Dragonball Evolution

For manga and anime fans around the world, the story of Dragonball has to be at the top, or at least in the top 3 of their most beloved manga/anime stories ever written. There is already an existing live action Dragonball movie called Dragonball: The Magic Begins (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0122050/) made in Taiwan back in 1989. That movie tried really hard to stay as close as possible to the original story of Dragonball as written by Akira Toriyama, but it ended up being more of a comedy. The entire story also only went up to the Pilaf storyline, which was way before the first Piccolo appearance. This movie, although aged and not exactly a direct interpretation of the Dragonball story, was still appreciated by most fans due to the comedic entertainment value.

Now, another live action Dragonball movie has come, called Dragonball: Evolution. When the first few pictures of this movie appeared on the internet, a lot of the fans already predicted that the movie would turn out horrible because the characters don't look like themselves. The characters were heavily changed and westernized too much, especially Piccolo, the main villain, who didn't look like the one from the manga and anime. Fast forward to a few weeks before the latest Dragonball movie was released, a trailer was leaked on the internet. That trailer spelled the certain doom of the movie to the fans of the show. Most of the comments described the movie as "Not Dragonball, but another action movie".

This writer was fortunate enough to be invited to a private screening of the movie, and boy was I surprised! I was already expecting the movie to be bad and not a "real" Dragonball, but what I witnessed was something much more horrible! Granted that the movie was really different, but the way the movie progressed, the introduction of characters, the fight scenes, oh wow, you'd think it was a movie created by elementary kids who had no idea what Dragonball was about, except for the "Kamehameha" move and the 7 dragon balls, just with the financial backing of a millionaire.

Everything seemed rushed in the movie and characters would just pop out of nowhere and decide to join together to beat Piccolo. The love angle in the story seemed forced as well, everybody was simply out of character. Goku's a powerful but lame school boy, Chi Chi's a martial art school girl who can't even open her own locker, Master Roshi's some crazy dude living in the city (at least he still wears a Hawaiian shirt and seems a little perverted), Bulma became Lara Croft and Rambo combined in another body with a bizarre voice, Mai (originally one of Pilaf's hilarious henchmen in the manga) became a cold blooded, shape-shifting killer, Yamcha became a weird cross between a desert bandit who can't fight and a hobo with unwashed hair, and Piccolo became a weird vampire whose outfit seems to be inspired by the Matrix. I think only Grandpa Gohan was close enough to the original character, except for the way he exits the movie early on.

The fight scenes were lame. Dragonball was about epic sized battles that could not be contained in one location. Characters would get punched through mountains, cities would be destroyed, the earth would rumble and split up due to the massive forces of the fighters. In this movie, everything seemed so lame. Even the Kamehameha attack was used to light some candles! Talk about total weakening!

The only "good" things about the movie were the special effects, although the energy blasts seemed very weak.

My advise is, if you're going to pay to watch this movie, DON'T DO IT. Listen to what almost everybody has been saying because they're right, the movie is worse than what you currently have in mind!

This movie is just plain disappointing to say the least. I don't care if this is an adaptation of Dragonball. The only reason why I gave it a 3 out of 10 rating was for the special effects and production value which were semi-decent. I don't understand what was wrong with the original storyline that needed to be changed and messed with. It's the original storyline that made fans love Dragonball in the first place. "If it ain't broke don't fix it." I think this movie would do a lot better if they stuck with the original story and had better casting. The real fans would flood the theaters to watch it which would bring hype to the movie for new viewers that don't know about Dragonball, kind of like how Watchmen did. Street Fighter was horrible and they expect to do a sequel to it, this movie was a travesty...I guess next up will be Thundercats and Voltron for Hollywood to mess up for me. Thank you Hollywood for ruining my childhood memories.

This Movie plain and simple insults our intelligence, I mean I'm no Geek, but tham they were way off!, this should not even be called dragonball, because of stupid 20th Century Fox, now dragonball is ruined, if someone wanted to make a better movie with the real story that Akira Toriyama made, they made so many changes and mistakes that the dragonball that we know is gone forever, on Watchmen they made some changes but only so the essence of the show could be shown on film, but Dragonball is dead they killed it, I'm sorry Akira Toriyama they ruined your work and about every Anime , and dbz fan out there, like my Grandfather just to say "there's cheese all over that movie" It is illogical to spend the money on copyrights if you're not even going to use the story.

Zac Bertschy of Anime News Network, originally disgusted at Otaku decrying the film via leaked set shots and trailers even before the movie was released, gave the movie an overall F grade, admitting that "The fans were right." Criticizing the films lack of explaining plot elements to its hackmead storyline and lackluster effort by the actors, he suggested that the film "Might be fun when you're hammered and surrounded by friends. Or suicidal, and need something to push you over the edge."

Hollywood plundering Japanese pop culture isn't something new. From "Americanizing" television series for the kids from Power Rangers to Ultraman, and adapting famed characters from Japanese film, games and manga to frequent disastrous effect, it still wouldn't stop the studios from going after one property after another. This time round it's the long running Dragonball series, because the assumption is that the built-in fan base would translate to instant dollars at the box office. Not.

