Must have been easy to find Brooks films at the Stockholm Blockbuster.
I might just be stupid - but what do other English speakers associate the term with?
It appears that “revoke” is the term for taking away a driver’s licence/license both in the U.S. and the U.K. I think this is like the philosopher’s/sorcerer’s stone change in the U.K. and the U.S. The movie distributors/book publishers change anything they feel like. They don’t have to check whether there’s really a difference in what the viewers/readers think about the titles.
I find this claim doubtful. I mean, they released a record and constructed a title sequence around the title. Did they make one for the original title, and then change it? I doubt it.
I think the change must have been made early in the process.
The phrase “License to Kill” is associated with James Bond, so anyone already familiar with it would expect a movie called License to Kill to be a James Bond movie. And to anyone who didn’t, it still sounds kinda cool.
If you’re already thinking of James Bond, the title License Revoked might make you think of Bond’s famous License To Kill. But if you didn’t already know that a movie called License Revoked was a James Bond movie, the title would be confusing or misleading, and you would indeed think the titular “license” was something more mundane, like a driver’s license.
I don’t really see a US/UK distinction here, just a familiarity with James Bond distinction.
I disagree.
He already had a license to kill for 15 previous movies and three previous actors. It was well established.
I remember before the name change and I thought License Revoked was perfect. You knew Bond was going rogue, and that this time, it’s personal!
If only it had been a better movie…
As a translator, I can tell you that’s the problem; too many words for “hangover”, most of them regional, which is a nightmare when you need a title for the whole region. ("Can we call it “la cruda”? “No, they won’t get that in Argentina or Chile, how about the resaca?” “No, no one in Mexico will understand that”… There’s also guayabo, goma, caña, resto, and probably a bunch more.
It gets better. The format was successful enough to be applied to a bunch of other unrelated films (successfully informing they were parodies, or at least comedies):
The Naked Gun - ¿Y dónde está el policía? (Where’s the policeman)
A Haunted Movie - ¿Y dónde está el fantasma? (Where’s the ghost)
Reposessed - ¿Y dónde está el exorcista? (Where’s the exorcist)
White Chicks - ¿Y dónde están las rubias? (Where are the blond girls?)
Young Doctors in Love - ¿Y dónde está el doctor? (Where’s the doctor)
Not in Argentina, Diego be thanked, at least for the Naked Gun, which was faithfully translated as “La pistola desnuda”
Nobody has brought up the fact that Licence Renewed was the title of the first James Bond book by John Gardner in 1981, the first new Bond novel since Kingsley Amis wrote Colonel Sun back in 1968 (ignoring those awful Christopher Moore novelizations), The title made sense because Bond was, in a way, being brought out of retirement. There had evidently been some thought given to using Gardner’s novel as the basis for a new Bond film, but they decided to go with an original plot. But they seem to have kept the idea of the title, but changing from Renewed to Revoked. Interestingly, Gardner also got the job of writing the novelization for the film (the first since Wood’s James Bond and Moonraker, so he wrote License to Kill as well as Licence Renewed, and this became the only Bond novelist to have “License/Licence” spelled two different ways in his titles.
Rather “With Death at his heels”.
Once Upon A Time In The West - Spiel mir das Lied vom Tod: Play me the song of Death or Play the song of Death to me. It’s a wordplay (he!) on the harmonica Charles Bronson plays and puts in Henry Fonda’s mouth while he is dying after he shoots him.
In Spain airplane! was translated as ¡Aterriza como puedas! → Land however you can!, and The Naked Gun turned into Agárralo como puedas (Grab it whichever way you can, if that makes any sense. It does not make much to me…).
My favorite example was when I was on a vacation in Costa Rica and I saw a commercial for a movie. I can’t remember the actual Spanish title, but the movie Lost in Translation was NOT titled Perdido en traduccion or anything similar. In other words, the title of the movie was lost in translation!
Catc
It makes sense if you translate it as “Catch him however you can”, “him” being the criminal.
Oh, that was Perdidos en Tokio: Lost (plural!) in Tokio. The phrase “lost in translation” is usually expressed as traduttore tradittore (translator traitor, meaning translators are traitors by trade) in Spanish, although it is actually Italian.
OK, I guess translating it as “cójelo como puedas” would not do in your country, where cojer make speople think of sexual intercourse, though it would have been the better way to say that in Spain Spanish.
It would also give us another way to make fun of Spain Spanish which is always a bonus 
Don’t you already do it? We do it with your version of Spanish, you know that 
Of course we do, that’s why I said “another way”
Only tangentially related to movie titles is the Film Festival in San Sebastián, probably the most prestigious film festival in Spain. The city of San Sebastián has a beautiful beach with a rounded shape reminiscent of a shell, thus is is called La Concha. The highest award the festival bestowes is therefore called La Concha de Oro: the Golden Shell. Unfortunately for Argentinians the meaning in their version of Spanish translates not as the Golden Shell, but as the Golden Cunt. I wonder how they feel when they win this award, as happened in 1992 and 1998.
Same way as when we win anything else, “ha! this is further proof that ours is the best country in the world” 
Huhhh… well, you know… 