A Foreign Language

Last night, I watched the DVD of Katsuhiro Otomo's Steamboy twice. The first time, I watched it on the default setting with the dialogue in the original Japanese with English subtitles. When it was over, I was playing around with the special features and started watching it again with English dubbing. Normally, when it comes to foreign films, I'm very much anti-dubbing. Call me a purist, or a snob, or whatever, but I think it changes a movie a lot if you're not getting the dialogue the way it was originally recorded. However, when it comes to gorgeously animated movies like Steamboy and the films of Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Nausicaä, etc.), I've changed my thinking. When you have to read subtitles to follow the plot, you miss out on an amazing amount of the visual beauty of these films. Steamboy is an incredible visual feat, blending traditional animation and computer-generated imagery to create a fantastic vision of Victorian London, and I'm glad I watched it twice, because I was amazed at how much I missed the first time through.

Images © 2004 Sony Pictures Entertainment.