Changing accents?

[Encaitare]

And while we're on accents, while I thought that Billy Boyd gave a great performance, I just can't get used to Pippin having a Scottish accent.

It doesn't really make sense, but his "Mission. Quest. Theng." is priceless.

[Elianna]

Well, Tuckborough is a good distance from Buckland, so it makes sense to me that Pip and Merry would have different accents.

I think I've heard an explanation of Pip's Scottish accent, having something to do with hints of the Tooks being Scottish; one point was their invention of Golf. It might have been on the extras of the FotR DVD...

[Kath]

Back to something mark12_30 said:
Just outside Moria after Gandalf falls: "Soon these hills will be swarming with orcs. Get them up!"
All the time Aragorn speaks here is accent is very odd, though I'm not sure how to describe this one!

[Eomer of the Rohirrim]

...golf is a fine explanation Elianna, but maybe excessive alcohol intake could be another?

I am, after all, allowed to ponder such national stereotypes.

[Mithalwen]

Although, I felt Dom Monaghan was the most convincing of the four hobbits .... I half hoped that Merry might have a slightly Welsh accent, because of Buckland representing the "celtic" fringe of the Shire. But I guess that to have Welsh and Scottish would be too much.

As for Viggo, I wondered if the strangeness of the accent was because he was allowing Danish influences in? But I didn't to much trouble with the multi-lingual multi-cultural Aragorn having a varying accent. I thought Liv was having to try quite hard with her British accent but I guessit was obviously a lot easier for Hugo Weaving who was raised here and Cate Blanchett who lives here........

But Sean Astin's was all over the place.....

[Eomer of the Rohirrim]

As a distinguished ( ) actor myself, I shall now offer a claim strong and vain; that it is easy to act and to put on a convincing accent, especially in a project as big and as edited as The Lord of the Rings. I mean, how many opportunities do the guys have to perform one line just right?

(To note, I am not criticising the mentioned actors. I am just arguing that there's no real excuse for not getting an accent right. Please argue with me. )

[Imladris]

I wonder if "changing accents" gets put in the same bucket as "the scar is over the right eye in this scene yet over the left eye in that scene."

[Evisse the Blue]

Originally Posted by Eomer of the Rohirrim

(To note, I am not criticising the mentioned actors. I am just arguing that there's no real excuse for not getting an accent right. Please argue with me. )

Well, I for one won't argue with you. I agree. And I'm not criticising the actors either (well, not much anyway); but there were two dialect coaches in the team. I figured they were there to help with the Elvish language and the pronunciacion of the names, but they messed up here as well. Have you noticed that names like Mordor or Gandalf are mispronounced? Chris Lee can tell them that the 'a' in Gandalf is pronounced like the vowel in "come', but the majority of the cast will still pronounce it as in 'came', which would be bearable, but for a minority of the cast who pronounces it correctly and so you have two different ways of pronouncing it - and even the same character might use both of them at one point or another in the story: I'm going to pick on of poor Viggo again, because I'm almost sure he pronounces Gandalf in both ways. It may sound like nitpicking, but it sure takes away a bit of the realism of the story; it's these little details that somehow count.

SPM - I stand corrected, if you as a Brit tell me that Sean did a better job with accents than Elijah. Although I still hold that this is not how it sounds to my profane ears.