Aaaah … I just got back from finally having seen Hero on the big screen and it was goooooooood. I went in a group of nine, three of whom had already seen it, six who had not, and we all left happy. It looked simply fantastic on the big screen and I found myself noticing things in the visuals and sound design that just simply don’t come through on a home system. The theater was packed out and was dead silent throughout the entire screening as everybody simply sat back and took it in. Word from the new folk on the way out: “Better than Crouching Tiger.” See? This is why you should always listen to Bubba.
And now a note for the nit-picky: those rumors that Miramax have tweaked the opening text and subtitles are correct. My impression is that they aimed for a translation that translated concepts more than going for a word for word translation of the spoken dialogue and for the most part the new subs are an improvement over the ones found on the Asian DVD releases. The two big exceptions lie in the opening text which is clumsy and removes some of the ambiguity around the king’s character and the translation of the phrase that Broken Sword inscribes for Nameless as he heads off to kill the king. The new version does the job but is just not nearly as poetic as the more literal translation. So, yes, there are some issues but not nearly enough to get all hot and bothered over.
The film’s got an unusually strong slate of trailers in front of it, by the way, including the trailers for The Grudge and a new – to me, anyway – trailer for Sky Captain, both of which had KungFuGuy and myself chortling away enough that we drew the mockery of the people we were watching the film with. The Grudge looks great on the big screen and Toshio just sounds better through a big ol’ sound system. Sky Captain looks simply spectacular. The art direction on that film is just staggering …
