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Anyone wish Harry Potter wasn't british?

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The books are incredibly British and it was incredibly important for it to be in the movies. J.K. Rowling insisted that all major and minor roles must be played by British actors.

I mean, the franchise has been a British national treasure. Some great thespians in these movies. Everything shot here. It's one of the few pop culture franchises people here actually feel proud of (I would be more for Roald Dahl but that's just my bias lol).
 

Oxirane

Member
How often to English language movies get dubbed into American English?

I remember it happening to Mad Max, but don't know of many others.
 
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the title simplification of the first book/movie for the American audience.

I'm not really that familiar with series but I bet they made loads of changes to the books for the early films to make them more friendly to a global audience.

How does the OP find the Pirates of the Caribbean movies they are just as English as Potter?
 

squidyj

Member
what if all the good guys were american, and all the villains were british? how would that be?

Snape can be Australian or Canadian or something.
 
tumblr_mlzzj44VpY1s40u17o1_500.jpg

U+WOT+M8+_0b8f6f79b23a3ee09eef60e3f9903fa3.jpg

Bwahahahaha. So good.
 

solomon

Member
I've never had trouble with accents in Harry Potter but then again I went to a international school growing up and live in Miami so I'm used to accents of many languages.
 

Dead Man

Member
I think the point was more that Britain isn't one country, even if there was only one English accent there is still Scottish and Welsh

I don't think that was the point, but if it were, Wikipedia disagrees:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,[nb 5] commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or simply Britain /ˈbrɪ.tən/, is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe.

But that would be splitting some pretty fine hairs either way.
 

Kurita

Member
Huh... British accents are that hard to understand? I never had a single problem understanding the films, and I was never around Brits growing up.

Also Game of Thrones isn't british.
Honestly when I was watching Misfits it was really hard to understand what they were saying at times without subtitles (well English isn't my first language but when I watch American shows I have no problem).
 

Wiktor

Member
Nah. British setting is more interesting than american one in this type of story. Plus there's a fact that publishers believed american kids to be simply a lot dumber than european ones, so I would rather not think what changes could have been made if it was primarly made for american market.

Plus the actors in Harry Potter use very clean verson of english. Much easier to understand than typical american accents.
 
Growing up, I loved harry potter well the first 3 movies. Young me had a hard time following the movies because I had a hard time understanding British accent. None the less, i still became interested in the series and really liked it but que the 4th? movie ..where the british really started to bother me. As the actors aged, their British became more apparent/ more confusing to me D: ..maybe their acting got worse or something <.> but I digress, the jokes,dialogs became more and more unfunny and confusing all because the actors started using heavy british accents and such. thats when I started falling out with the movies all together. =/

maybe if Harry potter was american, i would of liked it/understood it

( btw I do love british shows like game of thrones, etc )

I blame the acting

What the.... I don't even know what this is.
 

Timbuktu

Member
It is surprising that when an American writes a successful fantasy series that gets made into a big TV series like GoT, it is even more obviously based on Britain than Tolkien and LoTR.

I mean, we're just a tiny island.
 
What's the alternative? A boorish, ill mannered yankee doodle brat? I think not!

Anyone wish Harry and Ginny had a pottery wheel scene like in Ghost?

More of a Harry and Ron moment really

I wish Rowling would consider it though. American wizards as seen through the eyes of a Brit woman would be interesting. Guns, drugs and rampant sex galore.
 

big_z

Member
Does anything other than generic english sound like brad pit in snatch to americans? I cant figure it out but I've always found it weird that Americans subtitle anything with even the slightest accent on tv shows. In Canada nothing gets subtitled and we got shows like timber kings that are filled with all sorts of thick accents.

EDIT: now I understand why pauly shore's career died. no one could understand him
 

CloudWolf

Member
Just be glad Harry is from London.

Also, as a Dutchie I find most American accents much harder to understand than most British accents.
 

Currygan

at last, for christ's sake
In the '90s there was an animated series from England called Stressed Eric.

xTO2YrB.jpg


It was about this high-strung English family man.


They brought it over to the US, re-dubbed the main character's voice with an American accent, and implied that he was an ex-pat living in London.

Americans wouldn't watch it otherwise. Fucking stupidly hilarious.

(In Canada we got the original version.)


this is horrible

I remember another one: Ka-Zar by Waid and Kubert, great serie. Four pages in and he's teaching baseball (wat) to a tribe. then he rants about how he misses the Celtics (I assume Boston) (...wat)
 

kick51

Banned
Does anything other than generic english sound like brad pit in snatch to americans? I cant figure it out but I've always found it weird that Americans subtitle anything with even the slightest accent on tv shows. In Canada nothing gets subtitled and we got shows like timber kings that are filled with all sorts of thick accents.

EDIT: now I understand why pauly shore's career died. no one could understand him



I think it's because everyone else has to deal with Americans and Americans don't have to deal with anyone else.
 
British accents are incredibly grating to my ears...

...but honestly, a place like America doesn't have enough antiquity to host the locations and themes of the Harry Potter world, so it works out.
 

Bold One

Member
Meet the boy who lived. A young child whose parents were killed at a gun show when he was just a baby, growing was hard for Larry Potter. Living with his aunt and uncle, Paula and Vinny Dursano on Long Island, he was constantly bullied by his family, his classmates and his Bible class teacher. Not even the refreshing taste of an ice-cold Pepsi Max could lift young Larry's spirits...

But on his 11th birthday, everything changed. Larry receives a tweet on his Apple iPad Air from Hogvard University, inviting him to study magic non-blasphemous superpowers and become a true wizard special person. Meeting new friends like Ron Weasolowitz and Harmony Granger, and new enemies like Biff McSnakeface, Larry is going to need all the help he can get to make through his first year at Hogvard.

Along the way, many perils await Larry, Ron and Harmony. Can they protect the Constitution's Stone from the devious Professor Barack? What terrors lie in the Chamber of the National Security Agency? Will they survive the class trip to Ferguson? Find out this summer in:

LARRY POTTER AND THE POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

you sonnafabitch have all my likes
 
First show I had to turn subtitles on was "John Adams". Him and GW were really hard to understand because of their mixture of British(?) accent and missing teeth.
 
British accents are incredibly grating to my ears...

...but honestly, a place like America doesn't have enough antiquity to host the locations and themes of the Harry Potter world, so it works out.

How do you think we feel when most movies and tv shows are american with american actors, American accents to me sound so cheesy and bad.
 
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