Steven Spielberg praised for decision to leave out subtitles in West Side Story

Director Steven Spielberg has received praise for deciding to leave out subtitles during the Spanish-speaking scenes of his “West Side Story” remake.

The story takes place in New York’s Upper West Side and follows the romance of two members of rival gangs. One of the gangs, the Sharks, is made up of Puerto Ricans. The other, the Jets, of New Yorkers of Polish and Irish descent.

The Oscar-winning director’s reboot has received many positive reviews, including a 97 percent audience score from Rotten Tomatoes and a 92 percent favorable rating from critics, who have called the film “bold and daring” and “top-tier.”

One daring aspect that Spielberg has been praised for is his decision to not include English subtitles during dialogues between the Puerto Rican characters. He did so “out of respect for the inclusivity of our intentions to hire a totally Latinx cast to play the Sharks' boys and girls.”

"If I subtitled the Spanish I'd simply be doubling down on the English and giving English the power over the Spanish," Steven Spielberg said. “This was not going to happen in this film. I needed to respect the language enough not to subtitle it."

To Spielberg, it was important to cast Hispanic actors for the roles of the Sharks. It was “something that goes hand-in-hand with my reasoning for not subtitling the Spanish," said the director.

"That was a mandate that I put down to Cindy Tolan who cast the movie, that I wasn't going to entertain any auditions that aren't [descended from] parents or grandparents or [are] themselves from Latinx countries," Spielberg said in an interview with IGN. "Especially Puerto Rico, we looked a lot in Puerto Rico, we have 20 performers in our film from Puerto Rico or they're Nuyorican."

The remake of the 1975 Broadway musical premiered Friday in the U.S.