Vaguely Racist ‘Hancock’ Subtitles Prompt Fledgling Fan Revolt

The Dark Knight may have its curse, Transformers 2 may have its star’s busted hand and Terminator 4 may face the opprobrium of its own franchise anchor. But another summer blockbuster faces an unfortunate — if totally foreseeable — development of its own. Those viewers who remember Hancock’s introductory action sequence may have been too rattled/busy/overwhelmed to have been paying attention to the subtitled conversation of its Asian bad guys, but nothing got past an eagle-eyed blogger who caught the slightly insensitive translation pictured here. Follow the jump for an enlarged image and a summary of one man’s! total! outrage!
Look, would we have translated the dialect into a little more elegant English, as opposed to the more stilted “Engrish” of Hancock? Yeah, probably. But we’re not quite ready for the boycott action proposed by this particularly incensed viewer:

I don’t know the grammar of Chinese or any other Asian languages, so I don’t know if this construction is correct according to whatever language they’re speaking, but come on. Have the writers of this movie ever seen a foreign film? Subtitles don’t translate word-for-word. It’s not like German movies are subtitled with shit like “You like when I making the food, jaaaaa?” Japanese films don’t have “Ridicurous!” along the bottom of the screen. Seriously, do they get what subtitles are? These people are speaking their native language. … I no pay for next Will Smith movie.

That’s fine — judging by the ready availability of this screen grab, he didn’t pay for this one either. But anyway, don’t hold it against Smith; we hear the especially insidious “subtitle thetans” will be among the first to go at the megastar’s swanky new school in Calabasas.

• Producers of ‘Hancock’ don’t understand what subtitles are [Rottin' in Denmark via THND]