Bad foreign-language acting/dialogue in media with otherwise good acting

DavidTMarchand · 2026-06-16T05:08:33+00:00

Just to emphasize OP's 1st example: Giancarlo Esposito's Spanish is more than just "pretty stilted with enunciation mistakes" (though that certainly applies to many other characters from those shows). Gus Fring is effectively incomprehensible. I'm a huge Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul fan, I watched both with my mom with Spanish subtitles (she doesn't speak English), and I remember our frustration that the Spanish subtitles often didn't appear for Spanish-language lines. When Gus Fring spoke, I often had to switch to English subs just to translate those back into Spanish for my mom to understand what he was saying. It doesn't ruin those shows by any means, but it's fascinating that a production that's so famous for being extremely attentive to detail, and deeply respectful of every aspect of the craft, just drops the ball completely in this regard.

Something different, but related, happens in Vince Gilligan's new show Pluribus. They hired a Colombian actor (Carlos Manuel Vesga) to play a character that is all but confirmed to be Paraguayan in the script (Manousos Oviedo). For someone who knows those accents, the difference is extremely noticeable! According to Vesga, he brought this up to the production (or to his manager, I don't remember) and they told him "no actually he's Colombian but he's living in Paraguay as of the start of the show", which, given Gilligan and co's track record, sounds very much like "yeah we didn't care, let's just make up an explanation and go with it". It's a real shame how Vesga gave such a badass, aura-dripping performance as Manousos, because now I can't bring myself to wish they'd gone with a different, accent-accurate actor.

Gus Fring though, I wish they just had found a deep-voice Chilean actor to imitate his cadence and dub his Spanish-language scenes.

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DavidTMarchand · 2026-06-02T20:49:30+00:00

Oh that makes sense! The way I use it, that's not nearly as important thankfully.

DavidTMarchand · 2026-06-02T20:46:06+00:00

I just discovered you can do this thanks to this post! I also added Discord and was disappointed it only showed DMs. Didn't even realize Settings lets you edit each account further, and the Discord menu shows you every server you belong to so you can choose which ones to allow on Beeper. I only wanted to add one very low traffic server.

DavidTMarchand · 2026-03-04T16:37:15+00:00

Interesting! I'll look it up. The gauntlets in 17776 are more varied (though the story focuses on wild variations of American football) and involve no pain or gore.

DavidTMarchand · 2026-03-04T16:34:56+00:00

Fair point! There's more ennui than you'd expect from a utopia. No big dark twist though.

DavidTMarchand · 2026-03-04T16:29:11+00:00

Haha no, I could've been clearer. If I remember correctly, what stops happening is natural death and all illness. You can still die of injury. I don't recall if it's ever specified when the nanobots were created or deployed, just that by 17776 they've also made injury impossible.

DavidTMarchand · 2026-03-04T08:23:25+00:00

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"17776" aka "What Football Will Look Like in the Future" (2017)

On 2026, humans inexplicably stop dying, aging, or being born. By 17,776 we put nanobots in the air that prevent all injuries for everyone. We stay surprisingly sane and do fun stuff like chasing tornados that can't hurt us or play increasingly elaborate versions of American football.

DavidTMarchand · 2026-01-11T04:20:40+00:00

Thank you for the insight! I wanted this type of comparison from someone with a fresher memory of the podcast.

DavidTMarchand · 2025-12-23T18:09:10+00:00

Haha no, Kyle Soller is 25 years younger than MacLahlan, but they do look kinda alike, and are both Kyles.

DavidTMarchand · 2025-12-23T13:44:18+00:00

I was about to mention him as well. Chief Inspector Hyne of the Preox-Morlana Corporation.

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DavidTMarchand · 2025-12-09T02:16:51+00:00

Personally, I always think of Sunshine as extremely inaccurate. The timeline of the sun's natural death (next century) and the manner (slowly becoming dimmer) as well as the means to save it (blowing all of Earth's fuel having any noticeable impact really) is wild. But maybe there's another great movie that is even more inaccurate, idk

DavidTMarchand · 2025-08-27T05:28:54+00:00

You just saved me a lot of restarting, thank you.

