10 Films That Were Totally Changed For Foreign Audiences

3. Every Foreign Film The Weinsteins Buy

The Weinstein brothers have quite a reputation in Hollywood. In the early nineties the film producing duo of Harvey and Bob had become critical darlings during them time with Miramax, plucking the best indie talent of the decade from obscurity and training them up into blockbuster and art house fodder alike, grooming directors such as Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith and Richard Linklater during their formative years. In 2005 the brothers parted ways with Miramax, however, deciding to start up their own production company - The Weinstein Company - which is where everything started to go wrong. Nowadays the Weinsteins aren't synonymous with bringing new, fresh and interesting talent into multiplexes across the country. Their names are invoked with scorn and rage, a shorthand for idiotic American producers buying up interesting foreign films and then dumbing them down for the US market, under the assumption that the English-speaking world isn't interested in subtitles, orchestral scores or nuance, replacing them with dubs, hip-hop soundtracks and script revisions that don't make any sense. Plus, if you're thinking that your magnum opus needs anything longer than ninety minutes to be told, you're in the wrong game, bucko. The most recent - and egregious - example of the Weinsteins buying up a film and then changing it beyond recognition for the American release is Snowpiercer. A half-English, half-Korean comic book adaptation by The Host director Bong-Joon Ho, the film has received countless positive critical notices for its intelligence, daring and social commentary. So obviously the Weinsteins decided to cut the running time in half, remove most of the Korean stars and opening and closing monologues be added. Which is, weirdly, what they also decided to do with the American release of The Magic Roundabout, which got renamed Doogal, had a new song and a bunch of pop culture references added, and the all-star English cast replaced with American comedians who apparently had nothing better to do.