The movie is written and directed by a Chinese person, dialogue is in Mandarin Chinese, and the storyline is about a Chinese person, yet ironcally the characters in the movie's trailer are gibberish.
These are two screen shots Mark has captured from the movie's trailer to show just how ridiculous they are:
Just below COMING SOON is a giant ㄍ. Along the right side of the screen is the following, in zhuyin fuhao: ㄇㄞㄒㄖㄘ. This, in Hanyu Pinyin, would be “maixrici,” which is complete gibberish. The other vertical lines of text are also nonsense in zhuyin fuhao. Again, there’s nothing wrong with how these are written. It’s just that they’re no more meaningful than a random string of letters. (more)
The zhuyin fuhao on the left read, from top to bottom, ㄔㄐㄎㄊㄆ, which would be “chjktp” in Hanyu Pinyin. As I think should be obvious even to those who don’t know Mandarin or any other Sinitic language, this is simply nonsense. (more)
Hopefully the actual movie would be better than the trailer, unlike the last movie I saw Lady in the Water by M. Night Shyamalan which really sucked scrunt's balls.
Hmmmm. I bet it's because they're promoting it in the US.
ReplyDeleteI saw the version in Hong Kong. Same thing. I wonder if it is the same effect as the Matrix where Japanese Kanji characters are used.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't paid any attention to that, but now that the matter has been brought up, thats pretty sad. Stupid f'n Hollywood...
ReplyDeleteDon't worry, the movie's definitely worth a watch. It's a bit cliche, but then again it's a Jet Li movie, what would you expect?
ReplyDeleteI wonder if it is the same effect as the Matrix where Japanese Kanji characters are used.
ReplyDeleteIn the Matrix title scenes, they used Japanese katakana that were mirror-reversed. There too it was all gibberish -- none of it made any sense at all -- so perhaps the analogy is apt.
tian, i'm sure the ad is simply the result of dimwit advertising and distribution PR types who don't know any better. They're just going for flash. Unfortunately, the film's makers probably had nothing to do with it.
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