RPatz Goes Dark, Gritty, and... Southern?

To be honest, there was a bit of doubt as to whether or not Robert Pattinson was going to pull a strong movie career out of the whole Twilight thing. As popular as the film saga was, is there anyone who isn't still making Edward Cullen jokes at his expense? He's been involved three films since his Twilight hiatus and they're all as far from Twilight as it's possible to get. In the Maps to the Stars trailer, we got to see Pattinson get sexual. In the official full trailer for The Rover, we get to see Pattinson get Southern.

The story is set in a world 10 years after the collapse of the western economic system. Life is cheap in a lawless world where desperate and dangerous people are flocking to Australia for its mineral resources. Guy Pearce stars as a hardened loner named Eric who takes in Rey, played by Robert Pattinson, after he is wounded and then abandoned by the gang of thieves he was with when they take off with Eric's car. Pearce and Pattinson set off to track down the thieves, because even in a desolate world you just do not get between a man and his car.

We learned from the Twilight movies that Pattinson can do a generic American accent fairly well. Outside of the films, he defaulted back to his natural British accent, although there was a brief time where he worried that he was losing that one.

The gruff Southern accent he puts on in the trailer is unsurprisingly good, though whether he can maintain it for the whole movie still remains to be seen. He spends most of the clip being beaten up, looking like he just got beat up, or looking like he's about to get beat up, and the dark and dingy look works well for him. Nothing says "I'm not an immortal vampire" like the ability to grow facial hair and look like you don't get to shower that often. Add a Southern accent on top of that and people might just leave the theater swooning over him again, whether that's what he's going for here or not.

Watch the trailer below.

Image: A24