Cultural Differences between Original Asian Films and American Remakes

  100% Pass and No Plagiarism Guaranteed

Cultural Differences between Original Asian Films and American Remakes

According to Xu (2008), the adaptation of films across different cultural backgrounds in the world may be different. It is due to this difference in adaptation that influence remaking of the original product with an aim of reaching out to more people across the world who embraces a different culture. For instance, the original South Korean comedy film My Sassy Girl (2001) was widely appreciated in East and Southeastern Asia. Its American remake My Sassy Girl (2008) was not widely appreciated in Asia and had much less screen views than the original. In the U.S. however, the comedy’s reception was enormous in box office. Many unexpected factors came to light after the film transformation. The two films depicted a disparity in cultural values based on the notion of romance and humor. It is however not clear whether the original release of My Sassy Girl (2001)would have enjoyed a great reception as its remake. Hollywood film makers tailored the film to make it more western by removing the subtle allure and humor.

Hollywood film releases tend to achieve wide appreciation across the globe than in the local platform. Hollywood centralizes in the production of epic, action and disaster films which tend to achieve wider western audience appreciation. Just like fantasy films, one would anticipate that comic and romance films would appeal to people of all cultural backgrounds which was not the case for the original film My Sassy Girl (2001). Although love and romance seems universal across the world, the cultural aspect cinematic content in a film determines its reception. The target audience for the film My Sassy Girl (2001) are young adults and teenagers while other audiences are only a third party to the film. The concept of the original film was adapted from an internet novel posted by a teenager Ho-Sik Kim about the experiences he had with his girlfriend. The movie producers were hence targeting the already existing fan base of the blog and novel readers which the film is based. The American remake on the other hand seemed to be plain with less detail about the target audience. The American version of the film seems like a differentiation of other western comedy films. Presumably, the main motive behind the remake was to give the film a western aspect (Yu, 2011)…