Anna Daniels
American actors doing proper accents for movies and TV shows has always been a sore spot for those who live in the countries the actor depicts. While a small breed of actors have done an incredible job of mimicking specific dialects (Meryl Streep almost encompassing them all), there’s still a number of actors who struggle. In the trailer for Black Widow, Russian accents have once again become a possible problem.
Based on the online reaction from Marvel fans, the Russian accents heard in the trailer aren’t exactly the greatest. While nobody can say just how bad they are in the entire movie, it’s worth taking a minute to see why Russian accents are almost always abused in movies.
Let’s hope it’s not on purpose just because Russia isn’t exactly on our side of late.
Just how bad are those accents, really?
Let’s look at Reddit again to gauge what audiences were thinking when the new Black Widow teaser trailer hit. According to a few users, they found the fake Russian accents more than a little terrible. To them shows like HBO’s Chernobyl did them so much better, even if others agree most Russian accents from British or American actors usually sound pitiful.
If one goes and watches the Black Widow trailer again, it does appear the Russian accents are a bit forced. While Scarlett Johansson isn’t ordinarily bad at accents (she puts on a decent German accent in Jojo Rabbit), it’s easy to argue her co-stars in BW aren’t perfect.
In the case of Florence Pugh (who plays Yelena Belova), you could also sense that she doesn’t typically utter Russian accents in movies. The same could be sensed with David Harbour (playing Red Guardian) who’s done primarily American roles since the beginning.
Then there’s Rachel Weisz who’s really one of the most esteemed actresses in the world. Will her Russian accent beat everyone else’s out in the film?
Having bad Russian accents could make ‘Black Widow’ unintentionally funny
Based on the trailer, Black Widow doesn’t take itself overly seriously, especially with the scenes involving David Harbour trying on his Red Guardian outfit after becoming overweight. This was a smart idea so the Russian accents don’t have to carry an overly emotional or dramatically draining movie.
Regardless, when having to hear bad accents for an entire film, it can make people laugh when not intended as being funny. Despite the trailer looking terrific, the Russian accents could end up being problematic since all MCU films thus far have been based on American accents. Any deviation from this would be African dialects from Wakanda in Black Panther, which was faithfully based on real African culture.
So will Rachel Weisz end up saving those Russian accents, or will she also have trouble? It’s hard to tell from the trailer since she doesn’t have a lot of dialogue there. Most of the dialogue comes from Johansson, Pugh, and Harbour. A lot of fans thought Pugh did a good job considering she’s British.
If they manage to get by in the film, it wouldn’t be the first film that had to endure bad Russian accents for the entire running time.
A lot of good films were marred by butchered Russian accents
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxAtuMu_ph4?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281]
Women usually do a better job at Russian accents, it seems. Male actors are a far different story as many film analysts have shown. Some of the best Russian accents done by actors have come from more committed actors like Mickey Rourke and Viggo Mortensen.
The really bad ones came from those like Arnold Schwarzenegger who just had too powerful of a Austrian accent to ever shape his vowels into Russian.
Whether Black Widow will have to include their actors on this list will have to wait until early 2020. At least Johansson won’t have to worry since her Natasha Romanoff lost most of her Russian accent, something seemingly improbable being a deeply trained Soviet KGB agent not too many years before coming to America.
Written by: Cheat
