After much anticipation, the West Side Story [1] remake is officially hitting theaters on Dec. 10. Directed by Steven Spielberg [2], the film centers on Ansel Elgort and Rachel Zegler as star-crossed lovers [3] Tony and Maria. While the movie is a reimagining of the 1961 classic, Spielberg's remake does away with the harmful stereotypes of Latinxs [4] portrayed in the original. Spielberg also made the conscious decision not to include subtitles [5] for the Spanish dialogue "out of respect for the inclusivity of our intentions to hire a totally Latinx cast to play the Sharks' boys and girls."
In an interview with IGN, the director explained that he gave casting director Cindy Tolan a "mandate" that he "wasn't going to entertain any auditions that aren't parents or grandparents or themselves from Latinx countries." He added, "Especially Puerto Rico, we looked a lot in Puerto Rico, we have 20 performers in our film from Puerto Rico or they're Nuyorican."
He continued, "That was very important and that goes hand-in-hand with my reasoning for not subtitling the Spanish. If I subtitled the Spanish, I'd simply be doubling down on the English and giving English the power over the Spanish. This was not going to happen in this film, I needed to respect the language enough not to subtitle it." Several people have since praised the director's decision [7] on Twitter, saying it made the story more authentic, and we couldn't agree more.