The first planet earth wasn't just given different voiceover for American audiences, it was recut. The brass called the Attenborough cut "excruciatingly slow-paced", so once they decided to re-edit, it was probably easier to recast the narration than to try and edit down Attenborough's own speech.
The Attenborough cut is my personal preference too.
Replacing Attenborough as the narrator on a nature documentary is a crime against humanity, and should be treated as such ;-)
What we need to do is feed all of his narrations from the last 60 years into an AI and get it to process them; then we can use this corpus to have all nature documentaries narrated by him forever more.
I am, of course, joking... but would it really be that bad an idea? ;-)
Once wr did this it should be part of the UN charter that the Attenborough narration AI is the acceptable use of AI from that point onwarda into eternity.
It blows my mind that Attenborough would ever be replaced as a narrator because he is the best of the best vis-à-vis nature documentaries.
Or to provide an Americanized analogy, you wouldn’t replace Morgan Freeman in a situation where you needed the sage reflections of an old man in voiceover form.
Agree in general that the UK/Attenborough cut is preferable, but the American intro sequence is fantastic and dramatic. Gave me chills the first time I watched it.
I kind of hate the dramatization in newer nature documentaries, rife with cuts of sweeping landscape views set to loud, epic music. I'm probably just getting old, but it feels like they're trying too hard to keep my attention. I don't need blaring horns and pounding timpani to keep me watching.
"..until eventually, they’re shipping hamburger buns with exactly three sesame seeds artfully arranged in a triangle, and nobody buys their hamburgers any more."
The Attenborough cut is my personal preference too.