there is any real reason to this typecast. For the moment it seems to be working, so I guess there is nothing else we can do except to accept the fact that anyone with an English accent in film is going to be the bad guy.
(Note- I LOVE BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH I LOVE TOM HIDDLESTON)
bywayofthegreenlinebus 