The Contender Group are doing a great job of distributing Asian movies in UK cinemas, but are they going to far to get them a Western audience?…
The Contender Group, who run the Premier Asia and Hong Kong Legends labels in the UK, are beginning to get into the worrying habit of ‘fiddling’ with films they release theatrically. Often this has been little more than giving Asian films a new musical soundtrack, like Ong-Bak and Initial D: Driftracer. In the case of the latter droping Jay Chou’s power ballads for a new drum n’ bass/dance driven soundtrack by Fuel definitely added to the films appeal - especially for it’s audience of boy racers, who seem to enjoy damaging their eardrums with thunderous sound systems at the best of times.
For the theatrical release of Seven Swords, however, this meant cutting approximately 15 minutes of running time from a movie that already had underdeveloped characters and subplots. The deleted scenes, included on the DVD - though divorced from the film itself - may not appear drastically important to the plot, partly as their significance may be lost on a western audience, but losing them seems more a portent of what’s to come.
It’s not so long ago that Asian film fans united against Disney and affiliated companies like Miramax in their treatment of movies from the east. Dubbed, cut, seemingly deliberately delayed release (anything to do with Kill Bill?)- Shaolin Soccer was left on the shelf for three years when Miramax brought the distribution rights, while Legend of Zu neve even appeared - yet also made it impossible to get the original versions outside of Hong Kong or China, treatment which caused fans to even set up an online petition against them.
Point is, how far should you go to entice an audience to see a film? Some believe that as long as it helps brings the crowd in, that’s enough - at least if the original version is included in some form, perhaps on the DVD? But should we change films at all? Shouldn’t they reflect the different culture they come from, without hesitation?
When Studio Ghibli director Hayao Miyazaki agreed to allow Disney to release his movies in the State, he made one stipulation - you can dub them into English, but they couldn’t change one scene. Forcing them to translate every minute of the movie, each beautifully weird second.
Do Contender risk making the same mistake? It’s rather like they’ve opened Pandora’s box, and now they can’t help themselves. A tweak here, an edit there, a new soundtrack booming in the background - but where does it stop?
Forget art. Forget allowing a movie to find an audience on it’s own merits. Just cynically alter it to suit the market? Come on, let’s leave that to the Americans…
