Watching EPiC (Elvis Presley in Concert) in Japan with subtitles

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:01]Today I'd like to do a video about the experience of watching Epic in Japan.

[00:00:07]Now I've seen it four times in total, three times at the cinema. The last two times was at the IMAX theater.

[00:00:15]And most recently was yesterday. I took my wife to see it. Fortunately, she's an Elvis fan, too, so it wasn't difficult to persuade her.

[00:00:24]So yeah, I just want to talk about the experience of watching the film in Japan.

[00:00:27]I'm going to sit down in a moment. The reason why I'm sitting up is because I want to point out this poster here that you can see in the background.

[00:00:36]Um as soon as I turn the light on in this room, you're going to see a great big yellow splotch at the top there, so you won't be able to see it real well.

[00:00:44]So I've just got the natural light coming in here.

[00:00:47]It's a little bit cloudy today cuz it's raining, but yeah, this is the best I can do, I'm afraid.

[00:00:52]So that's the Epic poster.

[00:00:55]Um And yeah, I got this from my friend. My friend Atsushi sent me this, so I'm really pleased about it.

[00:01:01]So thanks a lot to him for sending that to me.

[00:01:04]And it's funny because there really hasn't been very much promotion of this film, even at the theaters where well, the theater where I saw it in IMAX.

[00:01:12]Um there was no poster, nothing at all, no programs for sale, no memorabilia for sale.

[00:01:19]The only thing that was there, the only thing we got, was these postcards. These were handed out to everybody who went to see the film. So I've got a couple of these now having been twice.

[00:01:32]Just says Elvis Epic Elvis Presley in Concert on the back there in Japanese.

[00:01:38]And then at the bottom it says May 15th IMAX Roadshow. It starts May the 22nd.

[00:01:44]It goes on general release from May the 22nd, which is tomorrow as I as I stand here getting an achy back.

[00:01:52]Uh so yeah, let me go and sit down and I'll talk to you a little bit more about the experience of watching the film in Japan.

[00:01:58]I just remembered actually, the first time I went to see the movie last Friday, one of the few people that were there, he he was about 70 years old, maybe older. He came in a jumpsuit, blue jumpsuit, and uh he had a cape on as well. He looked like he was about to do an Elvis tribute concert. Anyway, fortunately, he was quiet the whole way through.

[00:02:18]By the way, a friend of mine, he he went to see the movie in Yokohama, a much bigger city than where I live, and he said that there were about 70 people there, which is pretty good, uh I think.

[00:02:30]As I say, yesterday when I went with my wife, there were a few more, there were 15 people there, but no Elvis tribute acts this time.

[00:02:37]What I want to do in this section of the video is basically talk about how the Japanese people kind of missed out a little bit due to the fact that, well, they had to rely on subtitles to to watch the movie.

[00:02:52]And it's quite different, I think. There are some differences between writing subtitles for a movie and translating a book.

[00:02:59]So, with a book, of course, you can rely on things like footnotes to explain some of the more difficult parts, some of the things that don't translate very well or very easily.

[00:03:09]Now, one of the problems was the lyrics were not translated at all, and Elvis made quite a few jokes while he was singing.

[00:03:19]For instance, on stage, he performed "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" and he sang that line, um "Do you gaze at your bald head and wish you had hair?" And then he looks across to the backing singers, and they're they're laughing along with him.

[00:03:32]Now, because there was no translation of that, I guess some people in the audience must have thought, "Well, you know, what why are they laughing? What what's he done there?"

[00:03:39]I suppose hardcore Elvis fans um in Japan will will be aware of what's going on, and of course, people who understand English will will know too, but a lot of people don't really understand English very well, so they would have missed out on that reference.

[00:03:53]Another problem for the translator came when Elvis and the group performed something in the studio as a rehearsal at the rehearsal.

[00:04:03]And they sing the song and they stop and then Elvis goes back to some of the lyrics and starts singing them unaccompanied. And one of those lines is "Something in the way she shows me."

[00:04:13]Again, there's no translation of that.

