Hip-hop artists lend their voices to "Volcano High", a Korean action-flick featuring special effects and wire-fu techniques.
When I first heard that MTV was going to hire celebrity hip-hop artists to dub the South Korean action-flick
Volcano High (Wasango), I wasn't sure if I should be excited or apprehensive. We have all witnessed many foreign-language films fall victim to bad dubbing such as
Rumble in the Bronx, Drunken Master II or any Asian film released by Miramax for that matter. One look at Steve Oedekerk's parody
Kung Pow! Enter the Fist and one can see how ridiculous dubbing can become with its bad translations and inaccurate dialogue. Even worse, some suffer through the butchering but never make it to the big screen such as Tsui Hark's
Legend of Zu or Stephen Chow's
Shaolin Soccer.
Even though producers may underestimate the attention span and intelligence of the average American viewer, I am still a firm believer of subtitles (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was subtitled and we all know where that went), but subtitling a TV production seems a little inappropriate, so all I could do was sit back and see how MTV did with the premiere of Volcano High on December 21st.
Directed by Kim Tae-Gyun, and originally released in South Korea in 2001, the story focuses around Kim. He possesses special powers acquired during a childhood accident involving eels, lightning, and a water tank. This “curse?as he calls it, has caused him to be expelled from 8 different schools, and Volcano High is the last school willing to accept him. Thus, he vows that he will never again use his special powers or get into fights.
Unfortunately, the transition to Volcano High is not an easy one and within a week he gets picked on by every club in the school from the high school bully Jang Yang (dubbed by Lil Jon) and his Dark Oxen team, to the rugby team and the kendo team. Hakrim, the school's top student (dubbed by Snoop Dog) gets framed by Jang Yang for attempted murder and is put away. This creates the opportunity for Jang Yang to take over and the school is in chaos. Vice Principal Ko (dubbed by Pat Morita) hires a band of strict substitute teachers, led by Mr. Ma (dubbed by Method Man) to put the students in their place. The administration wants to brainwash everyone into becoming perfect students. With the support of another student, Jade (dubbed by Mya), Kim gains the strength to overcome his fears and put aside his vow so that he can save the school.
Although the movie begins with a promising plot, the story falls short at the end. It seems as though the storyline was shoved to the side so all attention could be focused on the visual aspects of the film. The fighting and physical agility of the actors were not as polished as what you would see in a Hong Kong production, but the special effects were entertaining to watch nonetheless and they gave the film a live-action anime sequence type feel. The showering scene where Kim manipulates the water and the final duel scene at the end with Mr. Ma were especially impressive.
At first, it was hard to separate the voice from the hip-hop artist, but as the movie progressed, it was gradually easier to match the voice and the actor. At the beginning, Andre 3000's (Outkast) voice was a little too cool and calm so it didn't match the comical expressions of Kim (played by Jang Hyuk), but as Kim became more mature later on in the movie, the voice became more fitting. But the cool and calm approach taken by Mya to voice Jade (played by Shin Min-Ah), the renowned Ice Queen of Volcano High, was well-suited. Granted that the voice-overs were done by singers, and not actors, the quality was not terrible. At least they tried to match the sounds with the movement of the actors' mouths.
While I had mixed feelings about the dubbing, using hip-hop music to replace the original musical score seemed appropriate to me. With the movie's light-heartedness and focus on high school students, the hip-hop tracks weren't as out of place as the dubbing. The new musical score was composed by Gary G-Wiz and Amani Smith, and featured two new songs by Just Blaze (who produced Fabolous and Joe Budden).
Overall, the premiere of Volcano High on MTV has become a landmark for Asian cinema, hopefully paving the way for other movies to make their way into the homes of American audiences. Although the film was not without imperfections, at least MTV embraced the movie whole-heartedly and did not dub the movie just for laughs, as others have done in the past e.g., Woody Allen's dubbing of the 1964 Japanese spy movie Kagi no Kagi retitled as What's Up Tiger Lily (1969) in which he totally changed the storyline and dialogue.
Volcano High was shown as part of MTV's Original Movies for Television, headed by senior VP Maggie Malina. Malina had seen the film at the 2002 Toronto Film Festival and was so impressed that she had decided to edit and tailor the film for MTV audiences. This project was produced by Jack Maeby. The executive producer was Rob Edwards, and Ted Chung and Seung Chung were co-executive producers.