The adaptation of foreign movie titles for Russian distribution is a process that sometimes defies logic. Even in situations where there is no hard-to-translate puns or other linguistic subtleties, domestic localizers sometimes give out such pearls that you wonder.
Such names sometimes completely kill the picture, scaring away spectators who are waiting to see some trash based on an inadequate name. From such localizations you can make the top 20 or even the top 50, but by tradition we will limit ourselves to a dozen and try to squeeze the most interesting.
10. Escape from the Shawshank | 1994
Let's start with the classics in every sense of the word: the classics of cinema and the classics of “creativity” of our localizers. The original title of the film is The Shawshank Redemption, which can be translated as “salvation,” “redemption,” or “liberation.” Yes, the word “escape” is even more meaningful, but it spoils the whole plot!
In the picture to the very end, there are only slight hints that Dufrain is preparing to escape, so without knowing the name you can suspect anything, but for some reason the domestic viewer was deprived of such luxury.
9. My boyfriend is crazy | 2012
What movie do you imagine seeing this title? Even if you have already watched it - abstract yourself and imagine what might be called "My boyfriend is crazy." With a confidence of 99.9%, it can be argued that you will come up with a youth comedy for girls that you watched and forgot.
In fact, the Silver Linings Playbook (a collection of rays of hope) is a tragicomedy with a deep meaning, for which Jennifer Lawrence won an Oscar. Our film’s target audience simply didn’t go for it, and those who went just because of the name felt cheated.
8. Telekinesis | 2013
An ignorant person can argue: the main character does indeed possess the most powerful telekinesis, so this name better reflects the essence than the original "Carrie".
Yes, everything is true, but there is one thing: the film was shot according to Stephen King’s book “Carrie” and is already the third adaptation. This means that “Carrie” already has an impressive fan base, among which there are both reading a book and watching a picture of Brian De Palma or David Carson, but “Telekinesis” is an empty phrase.
7. The beginning | 2010
The beginning of what? Have you ever asked this question? Apparently, the distributors in Russia also did not bother, “Slapping” the first thoughtful word on the poster that came to their mind.
The original Inception translates as “implementation,” which fits perfectly with the essence of the film, which deals with the introduction of ideas into someone else’s brain.
It can be seen that Christopher Nolan himself did not think much about the name and did everything simply, but elegantly. Why do we love to complicate everything so much?
6. Cross the line | 2005
An excellent biopic with Joaquin Phoenix about the life of musician Johnny Cash is an example of how our localizers know how to select antonyms.
The original name of the picture is Walk the Line, which refers to one of the artist’s songs. It can be translated as “walking along the line, along the edge,” about which the film was made. In it, the main character walks around the edge, constantly risking a break, but the love and support of June Carter do not allow him to cross that line, and only here in Russia, Johnny Cash crosses it.
5. Game without rules | 2010
And again the antonyms, this time even more meaningless and merciless. Have you heard the Fair Play football expression for fair play? Then you can easily translate the phrase Fair Game, meaning essentially the same thing.
Even if you try very hard, it’s still difficult to even guess how and why the “Game by the rules” has turned into a “Game without rules."
4. War of the worlds Z | 2013
And here the logic is quite clear: it is clearly visible how the "ingenious" marketers worked, who decided to "hype" on the loud title of the work of Herbert Wells.
In the original, the film is called World War Z, that is, World War Z, which is not the same as the War of the Worlds.
Just think: in the film there is not even one of the seediest alien or rusty spaceship, but at the same time there is a war of worlds. Marketing of the 80th lvl, what can I say.
3. Monsters on vacation | 2012
Even a person who has never studied English will probably be able to understand that Hotel Transylvania is not any kind of monster in any vacation. It’s just “Hotel Transylvania”, which refers to the homeland of all vampires, but this name, apparently, seemed too boring.
What do children like? Right, vacation. Who lives in Transylvania? Vampires, werewolves, all sorts of monsters. We add up and get an acceptable result, which people will definitely go for. That rare case when sheer stupidity in adaptation did not spoil the box office of the project.
2. Friendship and no sex? | 2013
Ask yourself, would you go to a movie theater for such a movie? Would you invite your girlfriend, or even your spouse, to the session? Hardly. The name clearly defined the tape in the category of youth or even teenage, although in fact this is not so.
Yes, this is a story about young people (starring Daniel Radcliffe, Zoe Kazan and Adam Driver), but it does not contain vulgarity, an abundance of jokes below the waist and drunk student parties ending with the arrival of the police.
The foreign press christened the picture as “extremely sweet”, in which there is more romance than comedy. There is almost no sex as such.
In the original, the name sounds What If, and you can translate it as "What if?" or "What (would be) if?" Russian adaptation and Russian adaptation and no logic.
1. Military diver | 2000
A biographical drama about the first American black graduate of a naval school who became a diver was released under the proud title Men of Honor, that is, People of Honor.
The US Navy, officers, huge ships, harsh army life - all this goes well with the name, direct associations suggest themselves. And what associations do the word “diver” invoke in you? Not a diver, but a diver?
Why not go further and call a sniper a shooter, an athlete a runner, and a sapper a blast? See this on the poster of your movie theater - do not be surprised.