Why are Ancient Greeks and Romans always portrayed on film as British?

I'm watching Troy now, and watched Rome not too long ago, and these guys always have a British accent. I can understand if someone was playing Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, but in more modern times, why not give them an American accent, or Italian, or Greek? Why does it always have to be British?!?!?

Anyway, back to the movie.

Dude.

Long time no see!

It's one of the unwriten rules of movies (it's on the net somewhere!)

"When alone all foriegn officers like to speak to each other in English"

I'm also pretty sure that the cast of Troy is a mix of Brits, Yanks and Aussies!!

MonKey

Yeah, I've been working a lot lately.

It's so weird though! Especially when they're dealing with the Saxons and other occupants of England. Half the time they give them a bad cockney accent or something to differentiate, but it's still all there. Romans are always portrayed as British. I'd like for once Romans or Greeks to be given heavy Australian accents or Indian accents.

Watching "Troy" tonight reminded me of just that same question. Why no Greek accents? Maybe Mel Gibson shoud have directed it instead so we can here them in the native languages of the time. With subtitles of course.
If Hollywood is going to treat us all as brain dead viewer then why not do all movies with British accents then?

I think the movie Alexanda takes the cake....
To be sure to be sure all Irish accents just didnt work did it and the fake blond Hair was to much with those black bushy eyebrows!!! that Movie could have been done much better,

You know, just over the weekend I was watching some older flicks where I was asking my friend.. Why the hell do these Greeks sound like they are British?? LOL I noticed that in a newer movie 300..

Seems you are right, and I have to wonder myself..
Same thing with the Empire in starwars.. Those guys where all British..hah!

Language and accent is one thing. Another thing I noticed when I saw Pearl Harbor (I wish I didn't see it, but it's too late now). Through the entire movie, not a single sigarette was smoked. Not one. Did nobody smoke in those days?! The PC-ness is making us rewrite history. Smoking is "out" now, so they'll remove it from the screen. Ok, I know this is just a movie. But this movie is supposed to be based on historical facts and real events. And still they'll paint this fake picture, and get away with it. By removing the sigarettes from the movie, is it more family friendly then as a movie? What if no American ships were sunk and no Americans died in that attack? Thousands of Japanese planes were shot down, the Japanese surrendered, and they had to say they're very sorry about the whole thing. Would it make it an even more family friendly movie? Ok, sorry for going a bit off-topic... Back to the British Eskimos. I believe I saw a movie with British Vikings in it as well...

It goes back to world war II and the fallout that created the cold war.

Back in those days, there were only a handfull of studios, and they churned out spy thrillers by the bucketfull, and always to the military's specs. They were serials, a kind of movie/comic hybrid, that didn't waste screen time fleshing out the main characters. Instead, like Star Wars or Indiana Jones, they used stereotypes and cliches to save the film stock.

The archetype of "the enemy" was first a German, then a Russian spy.

The Spy was European. Urbane, a chess-player, lover of classical music and art. Well educated, smug and stylish. Kind of like Belloq in Raiders of the Lost Ark, or Orson Welles' escaped Nazi, Franz Kindler, in The Stranger. Or even the Saturday Night Live character, "the continental."

After the war, and the decline of the Nazi menace, the Russian spy came to the fore, although James Bond's "Blofeld" villain is a mishmash of German and Russian stereotypes.

Back then (before about 1965), most Americans were so provincial that they couldn't recognize the country that a foreign accent was from, unless it was British.

So the British accent became the standard "good foreigner" voice in American cinema.


Sure, it's tacky and stupid as hell, but no more contrived than French film noir, or a ninja film.

.

Originally posted by Sanity Lost If Hollywood is going to treat us all as brain dead viewer then why not do all movies with British accents then?

I couldn't agree more! After all, if you were to believe Hollywood, Yanks went and won the Second World War all on their lonesomes.

reply to post by Rasobasi420


Would it help If I spoke in Greek?
:shk:

No, seriously I don't know why they do that!
But,dr_strangecraft may be on the right track..... I think.

Originally posted by Rasobasi420
I'm watching Troy now, and watched Rome not too long ago, and these guys always have a British accent. I can understand if someone was playing Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, but in more modern times, why not give them an American accent, or Italian, or Greek? Why does it always have to be British?!?!?

Anyway, back to the movie.

The British have generally been considered the culture with the highest degree of civilization, basically since the industrial era, and I think that means they sort of took the torch from the Greeks and Romans as being the height of civilization. The US doesn't really apply because for a long time it was considered a wild west type of free land.

Plus British academics have a lot of authority on classical-era history.

[edit on 12/20/2007 by Megaton]

reply to post by dr_strangecraft


Thanks Strangecraft! I didn't think there was a real reason, but that sounds about as plausible a reason as I can think of.

Oh come on, you two! Its NOT plausable and its got nothing to do with we Brits being more cultered than the yanks - academically speaking.

It has more to do with the fact that round about the period in question, Latin was the spoken work, along with Greek, Arabic and Farsi and dialects thereof.

Like America, Great Britain - UK Ltd, was but a mere twinkle in the cultural evolution of Homo Sapien and was peopled by nomadic tribes mainly coming from Central Asia or Asia Minor.

One of the main reasons Megaton is, and let's be really honest here, that an American accent would be so out of place that it could detract from the film, much in the same way as if Micheal Caine's voice was dubbed over with a deep southern drawl in Zulu!

It's breeding, don't you know Old Boy.

Don't forget, the legendary Russian WW2 sniper Vassili Zaitsev was also British according to the movie Enemy at the Gates.

Peace

reply to post by Hellmutt



so? Smoking sucks and the last thing we need is a bunch of rejects on screen showing how cool it is to smoke.
kids will do almost anything they see on screen

no offence how does a cigerate ruin a film? so what they havent shown it
good on them,

personaly i hate smoking and smokers that smoke next to others

reply to post by MinMin


Oh God yes that movie was awful! Alexander the great with an Irish accent? PLEASE! We can do better than that can't we?

Y'all want a hoot, rent The Black Shield of Falworth. Tony Curtis's turn as a Bronx-ese medieval knight. It's actually a pretty good movie, but Tony's accent provides some unintended humor. Then there's his role in Spartacus as a "sing-ger of songs".

I used to like watching the old Kung Fu movies made in Hong Kong. All the actors were apparently cockney.

reply to post by zysin5


I saw 300 when it was first released and thought it was very disappointing, and why did they introduce so much nonsense into it. Since when were the persians involved in producing genetically modified monsters??? And why did they look like ninja's. History according to Hollywood, they made the persians out to be a bunch of freaks!

Troy was also disappointing, and I didn't watch Alexander due to the terrible reviews. Those movies had wonderfulvery interesting central stories to work around, but the results were rubbish.

Gibsons Apocalypto was by far the best of that kind of movie that I have seen in recent years.