I wanted to offer my PERSONAL opinion as a film director, as well as what i understand from after reading about the narration debate on this website as well as all others (that I could find) on the web. I know it is human nature to dislike when somebody else do not like the things they like, but the point is to try to say, if they handed me 25 million dollars and asked me to choose a narrator for 11 episodes (no other factors withstanding), what would i have done?

Hereby, wanna say firstly, I watched both the versions, every frame of it, for a couple of times, first runs to enjoy it, purely, then other runs to try to understand how they filmed it (from a professional point of interest and from artistic point of interest). I paid attention to the feature as a whole, I paid attention to the cinematography, the cinematographic storytelling, the light, ambience and shadows, the (natural) sound, the sorround sound, the sound with regard to storytelling, the music, the moods of the music, the editing, each scene trying to see if it was real speed, sped-up, slowed-down or time-lapse, and then finally, ofcourse, the narration.

I think everyone here is right about what they think, but one should try to think from both sides. I feel that for a feature of such a scale, everything needs to be perfect, as much as it can. The biggest movies go through the tiniest of details, likewise for this series, I think everyone agrees that the cinematography, the music, the visual story-telling is perfect, world-class and revolutionary. Based on this alone why would I not want to use a world-class narrator? Why the hell would I want to intentionally dumb-down, or tone-down certain things in my production and knowingly scale-down the spectacle?

People here are saying Ms Weaver’s narration is plain and helps us to concentrate on the visuals, but its not just about the visuals, its about the emotion of how you felt inside your heart, she needs to help you get into that state, she needs to input that subconscious magic that will help to get us there. A great movie its more than visuals or music or pictures, its about magic and stuff that blow you away, and all this is only possible when every element in the movie / feature is world-class and on par with each other.

You can feel it, the shock when you hear, “The Amur is the rarest cat in the World …… there are only 40 of them left” .. thats when Sir Attenborough says it. You feel the sarcasm, when he talkes about the Chimpanzee’s next closest-relative, ourselves.., you feel. Basically, you feel things, you feel extra things, emotions, state-of-mind, with Attenborough.., that is something special. If a voice-talent can get you that, that is magic. Weaver will get you through the series, and you wouldn’t complain, you’d be satisfied, but still its only seven clours, you don’t discover the ‘eight color’.

I understand why people try so defiantly to defend their poinst-of-view, those who are fans of Ms. Weaver to argue why she’s better and those who are fans of Sir. Attenborough to argue why he’s bettter. But if I was responosible for 25 milllion dollars to shoot the series and it was in my hands to choose the better talent, and knowing how difficult everything in filmaking is, how competitive it is, I’d only settle for the very best, the very, very best.