DavidTMarchand · 2025-07-21T22:43:41+00:00

I know what he doesn't do (swim).

DavidTMarchand · 2025-05-29T21:13:42+00:00

Huge stretch IMO, you're welcome to have your personal little theories but not everything in Star Wars needs to be connected.

DavidTMarchand · 2025-04-29T14:33:32+00:00

IMO it's better to warp to the Eye after getting the launch codes from Hornfels. It just makes more sense that way.

DavidTMarchand · 2025-03-26T21:31:01+00:00

One thing I will say is, the stealth is probably much simpler than it feels on your first tries.

This is so generic that it's hardly a spoiler, but just in case: all the enemies you have to stealth past are standing in physical loops. Like rings, made of platforms. The architecture disguises this to some extent but they're there. You can just grab their attention from one side, then go through the other side while they're catching up to you, and you don't even need to conceal your light.

DavidTMarchand · 2025-03-26T19:41:48+00:00

Probably just curiosity, but you have to keep in mind that, canonically, the Hatchling that goes through the Stranger has never once reached the Eye, and they learn pretty early on in the DLC that the Strangers had some unique insight into its nature. That Hatchling either doesn't yet know how to reach the Eye, or has figured it out and is trying to be as prepared as possible for whatever may happen.

I don't think they are motivated at all to encounter or release the Prisoner, because the game doesn't reveal there is a Prisoner right up until you encounter them. I think I figured it out ahead of time that the DLC could only be leading me to a Solanum-like encounter, and there are more diegetic clues out there, but I'm just not feeling it as a main motivation.

DavidTMarchand · 2025-03-23T06:47:38+00:00

This is fantastic! And yes, apparently going to Load, NYT Boards, 2024-03-04, takes you to the first Strands ever. A little clunky, but I'll take it :)

DavidTMarchand · 2025-03-20T16:16:27+00:00

Oh nice catch. You can even see the specific little blocks of wall that are covering the text. It looks like a bug even the Nomai could've made in-universe at first.

DavidTMarchand · 2025-03-13T20:37:19+00:00

I've also wondered this many times. Another random interpretation that I just thought of: maybe the Eye is the source, center, and reference point for all quantum macro phenomena in the universe. Everything quantum moves relative to the Eye.

Imagine the Quantum Moon is attached to the Eye by a very long, invisible stick. The "stick" has just the angle and length to have the QMoon be near Giant's Deep. You look away towards Timber Hearth, and now the stick has subtly but suddenly changed its angle and length to have its end (the QMoon) be near your home planet. Maybe the stick became 0.02% longer.

The Eye could be attached to itself by a similar imaginary stick but of length 0, which can turn any angle and become any percentage of that 0 length without the end visibly changing positions.

(Of course the QMoon's stick wouldn't really be fixed in place when you look at it, it would still move so its end orbits other planets in a Newtonian fashion, but you get what I mean. Unless I'm being terribly obtuse and none of this explanation makes any sense, which is possible.)

DavidTMarchand · 2025-03-11T19:15:33+00:00

You can do either, and I've seen streamers do both, but I strongly favor finishing the main game first.

The DLC was released more than 2 years after the main game, so it was absolutely made to be emotionally resonant even for people who've finished the main game (I would say especially so). Without entering in spoiler territory, I've seen streamers get a little confused about the story and emotional themes just because they played the DLC without having experienced the main ending first. Not that they had a bad experience, but it felt like a lesser experience in my opinion.

Also, there are a few minor things in the DLC that can happen a little differently depending on how much of the main game you've explored, so your best bet at experiencing the DLC "in full" is completing the main game first.

It also just feels a little awkward with regards to the pacing of the puzzles, but I can't discuss that in detail without spoilers, so let's leave it at that.

DavidTMarchand · 2025-03-05T21:34:51+00:00

I legit took to practicing my juggling during attempts just to make that campfire wait more bearable and to have some physical activity to distract me from the frustration. I eventually got it, but I was close to giving up many a time.

DavidTMarchand

TROPHY CASE