Russell Crowe’s Zeus Sounds Like Stavros In Thor: Love And Thunder

So Russell Crowe plays Zeus in Thor: Love And Thunder. We can say it now, it’s in the trailer, and everything and the film is out; I saw it last week at the London Leicester Square Cineworld on IMAX. But why does Russell Crowe choose to play the Greek God with a… Greek accent? Or for what passes for one? Because it doesn’t sound like any Greek person, I know, well, maybe except for one. The Norse Gods of Asgard don’t put on a Norweigan accent. You don’t have Thor going, “please to be hitting you.” I am sitting next to Torunn Grønbekk at the London Film And Comic-Con right now, she is named after Thor, and no one in the Marvel Cinematic Universe sounds like her, aside from some of the cast of characters in Tønsberg. So why should the Gods of Greece sound like they are running a doner kebab shop at two in the morning on a Friday night in East London?

It’s weird; it’s offputting and, more than anything, makes Zeus sound like Stavros, the character created by Harry Enfield for Friday Night Live and Saturday Live back in the eighties. If you are not familiar, I mean, I suppose it was almost forty years ago now; here are a few examples. Although I suppose we should add that usual line about how the content reflects the cultural mores of the time and may include outdated and offensive stereotypes. But they didn’t give that warning on Thor: Love And Thunder for Rusell Crowe’s Zeus, and he’s also into human sacrifice. Stavros is a far more genial figure; frankly, I’d rather he were Zeus.

And here’s that Thor trailer where you hear the tiniest sliver of Russell Crowe’s Zeus, but nothing that quite prepares you for the godly version of “Hello everybody peeps.”