Excitement and Action

So earlier today I was talking with some of the Chinese at work, and I asked a couple of girls if they had seen Austin Powers.  They said they didn’t know that movie, but they’d probably seen it and only knew it by its Chinese name.  I looked up pictures of Austin Powers and they immediately recognized it as “Number One Super Top Secret Spy King.”

I, of course, thought this was hilarious, and asked if there were any other funny names.  Apparently the word “team” is appealing from a marketing stance.  A Bug’s Life is known as “Bug Team,” with the word “team” being used in the sense of a SWAT team, packed with action.  Most of the Pixar movies are named with the word “team” in them; Monsters Inc. is “Monster Team” and so on.

Another great one is The Matrix, which in Chinese is—I’m not making this up—“The Internet Can Kill You.” But I have to say that my personal favorite is, of all things, the Shawshank Redemption.  For some reason when this was released in China it was given the incomprehensible name of “Excitement 1995.”

“Number One Super Top Secret Spy King”

Ya baby! Do I make you Super Top Secret Horny? And here I thought it was just racist humor coming up with stuff like this, it’s real!

I think they department that names this stuff should be called “Lost in Translation”.

LOL!  there must be some way to get this posting
to Stephen King. He deserves to get as big
of a laugh as I did over ‘Excitement 1995’!
Hilarious. Now if you’ll excuse me I need to
get back to work on ‘Gereactric Archeaeologist’

Makes you wonder if the subtitles have anything at all to do with the movie…

I thought you had typed ‘Excrement 1995’!