Yet more response to this topic:

It’s a “whine.” “Jason? Freddy? JR Ewing? Boss Hogg? Seriously evil

badguys [are] quite un-British.”

“Anthony Hopkins is Welsh.”

“The Biblical/Roman era films mentioned all contain elements of class and cultural clash. What easier way to underscore those differences than by having one side speak American English and other speak British English? Would you buy into a film full of Romans speaking English with Italian accents? With any “foreign” subect matter, a cheap, easy way to express “foreigness” and still be intelligible is to use British actors.”

Another correspondent can “easily imagine a villain with a southern drawl; think of Deliverance. That is the dumb brute villain. But if a refined, elegant villain is called for, the British accent fits the bill.”

That may be true, I suppose, of traditional ‘Oxford English,’ but Bob ‘Beria’ Hoskins is no toff, and Robert Carlyle’s Begbie (Trainspotting) spoke in a Scots accent so broad that subtitles might have helped some American moviegoers.

Writing from one of Oxford’s more distinguished colleges, an American argues, “the reason so many of the on screen baddies are English is that, for some reason, they look humane [as they go about their wicked ways]. Americans are so much more unsubtle. If they are good, they are really good; if they are evil, they are really evil. No clear demarcation between good and evil exists in the UK.”

Well, that last sentence is a touch controversial. Let’s just say the Brits recognize a few more shades of gray than their cousins across the Atlantic.