Talk:Hero (2002 film)

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Contents 1 How is Quentin Tarantino associated with this movie? 2 How's the US military get involved/support Hollywood film makers? 3 removed sentence about film beeing not as succesful as the creator thought 4 "Chess House" and Go 5 NPOV

[edit] How is Quentin Tarantino associated with this movie?

How is Quentin Tarantino associated with this movie? In the ads I see here, it's supposedly a "Quentin Tarantino film".

Does it means he brought this film to the US? I don't think he had any part in the production of this film. He may own the distribution right in the US. Just a guess. Kowloonese

It seems from the discussion on the IMDB forum that Quentin is credited as the film's "Presenter" which is explained in the IMDB glossary. So he either did voice-over (which I don't remember happening, at least not Quentin Tarantino doing voice-over) or was an executive producer for one or both of the releases. Thames

Yeah, it just means that one of his companies was responsible for persuading people to release it in America and perhaps supplying some finances for promotion and whatnot. When a famous director does this, they'll often put his name on the publicity because they think it will sell more tickets; all the Kill Bill fans will go "Oh, great something QT is involved with which I ordinarily wouldn't have thought about going to". Seems like it worked, too. The Singing Badger 21:14, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Probably a throwback to QT's attempted series of Asian imports. Around a decade ago, Rolling Thunder was supposed to release a whole series of Asian art films in America. In fact, if you go to the article on Chungking Express you can see the obnoxious packaging that Tarantino put on that release. I dunno how many movies were actually released this way, but on CE you also get didactic monologues from Tarantino before and after the film talking about why he thinks it's important for Americans to see it. Glad no one tried to do this to Hero... On the one hand it's great that QT brought CE to America, but on the other hand, Quentin Tarantino what made you so great you cocky bastard why don't you just shut up. --Chinasaur

[edit] How's the US military get involved/support Hollywood film makers?

I have never heard any such claim except for here and unless something is cited proving that the US military does indeed, get involved/support producers then I feel this should be deleted.

Edit: I guess it does happen, my friend showed me about the Pentagon's 'approval' of the Black Hawk Down script. I guess I was just gullible enough to believe that our military supported the freedom of expression clause in the US Constitution.

Most Hollywood movies about the military are made with support of the Pentagon. The Pentagon knows the power these movies have they are willing to provide all kinds of support, equipment etc. Often the plots of movies are slightly edited at the request of the Pentagon to get the support and important services from the Pentagon. So Hollywood almost exclusively makes pro-Pentagon movies.

[edit] removed sentence about film beeing not as succesful as the creator thought

since hero set "a record as the highest-grossing opening-weekend foreign language film in the United States" I don't believe you can say that it "failed to be as successful as its makers hoped" I removed the latter passage since it is not based by facts and can't be validated...

Sirana 21:31, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Chess House" and Go

The section "Cross-cultural translations" has this sentence: Also, near the beginning of the film, a place where games of Go are clearly being played is called a "chess house".

It certainly didn't look like Go to me; in the movie, large round stones were placed in depressions on a stone table using a fork-like tool. It looks nothing like Go, which uses many small stones placed by hand on interesections of lines on a flat table. Even if it was Go, translation is about making things clear to the foriegn audience, and using "chess house" for a place where people congregate to play a strategy game, even if the game clearly isn't chess, is clearly appropriate. I'm going to remove the sentence soon if nobody objects. - dharmabum 22:01, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

The game they're playing at the "chess" house is called weiqi which is the game Go in Japanese. The forks that they're using isn't really significant, I guess it's to keep the pieces clean because back then the pieces were probably ivory or marble. It is something lost in translation because most Americans aren't going to know what weiqi or go is. I think calling it a chess house as a translation is fine.Kwazyutopia19 03:21, 23 August 2006 (UTC)kwazyutopia19

[edit] NPOV

This article section Political meaning and Cross-cultural translations seems to be politicized to criticize/oppose/defame the Chinese like by saying critics criticize something while not citing the critics that did so. Even the cited wikisource link is a dud. So, I'm moving the two sections into this talk page and a concensus should be reached whether it should be fixed then returned to the article page or deleted from this talk page entirely.

