Hot take: watching shows with subtitles ruins the acting for me but my roommate swears it makes dialogue better

I binged Severance twice last week, once with subs and once without, and the silent facial expressions hit way harder the second time, but my roommate says I missed half the plot without reading the words, so which side do you land on when you are stuck in a 5-hour train ride?

2 comments

2 Comments

ben_nguyen18d ago

Your roommate is right and I'll die on this hill. I watched Parasite with subtitles first and then again dubbed, and the dubbed version lost all the rhythm in how the characters actually talked to each other. Subtitles catch you up on whispered conversations and background chatter that directors put there on purpose, stuff you'd miss even with perfect hearing. The acting is still there, you just have to train your eyes to bounce between the faces and the words, it takes like 10 minutes to get used to. I commute 3 hours a day on the LIRR and I've watched whole seasons of Dark with subs, and I could still tell you the exact eyebrow twitch the main guy did in season 2 episode 4. You are not missing facial expressions, you are just learning to watch with your ears and eyes at the same time.

matthews2118d ago

I dunno, I feel like reading subs makes me miss the actual cinematography.