Dragonball Evolution

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I was actually curious about this movie. I never expected it to be good, but as the first live action DB film that I heard of, I had to check it out.

It was almost a crime against humanity. Almost.

I know this is late, but perhaps there are other people out there that waited for the DVD instead of torrenting to quell their curiosity.

Goku's a walking facepalm. If you had changed the name to "Mystic Spheres", you could not tell me that was supposed to be Goku, even in his orange outfit.

Some things I can understand changing, like giving subtle blue streaks in Bulma's hair, changing the size of Ozoruu, how the characters meet up, etc. But at least pull it off decently. We do not need a stereotypical "high school nerd" scenario to connect with Goku. But the interesting thing is, if I keep myself from thinking "this is suppose to be Goku", he is actually a bearable character. The only unbearable ones were Yamcha (die in a fire) and Master Roshi.

*spoilers*

What did they do right?

-While they pulled this out of their ass at the last minute, having Goku's Ozoruu form be connected to Piccolo some how *could* have been interesting. And the transformation scene was pretty good actually.

-Goku's final attack gave him red eyes a little bit and had him become "one" with his Ozoruu mind, kind of like Kyuubi Naruto without a visual change. That actually could have been really cool to see in the anime/manga *gasp!*

-Capsules, actual energy attacks that explode and not just invisible wind

-The final fight with Piccolo and Goku (giving the flight all of the sudden was meh though)

-A powerstruggle!! BUUUUUT...

What they did wrong

-...Goku is flying toward Piccolo while shooting a kamehameha, which made it look very hokey and kind of anti-climatic. It was ball vs beam and I was like "oh snap they actually are gonna pull a PS off!". But the effects looked more like smoke than energy at many points so I was rather disappointed.

-Horrible, horrible acting by most of the actors

-Awkward camera takes

-overly cheezy and uninspired dialog

-incoherent plot that actually gets hard to follow for someone who knew the anime

-The kamehameha looked more true to itself in the special feature's "work out" footage.


I know the director and the rest of the crew planned this out for awhile, but their execution was rather bad. The "work out" special shows that the creators were familiar with the show. They used the word "Super Saiyan", they had rock-wastelands like the show, and used anime-like speed backgrounds for humor
 
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I also let curiosity get the best of me, and watched this thing they called a movie.

*spoilers*

The only parts I liked, were when Goku looked into the DBs and saw Piccolo (Daimao) effin' **** up.

Piccolo (Daimao) was also the only character that actually said a noticable line from the manga/anime.

And, c'mon... that 10 foot Ozaruu...



...is ugly as sin. It looks more grunt demon than ape.

Lastly, THE MOVIE WAS SO ****ING FAST-PACED I WAS LIKE... SLOW THE **** DOWN, GODDAMNIT!!!

If Star Wars 3 was doing 120 mph... this movie was doing 380 mph AT LEAST!
 
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Long story short... The movie sucked dragon balls.
And than went to show it's self infront of people.

I liked the movie on a funny/interesting basis, sometimes even cool, but completly underdone and not well executed.

I could go on and on reviewing the movie, but I'm too lazy to do that. I mean, seriously, they didn't even air the movie in Slovenia. LOL!
 
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And than went to show it's self infront of people.

I liked the movie on a funny/interesting basis, sometimes even cool, but completly underdone and not well executed.

I could go on and on reviewing the movie, but I'm too lazy to do that. I mean, seriously, they didn't even air the movie in Slovenia. LOL!
And im happy for that.
 

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I knew it was going to be horrible, my friend at work told me all the stupid things about it.

So of course we got blitzed and watched it, had us a little Mystery Science Theater. When you think of it as a comedy, it's so funny.

It's probably the best worst movie of all time.


Seriously, the movie made me laugh and facepalm so much I enjoyed it in the end, hahaha.


Now, the sad fact of the matter was how at the end I stated "Man, Toriyama must be pissed his little creation just got shat on, I know he'd never let this happen if he had a part in it.."

Then in the end credits, just after I saw that...

Executive Producer
Akira Toriyama


I don't understand how he ok'd anything that movie did, it's perplexing and hilarious.
 
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I don't understand how he ok'd anything that movie did, it's perplexing and hilarious.
As one song said: "Cash rolls everything around me...". Sad but true.

