Everyone loves to give Kevin Costner grief for his accent in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves

I don't care what anyone says, I liked that movie. Then again, I was of the generation that saw that and other Costner movies in the theater.

Costner has limited (at best ) range, but that was the appeal; he seemed like an everyday guy. He reminded me a lot of a couple guys I went to school with. To me, that made it easier to empathize with him in movies where we're supposed to identify with his character.

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I don't care what anyone says, I liked that movie.

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It's highly entertaining and English accent or no, Costner is a solid leading man in that film. And you can tell that Alan Rickman was having loads of fun in the role of Nottingham.

Take it easy. His accent in JFK was fricking terrible, too. Almost as bad as Kevin Bacon.

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The English accent of today sounds nothing like it did at the time of the Third Crusade (when Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is set). The American accent of today is much closer to the English accent of that period. But it's all beside the point because the English nobility (of which Robin of Locksley would have been part of) would have been speaking French at that particular time. English was the language of the peasant class in 12th century England.

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Most of the fuss about "accents" in film, just a lot of misguided thespian snobbery.

Regardless of actual dialect, MOST film/story protagonists are supposed to be clearly liked and understood by the audience. That's advanced by making him easily understood, not by making him "authentic".

Look into Lord of the Rings, Tolkien wrote that the Common Speech (Westron) was translated into English for the benefit of the reader. So in reality, the entire story would be gibberish, not just the Elves talking and singing.

Back to Robin Hood, he was a man of the people, and the film was targeted to Americans first and foremost. As such, him sounding like Bill down the street, that fits into the theme, not make it worse. It does irritate the Brits, but that's because it's not THEIR film.

Alan Rickman carried the film though

The one he has in Yellowstone is also pretty awful.

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so Costner's portrayal of Robin Hood was actually more historically accurate than anyone who came before or after him.

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Yeah if Robin Hood was in the 14th century and within a few hundred years of Shakespeare's time, it would follow that Costner sounded more authentic than all the modern day Brits around him.

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So what’s popularly believed to be the classic British English accent isn’t actually so classic. In fact, British accents have undergone more change in the last few centuries than American accents have – partly because London, and its orbit of influence, was historically at the forefront of linguistic change in English.

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In fact they say when Brits have done Shakespeare all these years they botch some of the puns in the writing because of their accents.

That's why they now have Original Pronunciation productions of Shakespeare and they say its far easier for American actors to do it than modern day Brits.

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What they should've done was to tell every American actor to drop their British accents, so Costner wouldn't be as conspicuous

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Why not? We have war movies where the Nazis just speak American English (which is better than speaking English with some strange German accent.)

I don't think anyone had a problem with Valkyrie when EVERYONE in the movie just spoke their normal regular everyday accent...Tom Cruise, some Brits playing Nazis, etc.

I just never had a problem with Kevin Costner's accent in the film. I feel like it would have been much worse had Costner tried an English accent and failed miserably at it. Him using his own accent was the best choice for the film IMHO.

He was great in The Big Chill