Avengers: Infinity War

Can't believe I wasn't able to infer the obvious conclusion from all of those things I didn't know until thirty seconds ago. Puttin' on muh dunce cap!

I think the explanation is simply that Thanos is so tough, that Thor's innate power alone can't kill him, he needs a magical weapon to enhance it. True, his lightnings did do some mighty damage to Hela, but Infinity War begins with Thor having already lost to Thanos, so presumably he tried the lightning and it wasn't enough.

yeah, i s'pose that's fair enough - just seems a bit clunky storytelling-wise to have him lose his power, regain it in spectacular fashion, and then immediately have to go back to relying on weapons again

altho i guess infinity war was being written before or parallel to ragnarok so there's probably just a dull procedural reason behind it more than anything else

you could have just inferred it from her being Australian tbf

Not all of us have immediate and unfettered access to all of the knowledge in the universe, my friend.

sic does have custody of all six infinity stones tbf

I assumed as much.

It's a real struggle finding underpants that fit.

No one made you paste them on and around your no-no zone.

Blanchett usually plays English characters or does an English accent, no? So it's not unreasonable to assume she's from England. Has she ever done an Australian accent in her Hollywood roles?

I think Hot Fuzz is the only thing I've seen her in where she plays an English character

Anecdotally it seems that all the major Australian actors rarely get to act in their native accent. Blanchett, Kidman, Jackman, Crowe (well, New Zealand), Gibson, Geoffrey Rush, Guy Pearce, Hugo Weaving, Toni Collette, Naomi Watts, Margot Robbie, even Eric Bana or Joel Edgerton. Maybe has something to do with the Aussie accent being so specific? Or more likely that British accents have long been used as Hollywood shorthand for intelligent, or evil bad guy.

An exception that I just remembered are a couple of Apatow or Apatow-esque movies, one where Bana gets to play an Australian, and in that Seth Rogan movie where he is married to Rose Byrne, and she uses her native accent there, too iirc.

Mel Gibson is American.

Suggesting that Hugo Weaving and Guy Pearce and Joel Edgerton and Geoffrey Rush never get to act with Australian accents is completely bonkers.


Maybe has something to do with the Aussie accent being so specific?

It's true, everyone from Cape Cod sounds exactly the same as everyone from Houston.

blanchett's innate poise makes her appear upper-class english no matter what accent she's using

she's like the human equivalent of a cut-glass accent

you'd think making sic IA & fussy would be hilarious but it never is

It's true, everyone from Cape Cod sounds exactly the same as everyone from Houston.

No, they sound "American."

Suggesting that Hugo Weaving and Guy Pearce and Joel Edgerton and Geoffrey Rush never get to act with Australian accents is completely bonkers.

Sorry, I was talking about mainstream Hollywood movies. Obviously all of the above Aussie's have acted plenty with their native accents.

Aussies.

you'd think making sic IA & fussy would be hilarious but it never is

― El Tomboto, Friday, August 3, 2018 9:33 AM (four minutes ago)

No, they sound "American."

But the accent is "so specific"

there are some hints that Gamora revealing the location of the Soul Stone was a part of bigger plan by her to defeat Thanos; either she provided him with a credible forgery, or her soul was transported inside the Stone, where she can control it. The sequel will show whether this theory is true.

I thought Gamora thought she had Thanos cornered because "he didn't love anything" so therefore he couldn't sacrifice what he loved to get the stone. but unfortunately, there was one person that he loved who happened to be right there. idk if she really had a plan beyond wanting to save her friends.

We'll have to see if Blanchett gets a chance to play Hela in a second appearance

It'd give her a second chance to reprise a character with a British-style accent, like that time she played Queen Elizabeth and it was popular enough to spawn a sequel

voodoo chili otm, not sure what is up with this forgery take

I don't know enough about Australian accents to know how much or if they vary from place to place within the country. I'm sure when actors are doing a generic American accent they often must have some accent in mind, even if it's not recognizably regional like New England or Southern. I assume it's just a general flat accent a la many newscasters.

My favorite example of Aussies losing their accents is in that awesome twisty thriller "Triangle." The filmmakers are Australian, the entire cast is Australian, it's filmed in Australia, it's mostly set on a boat in the middle of the ocean and when it's not it's set in an unspecified (iirc) seaside town. And yet everyone acts with an American accent.

The director of Triangle is British.

I still haven't researched it but I'm pretty sure Dr. Strange and Dr. House had the same dialect coach because somehow Cumberbatch and Hugh Laurie end up sounding like their characters grew up on the same street

the crossover we truly deserve imo

So does anyone know why Brolin chose to play Thanos with an Australian accent? Weird choice, imo.

Benedict Cumberbatch sounds exactly like Dennis Quaid when doing his American accent in Dr. Strange.

I could buy that

it's funny to me that "american accent" means you sound kind of gravelly

Triangle director being British doesn't really change my point, but thank you for the correction.

xpost Clearly Doctor Strange and Doctor House picked up the accent as an affectation when they roomed together in medical school.

it's funny to me that "american accent" means you sound kind of gravelly

― mh, Friday, August 3, 2018 3:06 PM (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the batman accent

Just like the white accent = pinching your nose so you sound congested

we do sound like that though

I guess my daughter saw a TV ad for this somewhere because last night she asked me to summarize the story arc of the Infinity War and ugh I had to dredge up my half-remembered memories of various 70s/80s comics. Plus an aside that Thanos is a shameless ripoff of Darkseid.

I'd never heard of Triangle but

The actors, all of them Australian and New Zealand (sic), use American accents as the film is set in Florida.

Yeah, but it's nominally Florida at best. 95% of it takes place on a boat on the open deas. And when it is on land there are no signifiers that it is Florida or any other place. Nor does it matter.

open seas

open deas... nuts

Loving this detour.

Would like like de-tour of deez...

xpost I laughed

the detour ends up in Florida iirc

Nor does it matter.

it definitely doesn't matter, but you knew four things about this movie and three of them apparently aren't true

Oh, come on, my point still stands. It's a *British* director making a movie set on a boat starring an all Aussie *or Kiwi* cast, all of whom use generic American accents because it is nominally set in Florida. But they could have set it anywhere without changing a thing but the accents. Or hey, maybe not!

Benedict Cumberbatch sounds exactly like Dennis Quaid when doing his American accent in Dr. Strange.
― com rad erry red flag (f. hazel), Friday, August 3

I can definitely see that though he said before he was going for a Harrison Ford imitation. I didn’t like Strange in his own movie at all but liked him a lot more in the ensemble here.

I hope half of the next movie is just Captain Marvel and Wong

wong needs his own movie, really

actually maybe a wong / shuri teamup is what we need

Kinda can't wait to see what wackadoo Avengers/(insert team name) configurations the future holds based around characters that become surprise fan favorites.