I had watched the English-dubbed version and the original Chinese-version of the film, and I did not see why the BBC dub version suck! the only thing that stunk to me was the fake accents (I do admit); well you guys give your thoughts on how the film should dubbed in the US (voice actors), since BBC is from Britian.
Well, there's the fact the BBC voice actors (forced to use some stereotypical accents) doesn't even begin to match the original Chinese cast in nuance/characterization ... and that they replaced the beautifully played and dramatically composed full Chinese orchestral soundtrack with a generically "Asiany" & cutesy-cartoony RIP-OFF of the original music.
In this way, I'd say they have successfully/intentionally cut down the effectiveness of the death/reincarnation by at least 80-90%-- not to mention the fight scenes (a simple, deep bass riff for epic, multi-party/staged fights, really?)!
They were not just afraid of the language barrier, but also afraid of the music barrier-- as if the original traditional Chinese music cues would be too alienating for them (kids?), or just too emotional? I mean, they left the Qin when the Nezha's father is playing a Qin-- and then royally MESSES up the Dragon King's feast(a synthesizer playing when the crabs are drumming, really?).
But then the narrator says the Dragon King was going to "sound the gong" when he was clearly about to beat a drum-- and translations like the "Golden Dong" for "Cave of the Golden Light" (Jin-guang Dong) is just stupid... you use "Golden" in translation of "Jinguang" (Golden Light), but leave "Dong" (Cave) as "Dong"?!
And going back to "Naya" (the Sanskrit/Indian roots of Nezha's name) for the sake of "authenticity" makes about as much sense as Shyamalan using Asiany pronounciations of character-names in his adaptation of the Airbender TV Series-- Nezha doesn't look Indian, his (father's) family name is the Chinese "Li", and the story takes place in Chentang Pass, China...
But apart from all that-- no, it's nowhere as bad as how the Americans cut up "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind" into "Warriors of the Wind"... but I would still consider it a fail/travesty. 8^P
In short, just subtitle the film for wide release-- cos it will never ever get a "G"-rating (except in China, where they don't have a rating system) with the amount of blood, violence and deaths (including a child suicide!) it has. Western children are "supposed" to be brought up on Andrew Lang's fairy tales, not truly epic and metaphysical myths...
"Because bad movies deserve to be hurt back!"-- Spoony
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