The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (film)

[MinionZombie]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/markkermo...y_tattoos.html I saw that video just this morning actually ... however one thing that always makes me laugh is how so many English-speaking people pontificate about "watching stuff in the original language" like it's heathenous not to, yet countless countries around the world routinely watch Western/English-language output (TV, movies) with all the voices dubbed over in their respective native tongues, and they're fine with that. I'm not averse to reading subtitles, but the reason I do sometimes prefer to watch a dubbed version is because subtitles force you to stare at the bottom third-or-less of the screen, so you're missing so much visual information (from meaningful glances to big spectacle moments) ... I wouldn't watch Downfall in a dubbed form, but I routinely watch Italian giallo movies or Japanese genre movies entirely dubbed. Indeed, the Japanese action movie "Versus" is better dubbed in my view, because the voice actor who dubbed the hero sounds much tougher than the real actor ... but also because that movie is so visually oriented, it'd be daft to keep looking at the bottom quarter of the screen everytime someone speaks in that particular movie.

[Neil]

I think the point being made wasn't any form of elitism, but simply did the film need to be remade. ie: Was the remake superior to the original? And as regards sub-titles, I find that odd - I've watched foreign films and afterwards I've forgotten that it was even subtitled as my subconscious has just taken over and I just 'hear' English Kinda cool really... And we know dubbing is generally pretty poor, so it's not really an option

[MinionZombie]

Some dubbing is piss-poor, but it's not a rule by any means ... and as I say, if it's good enough to be accepted by countless millions/billions of non-English speaking people around the world, then who am I to sniffily reject it out-right? (Not saying you're being sniffy - I'm speaking about commentators out there who make such a big deal about it). I'm not averse to subtitles (e.g. in Inglourious Basterds it made a lot of sense, and indeed part of the pleasure was seeing Germans-as-Germans, French-as-French, mostly-Brits-as-Brits, etc), and dubbing doesn't really fit into something like Downfall, but so what? Also, if it's something like the Swedish TGWTDT they actually get good actors and put some effort into the dubbing - I've seen it with the dubbed dialogue and it's fine. Likewise I've seen Let The Right One In with subtitles and that's fine too (indeed there's not much dialogue in that one) ... and let's not forget that some people can struggle to keep up with the subtitles, especially when it's a scene/movie which is dialogue heavy and in which the actors speak very quickly - so quality dubbing should be encouraged to further increase the reach of such movies into the American market without the need to remake them "in American" - just like how English-language content is routinely dubbed for countless foreign markets.

[EvilNed]

I'm not buying into the whole "I don't want to watch the bottom half of the screen, waaah waaah!" argument as an anti-subtitles argument. Your mind is way too quick in reading subtitles. You're not in any danger of missing anything ever. It takes miliseconds to read those lines of subtitles. It just doesn't hold water. No respectable cinephile would watch anything dubbed. Elitistic view? Yeah, probably, but you'll find similar views in most culture fandoms. Film is art and culture, no?