Posted: October 16, 1999 at 14:57:41: by RSS
No one said American actors are bad. I'm simply saying that in an adaptation of an ENGLISH book, the actors should be speaking with ENGLISH accents, or the believability factor will be ZERO.Spare me the bigotry. I'm American myself. I guess some Americans just have a massive inferiority complex when it comes to the Lord of the Rings. Just because the book is English, it doesn't mean that an American cannot enjoy it. I enjoy The Aneid, which is undoubtedly Roman in its outlook: is that wrong? I object to Viggo because Americans playing roles that are meant for English accents and English idiom generally don't do a good job. There are exceptions of course (Gwyneth Paltrow and Ben Affleck in Shakespeare in Love), and should Viggo prove to nail the role down without introducing Yankee twang (like mine) into Middle-earth, then more power to him. I am not objecting to Americans as Americans...I'm objecting to what baggage they MIGHT bring to the table. I would equally object to an actor with a thick German or French or Russian accent. But certainly an Irishman or Scotsman (as Ewan McGregor and Liam Neeson have proved) can play an English role much better than an American, in general. Why put yourself behind the eight ball from the start? I didn't like Townsend for the role either, but ol' Viggo certainly doesn't look the part himself. The book is ENGLISH. Why is it so hard for Americans to comprehend this basic fact?
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