Forbidden Empire

I didn't looks closely enough to realize this was an English dub - it's abysmal. The dubbing is so poor that it distracted completely from what I think may have been a cool flick. I'll try again when I can find it with subtitles.

Too bad they chose to dub instead of subtitle. I'm sure they had they're reasons. It woud have been pretty good otherwise. There was an intentional metaphor at play, so I watched it through because I like mythology in film. The dubbing made it far less profound unfortunately. The acting seemed decent. Hard to tell. The voice over wasn't totally awful, admittedly. But very distracting..

For the record: I almost always finish movies. Even bad ones, just because there might be a redeeming gem somewhere in the pile. I turned off Forbidden Empire after about twenty minutes. My single biggest issue is dubbing. I hate vocal dubbing, usually just because I’m a techie, and paying attention to quality issues like audio/video synchronization is second nature. But this movie goes a step beyond that, to breaking the narrative in places where it’s obvious characters are supposed to be having communication problems because they speak different languages — but they’re all “speaking” the same language.

Bad overall. Mostly dubbed in English from original language (likely Russian), it is a bit of a mess. Dialogue between Russian actors and English actors clearly not knowing Russian. The English actors was the reason I rented this movie hoping it would be decent. Unfortunately, a mediocre cast of Russian actors and mediocre settings made everything even worse. It could have been better had it not been so terribly dubbed and edited better. Or even better, how about cast actors that can speak English or just leave the original Russian and have subtitles? But overall a mess not really worth watching. Don’t let the fact that there are a couple of good English actors involved fool you!