Criticism
On 19 June 2007, Dragon Dynasty released the film My Young Auntie. The film was originally produced in Hong Kong by Shaw Brothers in 1981 and was accordingly released with a Cantonese soundtrack as standard. However, Dragon Dynasty's DVD features only the Mandarin and English dubbed soundtracks. Whilst it is true that some of the cast spoke Mandarin during filming (as is often the case with Hong Kong film productions), the main star (Kara Hui) and many other cast members spoke Cantonese.
On 10 February 2009, Dragon Dynasty released the film My Father is a Hero under the title The Enforcer. This was the second release from the company that did not include the original Cantonese language soundtrack, containing only the dubbed English audio that had originally featured on the 2000 release from Dimension Films (also owned by The Weinstein Company). Complaints from customers elicited a statement from the company
"Dragon Dynasty strives to provide fans with only the highest quality DVD releases, including restored video and audio and extensive never-before-seen bonus features created exclusively for the label. Though no usable version of the original Cantonese-language track was available in time for this release, every effort was made to bring together the best elements in the world in creating the greatest version of The Enforcer ever experienced on DVD in the U.S."
Other criticisms of Dragon Dynasty DVDs take issue with their release of shorter U.S cuts of films, when longer uncut versions are available in Hong Kong and other Asian countries. The film Police Story 3 (released as Supercop), which is tagged as the "Ultimate Edition" on the cover artwork, comes in for particular criticism. Although it is the first western DVD release of this film to contain the original Cantonese audio, the DVD still contains the shorter US cut. Contrarily, the DVD features an interview with star Jackie Chan, in which he argues that he has already edited the film once, questioning the American distributors' need to re-edit.
More recently, similar (and often identical) criticisms have been leveled at the label's Blu-ray Disc releases, following their adoption of the format in early 2010.
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