zhen_shuai Posted June 23, 2009 at 03:48 PM Report Posted June 23, 2009 at 03:48 PM anybody out there watch this? i remember being really surprised when that the smugglers spoke Mandarin! found this explanation online (supposedly something the producer said): "12-year old drug lord Tran, (Brandon Soo Hoo) was the second actor the producers saw and totally fell in love. Not only that, something I didn’t understand…Tran was originally supposed to speak Cantonese (in Cambodia?!) and then the part was changed to Mandarin because one of the screenwriters was fluent in Mandarin." -http://www.chi-lan.com/2008/08/movie-review-tropic-thunder.html odd that they would still name him Tran, a Vietnamese name...and Soo Hoo doesn't sound like Mandarin, either. his imdb page says that he speaks English and Cantonese: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1317656/resume i thought his Mandarin seemed a little put on! also, the scene where Robert Downey Jr. speaks 'Chinese' is completely unintelligible. i watched it with two friends who also study Chinese and we couldn't make heads or tales of it. i guess that was the point? Quote
Manoz Posted June 23, 2009 at 10:02 PM Report Posted June 23, 2009 at 10:02 PM Aye, I've seen that film (it wasn't that great from what I remember). I think his Chinese was meant to be awful. It's one of those light-hearted comedies I guess. Quote
zhen_shuai Posted June 23, 2009 at 11:59 PM Author Report Posted June 23, 2009 at 11:59 PM http://6.cn/plist/239806/4.html @ 6:43 Robert Downey Jr. speaks 'Mandarin'. Jack Black: Okay so what's the plan? Are you gonna talk Vietnamese to those dudes? 好的，计划是什么？你准备用越南话和这些家伙说话？ Robert Downey Jr: No, no. Mandarin Chinese. Which, from what I can tell, is what they speaking down there. 不、不是。是和中国人。 我推断 他们在说汉语。 JB: How the hell do you know Chinese? 你怎么懂中文？ RDJ: Land of Silk and Money with Gong Li. Second Globe, third Oscar. Prepped for that one by working in a Beijing Textile Factory for eight months. That might be our ride. 和巩俐演过丝绸之路。去过两次金球奖，三次奥斯卡典礼。我在北京一个纺织厂工作过8个月。 没事了。 After which the subtitles switch to just English. Man. Some bad translation work here. Land of Silk and Money as 丝绸之路? Makes it sound like he was in http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095071/ And what's up with 去过两次金球奖，三次奥斯卡典礼 ? That's just...not correct. He didn't win two Golden Globes and three Oscars, he won his second and third ones. Quote
muyongshi Posted June 24, 2009 at 06:31 AM Report Posted June 24, 2009 at 06:31 AM I remember hearing his Chinese, understanding it and laughing my head off at it. It was understandable just bad in pronunciation [ok so not bad but...] Other than that I have tried to block that movie out of my head. Quote
imron Posted November 1, 2009 at 12:20 PM Report Posted November 1, 2009 at 12:20 PM It was understandable just bad in pronunciation [ok so not bad but...]Ok, I just watched this film, and his Mandarin was awful - on par if not worse than Firefly . Yes he was supposed to be speaking nonsense, but his accent was appalling (understandable, but awful) and WTF were those guys doing speaking Mandarin in rural Vietnam anyway. Incidentally, this thread is the top google search for "tropic thunder" mandarin Quote
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