Tearing Down Hollywood's Worst Obsession

This is the climax of Arrival, one of my favorite sci-fi films ever. But the moment is completely ruined for me because of one simple yet stupid detail. She can't speak Chinese. For a film that's quite literally centered around language, it's ironic how this is the message which saves the world. An unintelligible piece of gibberish. Yet this is but a drop in the vast ocean of ignorance Hollywood has when it comes to foreign languages. Hollywood's strange obsession with butchering foreign languages has been going on for decades. I'm just surprised it's still going. Honestly, it's ridiculously hard just attempting to translate whatever the heck he said. And I know what you're thinking. Film Junkie, why is this a big deal? Well, whenever a scene like this comes up, it just completely ruins the immersion of anyone who actually speaks that language. Take for example Mandarin. This is a very tonal language. Based on your pronunciation, the same words can have multiple different meanings. For example, if I were to say 我来庆祝你的生日了, it would mean I'm here to celebrate your birthday. If I were to pronounce it differently, say 我来庆祝你的生日了. While I'm in a sense using the same words, it would instead translate to But the thing that genuinely bothers me is that a lot of times these lines of dialogue are completely unnecessary. Take for example Cloudy with a chance of meatballs too. What they're trying to do here is establish this character's intelligence by showing that he can speak Mandarin and that he knows Chinese proverbs. But given the fact that his Mandarin is unintelligible, it only results in making him look like a complete buffoon. They do this so many times in the film for no fucking reason whatsoever. It's almost as if they're trying to piss off Chinese speakers, and every time I hear it, I can feel myself losing more and more of my sanity. And in some cases they occur at pivotal moments in the plot, possibly ruining the audience's experience. In Arrival, this scene takes place at the climax of the film. Yet if I were a native Chinese speaker and heard this, I'd have no idea what the heck they're saying. I would much rather have watched her say an English translation of the message instead of having Amy Adams, who I'm not hating on by the way she's a great actress, try to tell the general this message in a language she clearly can't speak. The general in this film literally speaks fluent English. So I think this comes down to an issue with the writing. He simply could have told Louise this message in English instead of Mandarin. And to further prove that pure gibberish is allowed to pass, let's take a look at this scene from Moon Knight. Now ignoring the fact that what he said in no way resembles Mandarin, the grammar in this line of dialogue isn't even correct. This is not the word you're supposed to use when talking about playing soccer or football. It's supposed to be 踢打, which was used in Moon Knight, would actually be used if you're talking about for example basketball. This gibberish has become so common, the few rare occasions where an actor actually pronounces things correctly have become the thing that's shocking. Although it's a very short piece of dialogue, considering how hard it is to speak Mandarin properly, trust me it's fucking difficult, this is still very impressive. And to further emphasize how long this trope has been going on, Stephen Chow's Kung Fu Hustle, which was released almost 20 years ago, made an entire joke revolving around this exact concept of how characters speak some foreign language for no real reason other than to show off. When it comes to languages, just do what makes sense for the character. If the character is an American who's never had a reason to learn, for example, Cantonese, then speaking the language crappily makes sense. But if a character has a reason to speak it fluently, then they should. Both of these clips are from Rush Hour 2, and this is a fantastic example of how a foreign language should be used, not some cheap party trick that is just thrown in without any care for the language itself. In this case, Don Cheadle speaking proper Cantonese makes complete sense with his character. His wife is Chinese, he has a Chinese restaurant, and even learned Kung Fu from a Chinese instructor. So here it wouldn't make sense if he spoke gibberish Cantonese. Meanwhile, Carter does speak unintelligible Cantonese, and that also makes sense. Once again fitting with his character, and even helping to emphasize his goofy, extroverted personality, resulting in some pretty comedic scenes. Hopefully this video changed the way you look at foreign languages in films. I want to make it clear it doesn't just happen to Chinese languages, there's been plenty of cases where films butcher German, Korean, Spanish, and the list just goes on and on. I am hopeful though that at some point I'll be able to deeply immerse myself into a film without any risk of crappy Chinese ruining my experience. But until then, this is an issue I believe needed to be brought up. Anyways, thanks for watching, and have a great day.