No, the English localization team was simply incompetent (it was Streamline and Carl Macek FFS), and didn't understand the deep themes and majesty of FotNS. It's probably worsened by the fact that they had never read the manga or seen the TV show (which is REQUIRED to fully understand what's going on in the film). This is why they thought "uh...let's just make this sound like one of those kung-fu movie dubs." Thus they crapped on it, and deleted the backstory that is fundamental to the story, thus further impairing understanding of the film by those who unwisely choose the dub. Doesn't help matters that the cast was HORRIBLE. Just plain sucked. The line delivery from Akira Kamiya's Kenshiro is simply succulent and dramatic, same for Toshio Furukawa's Shin. The English cast should have hung their heads in shame.
I think audiences would have been VERY receptive to FotNS had it been dubbed faithfully, with much better actors (say Keith David as Kenshiro). Instead of going "hey, you should see this cheesy kung-fu cartoon movie I saw. It's hilarious and there's GORE, the guy goes 'Hey lardass, you're already dead' and this big fat guy explodes! Story's pretty thin though," people would have said "HOLY *beep* YOU HAVE TO SEE THIS THING. IT'S EPIC! THE COOLEST ANIMATED MOVIE EVER MADE! YOU'VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE IT, DEFINITELY NOT IN AMERICA!" Which doubtless would have kicked up interest in more, leading to at least the whole manga. In fact, the somewhat passive reaction to the movie is probably the reason that Viz's release of the manga fell flat. People were expecting more of the same and passed on it (what little amount of people were reading manga at the time anyway).
TL;DR, maybe a LOT more anime fans would have been made, instead of remaining this very small niche cult thing until Pokemon, if the dub had been faithful and way less amateurish (bearing in mind that FoTNS was one of the few great anime available in the West at the time). Streamline ruined the film with their dub. Choose subtitles if you're a new viewer.
WARNING: Some posts were written on my iPad. And some were dictated to Siri... >.>
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