Snippets begins in nowiki:

==Political meaning== {{Unreferenced}} Although inspired in part by the success of films such as ''[[Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon]]'', the film failed to be as successful as its makers hoped, in part due to criticism overseas at a perceived pro-[[totalitarianism|totalitarian]] and pro-[[Chinese reunification]] subtext. Critics also cited as evidence the approval given to the film by the [[Central People's Government|government]] of the [[People's Republic of China]]. These critics argue that the ulterior meaning of the film is the triumph of security and stability over liberty and human rights and that the concept of [[all under heaven]] (translated in the English-subtitled release as "Our Land") is used to justify the incorporation of areas such [[Tibet]] and [[Xinjiang]] within the [[People's Republic of China]] and promote the reunification of [[Taiwan]] with [[China]]. Additionally, the future first Emperor of China is portrayed in a very sympathetic light while for centuries [[Qin Shi Huang]] has been looked upon with scorn as a brutal tyrant by [[Confucianism|Confucian]] scholars. A more standard and much less sympathetic portrait of Qin Shi Huang is found in the 1999 film ''[[The Emperor and the Assassin]]''. While it is true that his rule is often brutal, Qin Shi Huang's reign is now looked upon more objectively by some modern scholars for some effective measures such as unifying the systems for language, weights and measures, currency, and for the construction of a national transport network. In any case, the revisonist portrayal in the film reflects the controversy associated with the historical figure. However, philosophically, the film can be viewed from a different angle; that of [[causality]]. The fact remains that if Qin Shi Huang didn't unify China, there systematically wouldn't be a China. This throws into question the acts of historical events and how people view them in the present; whether the ends justified the means, and can be viewed as a [[fallacy]], hypothesis contrary to fact. The film's director, Zhang Yimou, purportedly withdrew from the [[1999]] [[Cannes Film Festival]] to protest similar criticism [http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Zhang_Yimou_withdraws_from_Cannes], though some believe that Zhang had other reasons. However, defenders of Zhang Yimou and his film argue that the Chinese government's approval of ''Hero'' is no different from the U.S. military providing support to films such as ''[[Top Gun (film)|Top Gun]]'', in which filmmakers portray U.S. armed forces in a positive light. Others reject entirely that Zhang Yimou had any political motives in making the film. Zhang Yimou himself maintained he has no political intentions whatsoever. [http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,6737,1375277,00.html] ==Cross-cultural translations== {{Unreferenced}} There has been some criticism of the film for its American-release translation of one of the central ideas in the film, ''[[All under heaven|tiān xià]]'', which literally means "all under heaven." During this time in their history, the Chinese people held the opinion (as did many before and after—see e.g. [[omphalos]] and [[axis mundi]]) that they were the very center of the universe; indeed, the Chinese term for China is ''Zhōngguó'', literally meaning "middle-country" or perhaps more accurately "central kingdom" (though originally conceived as "the country between [[heaven]] and [[hell]]", much like Germanic [[Midgard]]). With that in mind, Broken Sword begs Nameless that the King of Qin be allowed to succeed, because the peace he will bring will benefit not just China, but everyone around them (figuratively) — ''all under heaven'' (literally). In this case, the term should be interpreted figuratively. But as the average American viewer is probably unaware of China's self-conception, mistranslating ''tiān xià'' as "our land" is a simple way to avoid having to explain it. Zhang Yimou was [http://www.eye.net/eye/issue/issue_09.30.04/film/mediumcool.html asked] about the change at a screening in Massachusetts and said it was a problem of translation. "If you ask me if 'our land' is a good translation, I can't tell you. All translations are handicapped. Every word has different meanings in different cultures," he said. That wasn't the only change in translation. Cries from the soldiers were changed from "Hail!" to "storm," in order to avoid a [[Nazi]]/[[fascist]] connotation. Others were minor; Nameless addresses the old blind musician (during his fight with Sky) as "Sir" in the Miramax translation. On the import DVDs, he calls him "old man" (actually, Nameless says "lao xiansheng", which means something along the lines of "old gentleman"). Lao can be translated to English as "old". Xiansheng in Chinese is a polite way of addressing men, such as "sir" or "mister" in English.

Snippet ends. Feureau 21:45, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

I can't substantiate that stuff, but there were critics who said it had a controversial political subtext. The Washington Post's review was positive but indicated the film ultimately endorses tyranny and so ends up morally wrong, even if beautiful along the way.[1]. The Village Voice compares it to something Leni Riefenstahl might have done[2] and the reviewer at Philadelphia Weekly called it "politically sickening."[3] Lucius Shepard was highly negative, but then again he is almost always highly negative. That said most reviews were positive.--T. Anthony 19:02, 21 October 2006 (UTC)