Originally Posted By: VitoC
I saw Clint Eastwood's "Letters from Iwo Jima" this morning on AMC, showing the Japanese side of the battle. Very good, but I was really disappointed that they showed it dubbed into English, instead of the original version which was in Japanese with English subtitles. I don't like dubbings. If I were Japanese I might be offended, because it almost suggests Americans are so limited that it's too much trouble for them to read subtitles (although apparently the original subtitles were in small print, something that caused complaints).


Its done for the same reason why all those Japanese movies back in the day (like GODZILLA) were dubbed for American consumption: Because most mainstream audiences are able without exerting much effort, i.e. brain attention span.

But yeah I despise dubbing on principle. That said, I don't think Japanese would be that offended, considering all foreign tongue movies (especially ours) get shipped over there dubbed. Plus it actually gives actors in those countries jobs dubbing over.

In fact the only markets where foreign film imports aren't dubbed are markets so small, its not economically feasible to spend the time and money to put out a unique language track for that territory. Like Portugal.