As for the movie, i still haven't seen it. Make i'll check it out...just for fun if i can say that. :)
 
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I knew it was going to be horrible, my friend at work told me all the stupid things about it.

So of course we got blitzed and watched it, had us a little Mystery Science Theater. When you think of it as a comedy, it's so funny.

It's probably the best worst movie of all time.


Seriously, the movie made me laugh and facepalm so much I enjoyed it in the end, hahaha.


Now, the sad fact of the matter was how at the end I stated "Man, Toriyama must be pissed his little creation just got shat on, I know he'd never let this happen if he had a part in it.."

Then in the end credits, just after I saw that...

Executive Producer
Akira Toriyama


I don't understand how he ok'd anything that movie did, it's perplexing and hilarious.
One part I laughed out loud on was when...

*spoilers....*


After the credits, we see Piccolo TUCKED in a bed in a native hut/house with a woman nursing him back to health, and his green comes out out of the covers and slowly looks at the woman with a blank stare.
 
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Now, the sad fact of the matter was how at the end I stated "Man, Toriyama must be pissed his little creation just got shat on, I know he'd never let this happen if he had a part in it.."
Toryiama made Majin Neko. That manga preety much ****s on DBZ itself XD

I see no problems there ^^;
 
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One part I laughed out loud on was when...

*spoilers....*


After the credits, we see Piccolo TUCKED in a bed in a native hut/house with a woman nursing him back to health, and his green comes out out of the covers and slowly looks at the woman with a blank stare.
That made absolutely no sense... didn't Piccolo attack her town and threaten to kill her?

Why would she take care of him?

They never explained who that woman was... or did I miss it?
 
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From a fan POV, I despise it, and Fox, with every fiber of my being.

From an impartial perspective, I can't deny that while it's still terribly structured for a movie, it's good for mindless entertainment. I'd certainly watch this over the "Endless Eight" travesty from Haruhi Suzumiya.

I actually showed this to my parents for the full impartial effect, and surprisingly they really liked it...And they tend to have pretty decent taste. Not so in the case of District 9, which they were mostly "meh" about.

As a fan, I take the most issue with the portrayal of the characters. Goku is almost the exact opposite of the character he's supposed to be. Bulma is a biker girl with half the estrogen. Yamcha just plain has a terrible actor, I really can't tell how he portrayed it outside trying his hardest to imitate Chris Sabat.

And aside from the high school stupidity, the characters are the main place where the movie has it all wrong, where the movie would be infinitely better if this were amended. As to the actors themselves...

Chatwin for Goku: I can't really HATE Chatwin, because I think he tried hard, but neither do I think he is the actor for Goku. He just isn't. Teen Gohan, maybe, but a movie series would never move past the Frieza saga, so he really has no place in Dragonball. Hate to break it to ya' pal.

Marsters for Piccolo: This was a good cast, I can honestly say Marsters was one of the best choices in DBE by a landslide. Not only does he dig deep despite mediocre writing in order to give Piccolo charisma and menace in the few scenes even including him, but he's also a die-hard fan who lobbied at the risk of his job to preserve the Piccolo of the series as hard as he could. Easily the best performance of the film, even with Chow Yun Fat on-board.

Rossum as Bulma: Excellent cast, terrible direction. I honestly think Rossum could pull off the Bulma we know and love perfectly if only Fox had let her. She looks the part, and her voice is great when it isn't putting on this icy growl she has to maintain for the DBE version of the character. An utter waste, making her and Bulma act like a badass with dual pistols who wears leather, which is meaningless anyway since her guns never have ANY consequence, or in fact, hit anyone or anything they're supposed to until Yamcha uses one to shoot Mai in the back.

I won't get into Roshi or Chichi, as I don't care as much...AS much...

Either way, this film has only a few good things going for it. First of all, the music. Brian Tyler did music for a much better film when he scored DBE. It carries the film where it deserves to fall flat. I love the themes, I love the way it respects Dragonball's roots. As we all know, Dragonball originally had an orchestral score. It was meant for a much lighter hearted series, so it sounded too bouncy later on, and the recording equipment was pretty poor, but DBE still went mainly orchestral with music which much better fit the film. Faulconer was also somewhat homaged, in the couple instances of techno-grunge used in the soundtrack at odd points.

