The German version is also with the burnt-in English alien subtitles. This kind of treatment is actually incomprehensible, as Disney actually went and provided multi-angle solutions for the film intro (“A long time ago…”/Textcrawl).

The optimal solution would have been to use a “clean” master without subtitles and use player-generated subtitles for each respective language. On BluRay, these player-generated subtitles can even replicate the look and feel of the theatrical subs quite well.

I see this development as a result of cost-cutting throughout the film industry apparent in later years. For example: in 2002-2004 the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy (New Line Cinema) was released on DVD with burnt-in subtitles for Elvish in USA, and with a clean master outside the USA (so that Elvish subtitles could be player-generated). Same is valid for the LOTR BluRay releases (which were released some years later). However, on “The Hobbit” (Warner Bros., 2013-2015), there was only one video master per DVD/BluRay release worldwide: one with burnt-in Elvish/Orkish subtitles in English. Okay, that cuts the costs for encoding by 50%. Still, it’s not nice.