“Star Wars has always had its home in the UK,” a Disney representative announced before a London screening of Solo: A Star Wars Story, the latest film in the franchise. But as the movie wore on, I realised this was only partly true. There are lots of Americans, and lots of posh English people, but as someone with a regional accent, Solo involved me about as much as the Royal Wedding.
From the beginning, that galaxy far, far away has always felt more like it’s within the London commuter belt. In one of the series’ most effective running jokes, the good guys were Americans while the baddies had snooty English accents. But something has gone wrong. Yes, Solo is full of supercilious Imperial officers, but a lot of the goodies are now posh too. In a galaxy full of planets, species and puppets, why does everyone sound the same?
Star Wars has a history of playing with the politics of accents. C-3PO was a parody of the prissy English diplomat, a Graham Greene character. In A New Hope, Carrie Fisher infamously adopted a courtly accent for Princess Leia. (“Say those lines like an American and I’ll pay you,” she once quipped.) Her relationship with Han was a version of that old Hollywood cliché, where American cultural supremacy meets old-world English snobbery.
Most notably, as Eddie Izzard once pointed out, the Death Star in the original movies was staffed almost exclusively by guys called Sebastian with cut glass voices (Grand Moff Tarkin probably interrupted a bridge game to blow up Alderaan). From an American perspective, the politics of plucky rebels overthrowing the Coruscant Cricket Club isn’t hard to work out. Director Irvine Kershner deliberately cast Brits as high-ranking imperials for The Empire Strikes Back, to mirror the American revolution. The Galactic Empire has the voice of Imperial Britain.
But it’s not as simple as Brits vs Americans. Although Americans never quite understand this (or perhaps can’t hear the difference), accents are still key to the British class system. Received Pronunciation (known as RP) is still the voice of power and influence, in all areas from politics to the media. Throughout most of the 20th century, the clipped enunciation of ‘BBC English’ was all-pervasive, held to be the ‘correct’ way of speaking. Despite ongoing efforts to represent regional accents and move channels out of London, RP and southern English accents are still hilariously over-abundant. BBC News presenter Steph McGovern has claimed that posh people are paid more and says she was once told she was too “common” for the news. An RP accent is not only an indicator of wealth or status – it gives status in itself. (Rather brilliantly, the Star Wars wiki Wookieepedia renames RP as ‘Coruscanti’, defining it as “what some would consider a superior accent”, frequently used in “propaganda broadcasts, rebel satire, and [by] the Imperial elite.”)
What’s more, although it is most prevalent in the south of England, RP is not truly regional. It’s not ‘from’ anywhere, but is taught in certain schools and social circles – perfect for a galaxy-spanning, homogenous bureaucracy. Encoded in Star Wars’ use of RP is the same presumed authority that powered a real-life empire: a certainty that they will be heard, delivered with a decorum that does not indicate respect. (Yes, I am a Scot who works in London media, why? What chip on my shoulder?)
But the once-clear linguistic dividing line is breaking down. Star Wars has gone from mocking the dominant English voice to amplifying it. In Solo, Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke) grew up homeless on the streets of Corellia, but must have received elocution lessons from Henry Higgins. Her fellow street urchins are straight from an Eton production of Oliver. The main villain is Paul Bettany, Iron Man’s robot butler. The new droid is Phoebe Waller-Bridge. With all of the heroes, villains, robots, pirates, gangsters, bit-players and surprise cameos blethering like the Millennium Falcon is the New York-Heathrow Concorde, the sheer prevalence of RP and southern accents has become not just noticeable, but absurd. (Remember even those everyday blokes Princes William and Harry got a cameo in The Last Jedi.)
It’s not that English people must be villains, but surely they can’t be everyone? With posh English people on both sides, the series is feeling less like Star Wars than the War of the Roses.
More importantly, it highlights an insidious trend in sci-fi and genre films, in which non-RP accents are silenced or replaced. Daisy Ridley uses her RP for Rey in The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, but John Boyega puts on an American accent for Finn. (“I tried it in the British but it didn’t work out,” he joked to Graham Norton, putting on an exaggerated South London accent.) Liverpudlian Jason Isaacs, who uses a Texas twang as Gabriel Lorca in Star Trek Discovery, once told me he is not Starfleet’s first Scouse captain partly because he didn’t want to be in the shadow of Patrick Stewart’s magisterial (and RP) voice. Karen Gillan, James McAvoy and Ewan McGregor have all lost their burrs before to travelling to space or developing superpowers.
When regional accents do appear, they often play into stereotypes. Several Scottish towns argue they are the future birthplace of the Enterprise’s chief engineer (Linlithgow even has a plaque) – but Scotty was also a pub brawler who drank aliens under the table. Before developing into a fan-favourite in Deep Space Nine, Chief O’Brien “kissed the blarney stone” and carried a tune. Much of this stereotyping is evident in fantasy as well as sci-fi. The dwarves in Lord of the Rings could star in a Ken Loach film. Shrek is Scottish. In Westeros, the inbred toffs are from the south eastern capital; north of the wall is an icy land of savage redheads and zombies that look like extras from Trainspotting.
If you have a regional accent in a genre film, you are not going to be a captain or an elf. You’re going to be a viking, klingon or something else that’s drunk and/or violent. There is one noticeably Scottish character in The Force Awakens: Bala-Tik, played by Brien Vernel. He’s a gangster who threatens Han Solo. Still, it’s better than not being heard at all.
Look, I don’t want to be one of these Scots who always brings up the Highland Clearances… but during the Highland Clearances, crofters were forced off their land so aristocrats could have fun hunting over the heather. Genre films display a similar love of the landscape but not the people. Much was made of filming on Skellig Islands for The Last Jedi, but Domhnall Gleeson (General Hux) does not use his Irish accent. Hogwarts castle is canonically in the Highlands, but all of its pupils sound like Prince Charles at Gordonstoun. Avengers: Infinity War has a major battle just off Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, but the closest you get to a Scottish accent is a sign in a chip shop window, offering to “deep fry your kebab.” Scottish voices haven’t been ignored this completely since Brexit.
Hollywood’s tin ear is reinforcing one of Britain’s many inequalities, and an infinite universe should not all sound the same. Or to put it more simply: if Star Wars fans can understand Chewbacca, then they can understand Glaswegian.
