His vaguely Nordic accent felt convincing to me as a native speaker at least. Since I didn’t know who he was, I expected him to be some Scandinavian actor.
That’s just fantastic. I don’t think I ever really believed it was canceled because that just broke my brain. Glad to hear I don’t have to try to come to terms with it.
Was the main influence on the Belterese accent supposed to be Nordic? Based on Jared Harris’ turn as the leader/crime boss on Ceres, I thought it was Afrikaans.
I don’t know if it was supposed to be Nordic, but it definitely sounded like it. It would fit with the name as well, being a not uncommon Swedish name.
Whee. I’m guessing that Amazon thus will have to buy the streaming rights from Netflix since they (NF) had a distribution deal with Syfy for Europe. I actually hope they can fastrack this so that I don’t have to wait 5 months for season 3 to be available over here.
Excellent news!
Awesome. I hope that next time they decide to cancel it they will work with the writers to prepare proper ending.
It really is the little victories that keep me energized in these times we currently live in.
Did he say “seasons” at the end of his announcement?
SEASONSSSSSSSS
Insofar as one can be a ‘fan’ of a gigantic corporation, I was already an Amazon fan. Prime is fantastic. Now this has me ready to wear a T-Shirt with their logo. Woot! :)
It was firefly all over again for me :p
YEAH GOOD NEWS! A SCI FI SHOW I LIKE GOT RENEWED! THANX AMAZON PRIME! AND YEAH BRING BACK ALPHAS! Straitharn is a good actor… a Sayles veteran. Can’t go wrong with him. Belters are cool!
The Belter accent is hard to place, for the good reason that various actors have called upon different sources to inspire them. It’s wholly made up so that’s an exceptionally hard thing to do. The human brain processes language and accents on levels that duck and weave in and out of our consciousness. Our ears detect things which are “off” without understanding how or why they are “off”. Accents are hard.
I agree that Jared Harris’ accent while playing Anderson Dawes “felt” true and organic in a way that some others have not. I think that is because most viewers were simply unfamiliar with his source, but recognized that it was consistent.
I actually don’t mind the Belter accent of Drummer (played by Cara Gee) and some of its vaguely Chinese sounding elements - the nasal intonation in some of her pronunciation feels both Chinese and real; however, my wife thinks it’s terrible and wanders all over the place. My wife probably has a point. Still, I like the weird Asian influences more than when Naomi’s Belter accent trails off into Caribbean patois. I’m waiting for Naomi to just go all in and call someone a “blud clot”.
Maybe it’s simply safe to say that invented accents are very hard to do convincingly and leave it at that.
Especially when the accents are substituting for what is, in the books, a creole formed from bits and pieces of a couple dozen different languages in a way that’s largely incomprehensible for people who didn’t grow up in the Belt (i.e., everyone in the audience). I was looking forward to hearing it spoken but I can understand why they chose not to try.
It sounds VERY South African to me. Especially Jared Harris.
Actually, I listened to clips of Harris’ performance again and it sounds like it’s influenced by other parts of Subsaharan Africa-- I’m really not competent to say from where:
For the book, the authors just winged it. But for the TV show they hired a linguist to design a creole language. Cara Gee said she can’t really speak with a Belter accent on the spot, she has to mark up all her lines in the script syllable by syllable and just memorize it.
I didnt want a weeks wait between so I held back on the series until this week. Ive watched the first 5 episodes and damn this season has been really good. I think its unfortuante for Syfy that they let this go over a bad contract because this is the kind of show they need. Excellent sci-fi. Now Amazon has it and I think they will regret losing it.
It was never about the quality - it was about eyes on the screen watching it live as it first aired, with ads.
Even for those WITH cable, the demographic that The Expanse appeals to is tech savvy and prone to torrent or stream it. The show reached a lot more people than those who watched it live or PVR watched it within 3 days of airing.
But those are the only eyeballs SyFy could count as far as its advertisers go. The Expanse was the prestige series on SyFy. And now it isn’t.
Now they are down to The Magicians.