English accents in historical films

I never really get why people get so bothered by accents in movies. If it's made by an English language country, the funding usually won't be there for anything else. And with a lot of these big budget features, stars are required. Thus simple economics come into effect. The problem is that many of these stars don't have particular range as actors. TBH, I always thought with something like Alexander (which I haven't seen) the only 'artistic motive' was just to make Farrell look good :P I'd rather normal, American / British accents than bad Russian ones, for example.

One must suspend disbelief when watching films - they're fiction, or mediated recreation that tend to take serious liberties with the narrative they're adapting. A foreign accent is usually the least of my concerns when it comes to these things. I always go back to the Valkyrie approach. It's merely an OK film (perhaps overly generous?) but having Cruise speaking German and then fading into his normal accent acknowledged the inherent problem with Hollywood accents. That, for me, was the perfect way to point out "OK, this is a Hollywood adaptation of a Germany set narrative, let's just get on with things".

Was discussing Dangerous Liasons today, and while I'm not the biggest fan of the film, what I did like was how they kind of give a big '**** you' to the typical period picture stylings by having all the characters speak in their native accent. Particularly sly is the representation of peasants / servants as Scottish, where all the bourgeoisie are American. It's just a nice touch, and one which really helps distinguish it from your usual po-faced costume drama. Indeed, a contemporary period drama, if you will. Marie Antoinette had the same casual disregard for genre norms, but unfortunately that had problems elsewhere too. Still, makes a change from po-faced, clean and very British extravagance.