Your most pointless TV/movie/book nitpicks

[Paul Farquhar]

This is videogame related, so not sure it's on topic, but the accent of the characters in Assassin's Creed 2 is completely off. Not to mention the songs by the gondoliers in Venice. All those are from Southern Italy and would be completely out of place in 15th century Venice (and in modern day Venice too).

Any accent from 600 years ago would be virtually unintelligible to any modern speaker of that language.

 

[briggart]

Any accent from 600 years ago would be virtually unintelligible to any modern speaker of that language.

Since we are nitpicking , I don't fully agree, but that is kind of beyond the point. I mean, everyday people in Venice 500 years ago would not be speaking English, regardless of accent.

There was no Italian language at that time, but rather a collection of dozens of regional languages, some of which were definitely not mutually intelligible. The language spoken in Venice at that time (and still today) had likely more in common with languages spoken in some parts of France, than with those spoken in Southern Italy. So, by that token, they could have as well had the character speak with a French accent rather than a Southern Italy accent. Mind you, I get why they did that, but it's still annoying.

 

[payn]

I was going to complain about The Last Duel directed by Ridley Scott. A French story about a couple of knights fighting to the death. Nobody actually speaks French, nor do they have English accents. Then, I realized, for reasons I wont go into, the movie is bad and fixing the nitpicks is the least of its problems.

 

[Ryujin]

I was going to complain about The Last Duel directed by Ridley Scott. A French story about a couple of knights fighting to the death. Nobody actually speaks French, nor do they have English accents. Then, I realized, for reasons I wont go into, the movie is bad and fixing the nitpicks is the least of its problems.

I've been meaning to watch it, in hopes that it was as good as "The Duellists." I guess not, huh?

Still waiting for someone good to take on the job of making a movie based on La Maupin.

 

[Riley]

I've been meaning to watch it, in hopes that it was as good as "The Duellists." I guess not, huh?

TIL that Ridley Scott’s The Duelists is not the same movie as Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel.

And now I need to reassess a brief discussion of The Duelists (not, apparently, The Last Duel) ithat I listened to this week.

 

[Ryujin]

TIL that Ridley Scott’s The Duelists is not the same movie as Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel.

And now I need to reassess a brief discussion of The Duelists (not, apparently, The Last Duel) ithat I listened to this week.

Definitely not the same movie

I would put "The Duellists" right up there with "Rob Roy" in quality. It's the primary reason that I still hold out some hope for Scott.

 

[MGibster]

I was going to complain about The Last Duel directed by Ridley Scott. A French story about a couple of knights fighting to the death. Nobody actually speaks French, nor do they have English accents. Then, I realized, for reasons I wont go into, the movie is bad and fixing the nitpicks is the least of its problems.

Hitler's SS: A Portrait of Evil was released in 1985 and starred David Warner. Members of the SS spoke with a posh British accept while members of the SA spoke with, well, I don't know the names of the accents over there, but we'll say a lowbrow British accent. It absolutely cracked me up with two brownshirts were talking to one another and it sounded like a 1970s British crime drama. I think we've got to give language and accents a pass, for the most part.

Shadow of Rome was an action/adventure game set in Ancient Rome and released for the Nintnedo Gamecube in 2005. It's in English of course, but presumably everyone is speaking Latin. We hear that Ceasar's last words were "Et tu, Brute?" and folks in the game are trying to figure out what he meant. It was am amusing moment.

 

[MarkB]

Shadow of Rome was an action/adventure game set in Ancient Rome and released for the Nintnedo Gamecube in 2005. It's in English of course, but presumably everyone is speaking Latin. We hear that Ceasar's last words were "Et tu, Brute?" and folks in the game are trying to figure out what he meant. It was am amusing moment.

Seems like a deliberate meta joke on Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, given that all of Caesar's dialogue in the play is in English except for that line.

 

[Homicidal_Squirrel]

The Netflix Narcos, season 1: Pablo Escobar having a Brazilian accent. The actor was great, and there were parts where he pulled off the Medellin accent, but those moments were it went into a brazilian accent were jarring.

 

[pukunui]

I love the Dragon Age series, but the accents can be a bit jarring there as well. In the first game, the Dalish elves had generic sounding American accents, but in later games, they got Welsh accents. Meanwhile, most of the male dwarves sound like American trucker / biker dudes. The different human nationalities have different real world accents (British, French, Scottish, Spanish, etc). The tiefling-like Qunari, meanwhile, sound kind of like they're meant to have a generic Native American accent or something.

I appreciate that the voice actress for Cassandra (in DA2 and 3) tried to come up with a generic European accent. It stands out because it's clearly not an identifiable real world nationality.


While we're on the topic of accents, can we all agree that Quentin Tarantino's "Australian" accent in Django Unchained was truly abysmal? See also Sir Ben Kingsley's accent in Ender's Game - his character is meant to be Māori, but he too adopts a bad Australian accent.

Dee Bradley Baker also failed to get a Kiwi accent right for the clones in the various Star Wars animated shows. His Australian accent at least sounds decent and not that far off from Temuera Morrison's accent, so I only find it mildly irritating, unlike the aforementioned Tarantino's and Kingsley's accents, which are painful to listen to

(And let's not even talk about Kevin Costner's accent [or lack of one] in his Robin Hood movie ...).