[00:04:15]And then he looks across at James Burton and says, "Very suggestive lyrics." Now, there is a translation at that point, but it's translated as "Very deep lyrics." Which is not what Elvis was saying.

[00:04:27]But if they translated it as "Very suggestive lyrics", it would have made no sense to the audience because they would have been asking themselves, "Why? Why is it suggestive? You didn't tell us what the lyrics are. How can we say?"

[00:04:39]So, they just fudged it and translated it as "Very deep lyrics."

[00:04:44]So, that was a bit of a bit of a shame.

[00:04:46]Later on in the movie we get another rehearsal, '72 rehearsal. One of my favorite parts of the movie actually was the Burning Love sequence. Now, I'm not really a a massive fan of Burning Love.

[00:04:55]Don't dislike it, but it's not one of my favorites. But I absolutely loved that particular sequence.

[00:05:01]The combination of this that there appeared to be two different rehearsals.

[00:05:05]One where Elvis was wearing that blue and orange outfit.

[00:05:08]And another one where he's wearing this outrageous blue jacket. He doesn't look like a pop star at all in that that outfit. It was fantastic. I've never seen that that footage before. It's kind of a light blue jacket with black trim or black stripes. I forget now. It seems like a very long coat as well.

[00:05:25]It looks like he's some sort of visiting member of royalty just popped in to do a bit of Burning Love.

[00:05:31]And then of course they showed the live footage where they performed it for the first time and uh messed up the ending. That was a really really good sequence.

[00:05:39]However, um in the rehearsal Elvis asks, "How are we going to end this on stage?"

[00:05:44]Because the the single fades out, right?

[00:05:47]And I think it's Charlie Hodge who says, "Let's do like patch it up."

[00:05:51]In other words, he's referring to how they ended the song "Patch It Up" on stage. Where, if you recall, on "That's the Way It Is", um it fades out, everybody stops playing except the bass, and then the bass stops, and then the orchestra just goes bam.

[00:06:07]That kind of a big dramatic ending.

[00:06:09]Now, either the translator didn't understand that reference to that song, or again, they fudged it. Because excuse [clears throat] me, because the translator just translated it as just do what you feel, something like that.

[00:06:22]Um but yeah, I guess it only hardcore Elvis fans would have got that reference anyway to to "Patch It Up".

[00:06:29]Then, what else do we have?

[00:06:32]Yeah, so Elvis on stage now. So, Elvis he's on stage, he's performing the songs, and at one point he does a little circuit around the showroom. And he gets back, and he says, "You didn't think I'd make it." And then, a woman in the audience says, "Kiss me."

[00:06:48]And Elvis says, "I wouldn't go back out there for love nor money."

[00:06:52]But the translation is something a little bit different. And I asked my wife about this after we'd seen the movie. I said, "Did you get that that scene?" And she said, "No, I didn't understand that bit."

[00:07:02]And the translation was, "I wouldn't do it for love nor money."

[00:07:08]So, that totally loses the the meaning of what Elvis was saying, which was it's not you, and I would kiss you, but I don't want to go back out there again. So, that was another unfortunate translation. I don't think that was necessarily to do with um space or time on the screen. It may just have been a bit of a um a poor translation. But I got to say, on the whole, the translation was very good.

[00:07:32]Some things are very difficult to translate easily into a foreign language, and you end up with a translation which is quite on the nose or a little bit too frank. And there was a a good example of that in this movie when again Elvis is uh kissing a woman, he's kissing her from the stage, and he asks uh what does he say now? Something like "Do you want to do it seriously?" Or do you want to just a peck on the cheek?

[00:07:56]Something like that. I can't remember the exact line.

[00:07:59]Now, basically he's asking her, "Do you want me to stick my tongue in your mouth?"

[00:08:03]And that kind of a that kind of a a serious kiss in Japanese is known as a deep kiss.

[00:08:08]And that was what uh what they put on screen. They used that phrase deep kisser.

[00:08:13]So, it loses that indirect reference that Elvis used to, you know, doing a well, a deep kiss.

