Sorry Austin Butler, Tom Hardy Is Reclaiming His Title As The King Of Distracting Movie Accents

The Bikeriders movie pairs Tom Hardy & Austin Butler, emphasizing their iconic accents that add unique depth to their characters’ performances.
Tom Hardy’s Chicagoan accent for the character Johnny in The Bikeriders stands out more prominently compared to Austin Butler’s accent as Benny.

Despite the noticeable accents, Tom Hardy’s performances in various films show that his unique vocal choices do not detract from his exceptional acting abilities.
The highly-anticipated new movie from Jeff Nichols titled The Bikeriders will pair two actors with a long history of iconic accents, Tom Hardy and Austin Butler. Butler is fresh off the overwhelming box office success of Dune: Part Two, which is already poised to be one of the highest-grossing and critically acclaimed movies of 2024. Butler also stars as Major Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven in the Apple original WWII series Masters of the Air, in which glimpses of the actor’s legendary accent from the 8-time Academy Award-nominated Elvis can still be heard quite clearly.

Hardy is known best for his roles in several Christopher Nolan films such as Inception (2010), Dunkirk (2017), and The Dark Knight Rises (2012), as well as major roles in Oscar winners Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) and The Revenant (2015). The Bikeriders marks Hardy’s first feature film since 2021’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage and his first non-comic book movie since 2020’s Capone. Nichols, the acclaimed writer/director of the Matthew McConaughey-led Mud (2012), the star-studded Midnight Special (2016), and the Oscar-nominated Loving (2016) makes his return to directing for the first time in seven years.

Tom Hardy’s The Bikeriders Accent Is More Distracting Than Austin Butler’s
Following the release of The Bikeriders second trailer from Focus Features, it’s evident that of the two accent-heavy actors, Hardy’s is certainly more noticeable than Butler’s. Hardy plays Johnny, the leader of a fictional biker gang out of Chicago known as Vandals MC. The Bikeriders takes place in the 1960s, which will inspire everything from the costumes to the aesthetic and even the accents in the film. Butler plays Benny, a lower-ranking but highly reckless and ambitious member of the Vandals MC, which was inspired by the real-life biker gang Outlaws MC that was founded in 1935.

The Bikeriders originally premiered back in August 2023 at the 50th Telluride Film Festival in Colorado but its wide release was delayed due to the historic dual WGA and SAG strikes. Although the film has been on the back burner for quite some time, and it is notably the second Butler film that was pushed back to 2024 due to the union protests in Hollywood, the film is expected to become one of the best movies of 2024. The Bikeriders will finally be released on June 21, 2024, the same day as the highly-anticipated Emma Stone and Yorgos Lantghimos collaboration Kinds of Kindness.

The Bikeriders is already similar to a 16-year-old TV show, but after a new trailer, this TV show might have already spoiled the movie’s ending.
Tom Hardy & Austin Butler Both Have A Long History Of Distracting Accents

Butler has a much shorter Hollywood career compared to Hardy due to their 16-year age difference. As a result, Butler’s streak of iconic accents has been very brief compared to Hardy’s body of work, which first began in the remarkable HBO WWII miniseries Band of Brothers in 2001. Butler’s history of accents really began after the popularity and claim of Elvis, for which he had initially received mass praise for nailing the pop star’s distinctive voice. Throughout 2023, Butler made several appearances in interviews still using the Elvis accent after his Golden Globes acceptance speech became an overnight online sensation.

Hardy’s history with peculiar and over-the-top accents started to become noteworthy during the 2010s after his brief role in Inception catapulted his rise as an international star. Hardy gives his best Welch accent in the 2013 claustrophobic thriller Locke and offers fragments of a working-class Boston accent in the MMA classic Warrior (2011). Hardy’s most legendary accent is, of course, as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, a vocal performance that might be outdone by the hardened, old-school Chicagoan accent used by Johnny throughout The Bikeriders.

Are Tom Hardy’s Distracting Accents A Problem?
Despite how noticeable Hardy’s accents are, they certainly don’t detract from the quality of the films he’s in or the outstanding performances he gives. While Hardy’s accents can be interpreted sometimes as doing too much, they never overtly distract from the plot or his character, which is a feat in and of itself. Bane’s iconic voice in The Dark Knight Rises remains one of the most memorable aspects of the celebrated film even more than a decade after its release. While Butler seems to have toned down his overall approach to doing character accents in his movies, Hardy is apparently doubling down on his vocal performance style as Johnny in The Bikeriders.