The visual direction. I think the set designers and concept artists had a good idea of what they needed to make, but obviously there was a pretty small budget, and the sets suffered quality, yet mostly retained their feel. This is especially noticeable in the "Dragon Temple", where the arena of the film's final battle is far too small looking to host this kind of fight.

The effects, or concept of such. The effects certainly weren't top-grade, especially Oozaru, but I can't deny even while it was extremely short and lackluster that including all the Ki effects, city explosions, meteor crashes, actor facial transformations, and lava pools were an impressive amount of things to put onscreen for a 35 million dollar film. I'll even say that I liked the Ki effects on concept, but felt they needed a certain solidity to them, in order to seem more "punchy" and physical, rather than it seeming that a column of colored smoke caused an explosion which shattered a boulder.

Otherwise, the film fails in almost every other area. The main problem with studios thinking they can do anime is thinking they should tackle the bigger ones first, and test it with a small movie.

A series like Dragonball cannot be done as a small movie. It's really all or nothing, it would be like making Star Trek for 35 million. Unthinkable right? Why? Because it's such a large scale series? Well, among anime Dragonball is big. I'll be the first to say, not the brightest and not the best, but it's big, it's got a huge mythology and TONS of room to work with on enhancing the motivations of the characters, unless high school bullying really IS the best you can come up with.

Though the numbers tell Fox that a big anime should be treated like a remake of an old TV show, like Land of the Lost, it's simply wrong. You can't stuff it in that way. Tackle anime that's popular, yet doesn't NEED tons of effects or epic fights first. Haruhi Suzumiya, that'd be a great one since it requires so little other than a cast that works and access to a school. Or Death Note, which to my understanding requires little in comparison as well. Test the waters THAT way, before heavy-handedly tackling an anime epic and smashing it into a bite-sized ball.

And for the love of God, keep Tom Rothman and Fox away from it.
 
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I personally liked the movie, even though it didn't really have anything do to with the anime. But then again, it's a movie not an anime.
 
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I personally liked the movie, even though it didn't really have anything do to with the anime. But then again, it's a movie not an anime.
Well then why not call it something else?
 
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Actually, I just admire its Kamehameha wave in Dragonball Evolution , it looks like a blue fire. But, the story is not much impressive as a huge series is put in small movie.In fact , Goku is a child in Dragonball, but they showed him as an adult.
 
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Actually they showed him as a teenager.

In any case the originall storyline they had planned would be more epic.

RR army gathering dragonballs and accidentally freeing piccolo in the end :p
 
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I think putting out sequels story wise would be much more entertaining, than altering the story so you can put it into an hour.... that's it I think, an hour movie. xD

Or was it an hour and a half? Should've been atleast two and a half hours.

Oh, and, it's not good looking for Bulma having greenishly-blue hair?

Yeah, well MAYBE because you need to sci-fi the rest of the world also, ha, maybe, perhaps? We can have a green, ****ing Piccolo in the movie, looking more yellowish than green, but badass non the less, but NO, you can't dye her hair blue.
 
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is there going to be teh second one or not?
 
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I think putting out sequels story wise would be much more entertaining, than altering the story so you can put it into an hour.... that's it I think, an hour movie. xD

Or was it an hour and a half? Should've been atleast two and a half hours.

Oh, and, it's not good looking for Bulma having greenishly-blue hair?

Yeah, well MAYBE because you need to sci-fi the rest of the world also, ha, maybe, perhaps? We can have a green, ****ing Piccolo in the movie, looking more yellowish than green, but badass non the less, but NO, you can't dye her hair blue.
Tehy did at first. Looked like crap. So they made the improvement with that actually.

is there going to be teh second one or not?
I hope not. Atleast not a direct sequel to this.
 
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I think there is going to be a sequel, it's on wikipedia or imdb. It was quite the fail movie imo.

Chi Chi was hot though and the kamehameha wave didn't look too bad...

One thing that I don't get it why didn't Goku want to fight those other teenagers? In the manga isn't that all he wants to do, isn't he supposed to love fighting others even if it's just for fun? Was really stupid.
 

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