[00:08:22]There was a nice balance of um serious moments and the humorous moments in the film. One of my favorite funny parts is during the Suspicious Minds routine where Elvis is is walking across towards the Sweet Inspirations very purposefully. And he's he [snorts] locks eyes with them. I can't remember which which one it is.

[00:08:42]But as he's walking towards her, she starts backing away like that.

[00:08:46]And as Elvis gets closer to her, he says um "Where you going?"

[00:08:50]Unfortunately, the translation in Japanese was sing.

[00:08:54]That's that's one that I really couldn't understand why they translated it that way. I have no idea.

[00:08:59]Because I think that that joke would have been one of the easier ones to to get across. Humor is not always the easiest thing to translate, but that's that's a very obvious one. So, that was a bit of a shame.

[00:09:12]In the movie, Elvis can be heard expressing regret about his movie career saying that the movies didn't change, the scripts didn't change, the songs didn't change very much, but time just kept on passing, and you know, before long he'd spent most of the '60s making these movies, which he didn't really get much joy or satisfaction out of.

[00:09:31]And he summarizes it basically by saying What does he say? He says uh but it was nobody's fault except maybe my own."

[00:09:41]But what the translator did was they only translated the first part of that.

[00:09:45]"It was nobody's fault." But the second part of that sentence is very important because Elvis is basically saying he could be expressing his regret. You know, I could have done something. Maybe I could have done something. Maybe I should have done something.

[00:09:58]But the translators just turned it into a very neutral sentence.

[00:10:01]It's It was nobody's fault.

[00:10:03]So, that was a bit of a disappointment.

[00:10:07]The last thing I want to talk about is the poem which is recited by Bono at the end of the movie. I think he wrote it as well, didn't he?

[00:10:15]And one of the lines in that poem Well, the poem itself was translated which is good.

[00:10:20]And I think it was a good translation overall.

[00:10:23]But one line was missed out and that is the line about Elvis shooting television sets. And we all know he did that, you know, out of frustration or boredom from time to time.

[00:10:32]But they missed it out completely and I spoke to a couple of Japanese fans about that and they think that it may have been done because the idea of Elvis shooting television sets doesn't match up with Japanese people's image of Elvis.

[00:10:48]But I don't really like that idea of censoring the poem like that. And the idea of mollycoddling Japanese fans. I mean, you know, they're all adults.

[00:10:58]I'm sure they can handle the idea of Elvis shooting a TV from time to time.

[00:11:05]So, I was disappointed that they missed that that that line out or they chose to omit it.

[00:11:10]So, those are just a few ways in which the Japanese audiences are missing out, unfortunately, due to I suppose the inherent problems of using subtitles for a foreign language movie. But glad to say my wife really likes it which is which is good.

[00:11:27]Japanese people will hang around until the lights come back on when a movie ends. As I recall, I haven't seen a movie in in my country for obviously many years now, but as I recall, people would basically start clearing out as soon as the credits came on. But in Japan, everybody will sit there quietly and patiently and wait right until all the credits have gone and the theater lights come back up and then they'll file out.

[00:11:53]But anyway, watching the end of the movie was quite interesting for me because I've seen it as I said a few times now.

[00:11:58]So I was looking at the design of the those sort of belt type designs that you get down the left and right sides of the screen. And I noticed that they'd put an I like Elvis and an I hate Elvis button on on both sides at the same time. That was pretty It's good to spot that.

[00:12:16]The fourth time around I spotted it.

[00:12:18]Another thing about watching a film in IMAX, I don't know if if any of you noticed this, but if you look when the credits are rolling and the names are coming up the screen from the bottom, if you look at the bottom of the screen, it creates an optical illusion. It's like the the the room is moving. And also, if you look at the top of the screen, again, the name as the names are rising, if you look at the top of the screen, it makes it look like the room is is sinking.

[00:12:41]If you get a chance to see it in IMAX again, just watch out for that.

[00:12:44]Anyway, I'm going to leave it there for this video. If you got any comments or questions, please let me know in the comments section below. Thanks for watching. Cheers.