You have to give the filmmakers a little bit of credit though, being either foolhardy, or just plain ballsy. It's a given that they cannot condense and distill the rich content into a surprisingly less than 90 minute movie, and live in the hopes of producing a sequel, or to generate a franchise (i.e. don't leave the cinema hall when the end credits start to roll). But what they successfully do, is to super-summarize the entire mythos by throwing out everything except the main gist of the entire manga, making it extremely simplistic in poor lazy-man standards in adaptation.

For the uninitiated, the film would serve as a quick launchpad to the original manga. For those with a wee bit of knowledge of what it's about (like myself), the film just treads along the same lines and doesn't offer you new information. For the fanboys, I guess you'll only get some kicks at seeing some of your favorite characters come alive, only that they look more Caucasian, and have a head full of hair when they're not supposed to (someone forgot to insist that in the contract?) That's all you're gonna get. Period.

As far as film-making and story-telling techniques go, you can see cliché after cliché being thrown at you, with the poorly and cheaply rendered special effects offering no consolation. Justin Chatwin's Goku is your typical teenager who possesses innate potential yet to be realized, and in his frustration he gets treated by peers as a loser geek. He lives with his grandpa Gohan (Randall Duk Kim in stereotypical know-it-all like in Kung Pu Panda), and develops a crush on school hottie Chi Chi (Jamie Chung). Goku's calling in life is to prevent an apocalypse from happening with the return of chief cardboard baddie Lord Piccolo (an instant shoo-in as one of the worst cinematic villains, ever!) and his temporary sidekick Mai (Eriko Tamura) who attempt to collect 7 dragonballs to fulfill an ancient myth. And of course Goku needs a Fellowship, in the form of irritating tech-wizard Bulma (Emmy Rossum last seen in the sinker Poseidon), mercenary Yum Cha (Joon Park who probably copied Rain's uninspiring cinematic turn in Speed Racer to a T) and Chow Yun-Fat the biggest name of them all here trying his darnest best to act cute as Master Roshi, who imparts skills in double quick time to Goku.

Speaking of time, or the lack thereof, everything is compressed. From two weeks to two days and the day of the blood moon shielding the yellow sun (OK so I made that up), everything moves at so fast a pace, that all you get are cheesy lines of dialog, and an excuse to paste some action sequences together. And James Wong certainly can't direct action (despite being at the helm of Jet Li's The One, which was of course bland and bad), opting to pay homage to Zack Snyder's slow-mo technique, and midway changing the style to having the camera being too close to the action, in the dark, coupled with quick MTV cuts that you don't get to see a thing.

And the rush job just doesn't stop at the narrative or the action. Special effects wise, they look really cheap, and I wonder whether Producer Stephen Chow would roll his eyes at what would be extremely pale when put side by side with his Kung Fu Hustle done many years ago. Ayumi Hamasaki's contribution of the theme song Rule sounded really bad as well (I may get flak from her fans), and I guess having some Asian participation doesn't legitimize what is essentially a poorly done movie. Not even Chow Yun-Fat's star status could save this, and you wonder what figured when this is the movie that he gave up Red Cliff for.

This is basically a movie that only children below the age of 5 will enjoy tremendously, despite having to see 6 half-balls, contributed courtesy of the 3 lead female characters, being continuously flashed on screen, thanks to some neck plunging wardrobe (where's that malfunction when you need one?) Totally bland and really uninteresting, I would suggest sticking to the manga instead.

What is wrong with this picture man? Nothing personal to James as a director. I love his Final Destination series, but I think James is NOT the right person to direct this million plus dollars franchise. Why James is hired to direct this movie in the first place? It is a big mistakes. Like having Ang Lee directing the Hulk. Hiring an Asian to direct an Asian animation epic doesn't mean the movie will turn out great. The director must have a vision of the given materials.

The entire outcome is a disaster and disappointment. It is understandable that the film isn't exactly the same as the original comic, but the characters and the plot just suck as a film on its own. From observing the promotion materials of Dragonball, it seems that Fox doesn't want to do this movie at all. The posters suck and the trailers suck. The studio spends a lot of money on making Marvels and DC comics into movies, look how successful those films had become. The studios should pay more respect and faith in Asian materials.

To me this whole thing isn't making any sense at all because there are established fans across the globe, and Dragonball comic and cartoon itself has last more than TWO decades. This is why I think 20th Century Fox was putting money into this project initially. Everyone is looking forward to see a Hollywood version of Dragonball. Soon as I saw the first teaser, I knew I shouldn't put up in any hope into this movie. Even though I went to see the movie without any expectation, the movie still suck! Despite the led down of the Dragonball fans, it creates negative impulses to those who is new to Dragonball.

Dragonball is a hot cult in Asia and it hits the western market because of the stylistic action and fight sequences. However, the martial arts choreography in this movie is another led down. Not to mention the screenplay, the production design of this film is not consistence at all. Wardrobes, props to makeup, nothing fits together! Not only nothing in this film resembles the original DB, it is a disgrace. No wonder they use the word "Evolution". But when they say evolution, I don't expect the studio turns something respectable like Dragonball into rubbish. I've seen a live action version of Dragonball shot by the Malaysian years ago. Although it is an exact duplicate of the animation. But the movie is far better than Dragonball Evolution.

A lot of us are looking for a remake of this movie.