Kill Bill Vol 1 DVD English Subtitles should be ON
 

Sorry if this has already been mentioned in previous posts.


I just watched the Kill Bill Vol 1 DVD and when it got to the chapter "Man from Okinowa" and they start talking Japanese, there were no subtitles. Now, I saw this movie in theaters, so I KNEW there were supposed to be subtitles to the japanese. So I went back into the menu and specifically turned them on. For the rest of the movie, there were tons of times that they spoke Japenese and they subtitles really needed to be there.

I'm wondering, did anyone else have this problem? Does it always default to subtitles off?

I'm worried that people viewing the movie for the first time on DVD will not realize that there is a lot of dialogue they are missing.

I'm pretty sure the R1 disc is set to turn the subtitles on for this movie. It does on all my players. Subtitle track 1 is English with it just showing up on the Japanese/French parts to translate. Subtitle track 2 is English on all the time. If you're talking about the R2 japanese disc then you have to manually turn it on at the non-English parts.

Default is on on my player.

OK. Then there is either something wrong with my player, or there is something wrong with my disc.

I was already aware of that though, because my "Making of Kill Bill" extra won't play. It just comes up as a mess of blocky video with sound. I've had that problem before on other DVDs, so i think my player just sucks. I should check for a firmware update.

I didn't buy Vol. 1 so please answer this question for me:

When I saw it in the theater the film had cool colored burned in subtitles, some yellow and some green. Is this retained on the DVD or are the subtitles player generated white subtitles?

Subtitles are player generated but exactly as appeared in the theater.

Yeah, the R1 subtitles kept the coloring and placement. Unfortunately the R2 doesn't. :(

i wish the dvd had burn in subtitles like they showed in the documentary. also the subtitles are outside the film print which really bugged me everytime i watched it.

Interesting. I wish that the subtitles were always outside of the film print. I wish players had an option where you could control where the subtitles showed up (which would be very handy for watching WS movies on a non-WS TV).

My player has this option.

Some players have a setting for subtitles - they will force them to always be off if you set it that way.

Subtitles showed up on my Sony player, but no on my computer's drive without turning on the first stream manually.

No big deal, but it's something to keep in mind.

On my Mitsubishi player, the subtitles didn't turn on automatically. This may have been because I stopped the DVD at the menu, and when it resumed it jumped straight to playing the movie.

Well, thanks for the heads-up, now I know not to buy this. I won't buy movies that have burned-in subtitles removed!

So, no DVDs for you then, huh?

Seriously, nearly every single major studio DVD has player-generated subtitles, because they're better.

I love being able to turn them off on foreign films, especially if the film is in a language I can halfway understand, like French.

No more burned-in choiceless subtitles, please!

it had the english subtitles turned on by default on my disc as well.

I had to leave the subtitles on throughout the film on my R2. I found myself reading them be it English or Japanese speak. However, it wasn't too distracting.

defaulted to on for me.

I have a front projection system and can mask my screen to exactly 2.35:1. Subtitles outside the film print would be lost. I'd rather have them over the print.

Just FYI, the Japanese R2 disc keeps the subtitles in the film and out of the bars.

i actually prefer them in the bars so they don't mix in with the background and then becomes hard to read.

I agree 100% with Alan Smithee and you totally misunderstand his point.

He (and I) refuse to buy movies that have had their burned in subtitles removed. In the case of Kill Bill, Smithee and I see the subtitles as being an integral part of the image. If they are removed and become player generated then the image is being altered. Don't get me wrong I have no problem with player generated subs on a foriegn language film like, say The Rules of the Game. But for movies that are in English but have certain passages that require subtitles I want them burned in.

The two biggest offenders in my opinion are MGM's Annie Hall and This is Spinal Tap. The lack of burned in subs on Annie Hall ruins a joke, and in This is Spinal Tap they've actually replaced the burned in location identifiers (ie. Los Angeles, 2 Months Later, etc.) with player generated subs. Both are totally unacceptable. It sounds like what they've done to Kill Bill is unacceptable too.

An additional example would be the great Japanese WWII film Fires on the Plain. In the film the Japanese speak in Japanese so there are electronicly generated subtitles in english for english speaking audiences. In some scenes of the film there are white actors playing American soldiers and they speak english. When they speak in english there are Japanese character subtitles burned into the image. I can't read the subs, and I don't need to because I can understand english, but I would never want the Japanese character subtitles to be removed because they are a part of the image.

i like how theyre not burned in also, (also note that not all of the japanese thats spoken is subtitled.

Oh. My. God.

There are times when burned-in subtitles are preferable, such as the examples Pants gave.

However, I disagree that this is one of those times. I love the fact that the subtitles are deliberately placed so that they don't block the picture (hard matting aside, which most people don't do anyway). Plus, they look and feel like they did in the theater.

Pants: I agree with you completely about location subs in MGM titles - Bond titles and Spinal Tap are fine examples of when the TITLES (not sub-titles) should be burned-in. I haven't seen an example where the film's credits were player-generated subtitles, but I would be against this as well (although in some cases it may be cool to see some film sequences without the titles obscuring part of the image).

In any case, in Kill Bill the TITLE cards are all burned-in as they should be, and the foreign language speaking parts are player generated, also as they should be. I disagree completely that Kill Bill is an English language title - Kill Bill is an international film and its subtitles should be treated as any other foreign film (it was mostly shot in China and Mexico) would be to American audiences.

As long as the subtitles appear as the director intended (either in the black bars in a 2.35:1 film, or in front of the image) I'm happy to be able to turn them off and just appreciate the Japanese, Spanish, etc., without having to have the film translated for me.