Lazy-ass streaming services and non-English language movies

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I’ve had this a few times now and it absolutely does my nut.

I have been waiting for Anatomy of a Fall to appear somewhere as I missed it at the cinema. It turned up on Amazon Prime. Great I thought, that’s tonight’s film sorted.

20mins later and we’ve had to give up on it, because they only have English closed captioned subtitles which means you get all the *heavy breathing* and *man plays piano* etc. Ridiculously distracting, and not correct at all for an English “version” presentation. Plus you get everything subtitled - which includes people speaking in English!

I’ve tried all my AppleTV settings, checked the Prime Video settings. Nothing works. It’s that or nothing.

What the heck are they playing at? This movie won the Palm D’Or - it would have had all of the appropriate language/subtitle versions created for the cinema. Why aren’t Amazon providing them?

 

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My pet hate, closed caption subtitles Netflix did the same with La Revolution it took months before it got regular subtitles. I always like to watch non English speaking tv series or movies in there native language with English subtitles.

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Yeah Netflix did it with a movie called Monos as well. Another award winner.

Amazon actually replied to my complaint saying basically it’s all that was provided. Absolute nonsense. There’s no way the content owners would want this on a UK streaming service like this. No way.

I'd like to inform, subtitle availability depends on the content owners. They only have the right to decide the type of subtitle for their contents.

Hence we don't have option to change it from our end. Please accept my sincere apologies for the inconvenience caused by this situation.

Thank for letting us know you are interested in regular English language subtitles, without the Audio Described parts.

I've forwarded your message to our Prime Video business team and internal team (who has direct contact with the content owners) for review so that each suggestion will be read and taken into consideration.

Our prime video team is actively engaged with the studios to add Subtitles to as many titles as possible and are expanding our catalogue of videos that support Subtitles every month.

 

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Are you suggesting Amazon watched that film and made their own subtitles. Bundling what they were given and chucking it out the door sounds entirely plausible. Why are the content owners immune from suspicion.

I wasn't suggesting they made their own subs.

I think you might be surprised. (snip)

To both, but at the end of the day presumably Amazon bought the rights to the film in the UK. The version they should rightfully receive should be the one suitable for a UK (English speaking audience). That means non HOH, regular English subs burned in for any non-English dialogue. This should be bread and butter, and I don't understand how or why both sides involved would think anything other than that is acceptable for a UK audience. As it is, I'd say 80% of people going to watch the movie in the UK will turn it off. It doesn't make sense.

 

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So, can anyone do a test for me? I just thought I'd try watching a bit of it in the web browser and it defaulted to subtitles = OFF which doesn't show the HOH/AD nonsense, only speech that is non-English. In other words, what you want.

Can anyone confirm?

Something might be going on with my AppleTV settings... I'm thoroughly confused. Turning subtitles to OFF on the AppleTV (in Prime Video) just meant you got nothing when they're speaking French. I have all AppleTV language settings set to English etc.

 

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Amazon don't give a **** what version they put out unless it is their own content so they won't bother sourcing all the subs. Unlike Apple and Netflix who will actively push back to the content owners, Apple won't even let something go live until everything is there.

But surely it’s not even a conversation? Like, here we pay you for the UK rights. Ok here’s the UK version with subtitles for non-English sections. Done. It’s like they’re actively giving them the wrong version?

But anyway can anyone try playing this film on Prime on the web and maybe AppleTV too? I need to figure out what’s going on!