For one, because Tolkien himself would have a fit, were he alive. His works were "a mythology for England", and I'm pretty sure this is how he would have wanted to keep it. Also, it would seem misplaced in that particular fictional universe. Now, a non-Boer, Anglo-South African accent would totally fool everyone.
Eh? Anyway, I don't think American accents work in something as fundamentally British as Middle-Earth. It's like filming Beowulf with people speaking Yank. It's like Robin Hood...oh wait. They did that. And it didn't work.
Off the top of my head, some possibilities are: Brian Cox Robert Carlyle Timothy Dalton Dominic West Ben Kingsley
I guess what I was trying to say was, to spite what Tolken might have wanted they went ahead and "Americanized" it anyway.
To be fair, the likes of Viggo Mortensen, Liv Tyler and Elijah Wood all performed very well in the LOTR trilogy, though all toned down their usual American accents and aimed for a sort of mid-Atlantic one. I'm sure that would work for Smaug too.
IMO, Smaug's voice needs to have "Shakespearian" authority, sneering menace and the hinted potential for unbridled devastation. Therefore my picks are either Gary Oldman or Anthony Hopkins. If they can't be hired, then Bobcat Goldwaithe.
So many of you forget that RB's voice for Gandalf was the very American John Huston. And American Orson Bean was the voice of Bilbo. An American can easily do Smaug justice. I can hear James Earl Jones in my head right now.
Nah, at this point having JEJ do your voice-over is having !!!JAMES EARL JONES!!! do your voice-over.
Well Viggo sort of screwed up the accent, but Elijah and Liv did aim for Estuary, and managed well. I think they got trained in Received Pronunciation phonetics. So it was supposed to be English, even what Viggo did, though he messed the vowels up royally. Oh, and I think Christopher Lee would be awesome.
^ But he's already Saruman in the saga. Too distracting to have him voice another high profile baddie. And don't cite the example of John Rhys Davies voicing two characters, cos that was distracting too.
Lol, that's exactly what I was gonna do! I didn't think it was distracting, but.... How about Patrick Stewart? I'm sure his name has popped up in this thread somewhere, but I'm too lazy to check.
Sorry, I'm not really a fan of the cartoon, Smaug included. The style of the movie will lend itself to non-American accents at a minimum. I feel this is especially true of dragons.
Not that an American accent was my only and final choice but I was thinking along the lines that dragons are a species that would predate human existance and have a dilect before the English language was ever spoken. So I don't see them having a British accent but rather one from a language/dilect that pre-dates it.