Found this terrific review of Jet Li’s movie, “Fearless” on msn.com just now. It’s not written by a legitimate film critic–which is obvious considering the biggest gripe this guy has:
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| I didnt know this movie was all subtitles, it totally bites having to read long stretches of dialogue. The movie was bad. Got boring and dragged. Why pay money to watch it in the theater and read, when you can wait for DVD and watch it with English. | |||
Indeed, John, subtitles are lame…for the illiterate. But it shouldn’t be an issue if you know how to read those “long stretches of dialogue”–oh wait, I’m guessing you can’t because you ended up becoming lost and are now trying to cover it up by saying the movie was “boring and dragged.” I too, find movies to be boring when they are in a foreign language and I can’t read the subtitles fast enough because I have a fourth grade education. Oh wait…that’s not me…that’s YOU! And everyone else like you who complains about reading subtitles.
I get it…some people prefer not having to read words on the bottom of the screen because it takes your eyes off the rest of the screen for a few moments. That’s fine…those people probably avoid watching movies featuring a foreign action star–who is wearing clothes and has his hair done the way they did back in the old days in China. Somehow that movie poster tricked John into thinking the film was going to be in English…but if he could read he probably would have figured out from other sources (i.e. internet, newspapers, DMX not being in the movie) that this is going to be Chinese-language only.
Hey, I could care less if you don’t like subtitles. Fine…whatever. My problem is by going to a foreign movie and complaining that there are subtitles, you are (1) asking for it, and (2) setting literacy back a million years. Deal with it. And if can’t read fast enough to follow along, or you get tired of reading…you’re really pathetic and just plain lazy.
And why the hell would you want to watch the movie dubbed in English? Why not just dub it yourself then?
absolutangel64 
nice.
I am in a weird situation with Chinese films … I can read traditional chinese, speak cantonese and a complete moron with mandarin. Most interesting films nowadays are all in mandarin but have the option of English or traditional chinese subtitles.
I usually opt for the traditional chinese since it’s very close to the actual dialogue even though obviously my english reading and comprehension is much much superior. It’s a strain for sure since I have to read the chinese and keep up with the action (for example, it was tough to watch Warlords since there is the cinematography plus the dialogue is interesting) but after the first 10 minutes, my brains adjusts and I could almost simultaneously scan the subtitles while watching the film. It helps that there are some mandarin pronounciations similarities with cantonese so I pretty much understood everything that I missed out with the subtitles.
So yeah, you are correct albeit in a really sarcastic manner of putting it … it’s not that tough to watch a film and scan the subtitles for dialogue.
Btw, Warlords can be summarized with one sentence: three guys and a girl, a death pact and a love triangle equals everybody dies tragically.