Man I hated that British dialect from the beginning of Rogue One, I don’t know who that guy was. Took me right out of the movie. Was it Scottish or whatever. I’m talking about the guy who Cassian meets in the streets.
It was Daniel Mays, a rather good actor. He’s from Essex (It’s the Jersey of London LOL).
I did find it oddly distracting as it was not something I’d heard in SW before. I was also initially distracted by the new strong Glasgow and Indonesian accents in TFA. I guess it’s down to the Star Wars accents being quite rigidly American and RP British before. The sudden and heavy use of Aussie/Kiwi accents in AOTC and ROTS was and is strange. If ANH had kept the west-country, Scottish and Cockney accents we’d probably be used to it.
Now that I think of it… Diego Luna’s strong Mexican accent in R1 wasn’t something I even noticed. Is there something about a Spanish twang that immediately says “Rebel-Space-Assassin”? Or maybe as Star Wars has a big toe in the Western genre, that accent just feels so right for a SW gunslinger.