The fact that films for the German market are often given strange new titles should be a well-known phenomenon. In recent years, however, an additional special Trend in animated films towards crazy (additional) titles watch. These are certainly meant to be humorous and witty by the distributors, but they range from a few creative ideas to chilling toenail-rolling levels that the old Disney cartoons would never have dreamed up.
Baymax – Big Robowabohu (Original: Big Hero 6) is just one of those animated films where the translators must have thought they could crack a joke right in the title. There are many more such films. We give you an overview of the artistic German title achievements of the last few years – the rarely addressed to the target group of children seem to be.
©Disney
Baymax & German animated film additional titles – or: What doesn’t fit will be made to fit
Animated films like Frozen: Puns with plot elements in the title
While Pixar intelligently extracts a thought-provoking “The last one clears the earth” message from the saying “The last one turns off the lights/closes the door”, which is certainly also familiar to children, the other films in this category are clear (hammer) like suggests: Ice Age 4 may still be breaking down plate tectonics for a younger generation, but without prior knowledge of Titanic, “collision” is quite a foreign word. And who lets the newly filmed, sorry: “tangled”, Rapuzel hear a tired “Ha Ha, Haar”?
There’s a catch to paradise, so does Maui, yes, we get it. Birds (and reindeer) always take off anyway. The fact that the dirty Sausage Party is about sausages at least spares the adult target audience the torment of having to watch the film in the first place as a pinpoint plot summary.
©Disney
Frozen: Headless Title Decisions
Animated films: Title references to other (adult) films
The gnome films completely dispense with their additional titles and confront the dear little ones with them classical literature – but have you ever heard of Romeo and Juliet and Sherlock Holmes at that age? The same applies to Action movie references like Armageddon and James Bond 007 – Die Another Day. Who is this reference really for?
© Senator
Free Birds: planned choice of title without an exit strategy
Baymax & Co. – Word sound, idioms and spelling pitfalls of German film titles
A commonality that some animated films share in their additional titles are those with the consonance of words play: spectacular/smecular – animal/bullish – unique/icy – totally/furry. That likes friends of the joke and Flachwitz advocate be happy. Children become the wrong spelling and the wrong at worst use of idioms animated.
While the saying “everything listens to my command” may still be familiar, it can also be doubted that the less and less common German word “Tohuwabohu” says something to the little ones immediately or through the alienation can be learned at all.
©Entertainment One
Mister Link: I’m a jerk, get me out of here
Do children understand the amusingly meant additional titles?
So the big question is whether the additional titles in animated films, which are often based on puns be understood at all by your main target group?
Bottom line, it definitely gives the impression that the embarrassing additional titles are a bad habit more for adult companionship of the animated films primarily aimed at children.
So maybe the addendum is just that a fishing rod being castto convince parents that the latest animation prank is smart and should be seen by the offspring?
Fortunately, the quality of an animated film is not (only) defined by its additional title. Anyway, we probably should do not take it seriously – the German title smiths obviously don’t do it either.
Do you find additional titles in animated films funny or rather to shake your head?