English Varieties in Star Wars side-story "Rogue One"

For a long time, English spoken by characters in fantasy and sci-fi movies has generally been American (e.g., Luke, Han, and Leia in the original Star Wars trilogy) or one of several British/Scottish varieties (from Obi-Wan Kenobi to the dwarves and elves in Lord of the Rings). In the world of linguistics, American and British English varieties are considered to be Inner Circle varieties: the dominant varieties with long histories, typically spoken by monolinguals or 'balanced' bilinguals from an early age (Kachru, 1985). Of course, there is little reason that would necessitate denizens of medieval fantasy worlds or intergalactic space travelers to speak English like Anderson Cooper or Benedict Cumberbatch, but hey, that's Hollywood. To me, that's what makes the creative choices in language so interesting in fantasy/sci-fi: it's much more of an arbitrary choice compared to say, a period drama or a biopic, which would require authenticity to a real-world context.

But the recent Star Wars side-story, Rogue One, has attracted some attention for featuring English colored by non-Inner Circle English varieties- and not just villains. Actor Diego Luna's Mexican roots are reflected in his portrayal of Cassian Andor (skip to about 1:19 to hear some Cassian lines):

As you can hear in the interview, Luna's Mexican English shines through his Cassian lines. However, before getting too excited about Mexican English as a full-blown variety being featured in the film, I would say it's mostly a Mexican accent that is featured. A full-blown variety of English would be marked by a set of distinct lexical and syntactic features in addition to phonology (pronunciation of particular sounds, intonation and stress patterns, etc.). You can hear a bit of a difference in Luna's interview, which was not scripted and rehearsed like movie lines are.

Donnie Yen's performance as blind temple guardian Chirrut Imwe piqued my linguistic attention, too. Yen is from Hong Kong (and a kung fu and action movie legend by the way), and Chirrut's lines reflect Yen's HK English. At this point, it's still difficult to track down Chirrut audio online, but I would be curious of any of Yen's distinct HK English features outside of pronunciation show up in the film, like plural marking that is quite different from standard American or British varieties (HK English plural marking is easily identifiable in Yen's interviews, e.g. "one of the main feature" at around 0:18 here: https://youtu.be/jyPdrKZ2grg).

So I don't know that new(er) English varieties have made their big splash in Hollywood yet, but this is still a cool thing that's happened with Rogue One.

"Arrival" is a really positive representation of linguistics and language learning

Arrival is a fantastic piece of science fiction. 12 (peaceful) alien spaceships arrive on earth, and a linguist is recruited to establish communication while the world at large slips into fear and panic. I will try to avoid spoilers here- go see it for yourself. But consider this a review of how the film portrays linguistics, linguists, and foreign language learning. I'll cover pros and cons:

PROS:

• The complexity of language is presented with major importance to the plot. For example, Amy Adams' character has to explain how linguistically complicated the interrogative "What is your purpose on Earth?" to an Air Force general who sees it as one simple question composed of 6 words.
• Linguistics is presented as science, and fights for equal standing along hard sciences. Jeremy Renner's character is a NSF scientist (chemist? physicist?) who is initially a bit dismissive of linguistics, making a distinction between language and science. But he is won over, and ends up being Adams' supporter. 
• Interaction. Adams needs to interact directly with the aliens in order for there to be any way for her to learn their language/teach them ours. Interaction is key in language learning! 
• Language teaching and learning is presented pretty positively. We get to see Adams' character providing comprehensible input to the aliens, using gestures and actions to illustrate concepts. She has to start with extremely simple messages, and gradually works up from there. Communication is important to the whole process.
• Written language. The alien writing system is key for humans learning the language, and I think this is a nice parallel to the real world, where written language can provide a huge boon to foreign language learning, especially for adults. Some would argue that for adults in non-immersion contexts, it's really the ease of accessing a particular writing system that determines the difficulty of learning another language. The classic example is Mandarin being especially difficult for Anglophones, even though Mandarin is really no more or less complex than French (of course, cognate vocabulary also plays a role).

CONS:

• Louise Banks (the linguist played by Amy Adams) speaks a lot of languages, and can interpret to English in real-time. While it's not a bad thing at all to have Anglophone movie characters demonstrate multilingual abilities, it nonetheless reinforces the popular conception of a linguist as someone who knows many languages.
• Just about the only linguistic theory mentioned by name is Sapir-Whorf. This is actually somewhat of a key plot point, so I can forgive it on that account, but in the real world the idea that the language you speak shapes how you think and experience the world has been largely debunked. There are only very slight differences in processing information across languages, and these amount to arguably negligible differences when it comes to forming a worldview.

All in all, this is the movie you tell friends to watch if you want them to get a basic sense of what linguistics is- it's not perfect, but I think it's better than linguists-as-accent-coaches in My Fair Lady. It's also a well-crafted, entertaining movie otherwise. I think I'm going to have to check out director Denis Villeneuve's other work!