Man of Steels fight scenes were inspired by DBZ

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Man of Steels fight scenes were inspired by DBZ

Post by Bullza » Tue Jun 05, 2018 2:12 am

https://heroichollywood.com/man-steel-s ... agon-ball/

So someone on Twitter asked Jay Oliva if he likes anime. Jay Oliva was responsible for doing the story boarding for Man of Steel (as well as Ant-man and Deadpool) and he's also directed a bunch of the DC animated movies that have come out in the last so many years.

Well his response was

"Of course I LOVE anime! My MoS fight was basically me riffing off of dragonball z and countless other animated series/films I love! #animefreak"

So I thought that was pretty interesting because I know a lot of people saw that fight (including myself) and was reminded of Dragon Ball Z. To be fair a lot of super powered fighting in the air will always make people think of Dragon Ball Z but here we have something of a confirmation that it actually was inspired by it to some extent.

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Re: Man of Steels fight scenes were inspired by DBZ

Post by KBABZ » Tue Jun 05, 2018 2:48 am

Well I don't think a fight has to necessarily be in the air to be like DBZ. My favourite, vs Vegeta, had no flying in it, as did Goku's fight with Daimao in Dragon Ball.

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Re: Man of Steels fight scenes were inspired by DBZ

Post by Super Saiyan Swagger » Tue Jun 05, 2018 3:00 am

Superman vs General Zod definitely felt like a typical fight from Z, so I'm glad that it was actually confirmed by the storyboard artist from the film that he was influenced by it.

It's funny, cause that Dragon Ball Z 4D short film that came out a couple of years ago had shots that looked like they were ripped straight out of Man of Steel.

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Re: Man of Steels fight scenes were inspired by DBZ

Post by Vijay » Tue Jun 05, 2018 3:27 am

MoS is perhaps the only officially declared Z fights inspired film. There are a bunch of other shows that really feel & look DBZ-esque which isnt coincidence. Bare in mind, I'm not underestimating geniuses of hollywood directors

1. Pacific Rim (Del Toro may have gone for Gundam, but the fight choreography especially "under the leg" shots/CGI really felt Z)

2. Avengers (2012). Hulk, Thor & Tony going-up against Chitauri army in the middle of city with alien shapeships in the sky gave Mecha-Frieza's invasion vibe

3. Dark Knight Rises. Anyone remember Piccolo Daimou's ultimatum once crowned himself as King? Yeah! Criminals, murderers, thieves, prisoners are all to be released while the rich & peace-lovers shall be vanquished, thus spread war & evil. Bane/Tom Hardy's no different & credit goes not to Nolan (who himself was inspired by A Tale of 2 Cities) but Toriyama

4. Infinity War. Owww yeah!!! Spoilers for those who's yet to watch the film...but really!!! Anyone still havent watch this film yet?!! The battle sequence on planet Titan (1 on 6) along with Thanos motivation had strong Zamasu-vibe. The fights...Tien's multiple arms, Janemba's Reality Warp, Jackie's hypnotics everything were full on display...

5. Avengers: Age of Ultron. The shots of multiple Ultron proxies fighting against Avengers especially Thor, Iron Man & Vision gave strong multiple Meta-Cooler rushing towards Goku & Vegeta from M6

6. Furious 7 & Fate of Furious (8): The aspect of developing most ruthless villain Deckard Shaw portrayed by Jason Statham into fabulous anti-hero & eventually protagonist at crucial baby-rescue scene & becoming part of Dom's "family" really feels DBZ. Tienshinhan, Veggie, Frieza, Majin Boo all these guys were badass villains who eventually teamed up with Goku. Oh yeah! The fights...goddamn...Hobbs vs Shaw / Shaw vs Dom reminded of classic early DB fist-fights without chi blasts & stuff

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Re: Man of Steels fight scenes were inspired by DBZ

Post by Cure Dragon 255 » Tue Jun 05, 2018 3:31 am

You REALLY are pushing it with these comparisons.
Marz wrote: Wed Jul 21, 2021 11:27 pm "Well, the chapter was good, the story was good and so were the fights. But a new transformation, in Dragon Ball? And one that's ugly? This is where we draw the line!!! Jump the Shark moment!!"

This forum is so over-dramatic that it's not even funny.
90sDBZ wrote: Mon Jul 01, 2019 2:44 pm19 years ago I was rushing home from school to watch DBZ on Cartoon Network, and today I've rushed home from work to watch DBS on Pop. I guess it's true the more things change the more they stay the same. :lol:

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Re: Man of Steels fight scenes were inspired by DBZ

Post by JazzMazz » Tue Jun 05, 2018 3:35 am

Vijay wrote:MoS is perhaps the only officially declared Z fights inspired film. There are a bunch of other shows that really feel & look DBZ-esque which isnt coincidence. Bare in mind, I'm not underestimating geniuses of hollywood directors

1. Pacific Rim (Del Toro may have gone for Gundam, but the fight choreography especially "under the leg" shots/CGI really felt Z)

2. Avengers (2012). Hulk, Thor & Tony going-up against Chitauri army in the middle of city with alien shapeships in the sky gave Mecha-Frieza's invasion vibe

3. Dark Knight Rises. Anyone remember Piccolo Daimou's ultimatum once crowned himself as King? Yeah! Criminals, murderers, thieves, prisoners are all to be released while the rich & peace-lovers shall be vanquished, thus spread war & evil. Bane/Tom Hardy's no different & credit goes not to Nolan (who himself was inspired by A Tale of 2 Cities) but Toriyama

4. Infinity War. Owww yeah!!! Spoilers for those who's yet to watch the film...but really!!! Anyone still havent watch this film yet?!! The battle sequence on planet Titan (1 on 6) along with Thanos motivation had strong Zamasu-vibe. The fights...Tien's multiple arms, Janemba's Reality Warp, Jackie's hypnotics everything were full on display...

5. Avengers: Age of Ultron. The shots of multiple Ultron proxies fighting against Avengers especially Thor, Iron Man & Vision gave strong multiple Meta-Cooler rushing towards Goku & Vegeta from M6

6. Furious 7 & Fate of Furious (8): The aspect of developing most ruthless villain Deckard Shaw portrayed by Jason Statham into fabulous anti-hero & eventually protagonist at crucial baby-rescue scene & becoming part of Dom's "family" really feels DBZ. Tienshinhan, Veggie, Frieza, Majin Boo all these guys were badass villains who eventually teamed up with Goku. Oh yeah! The fights...goddamn...Hobbs vs Shaw / Shaw vs Dom reminded of classic early DB fist-fights without chi blasts & stuff
Yeah, you are really pushing it with these comparisons, to the point that I don't think they're really justified.

A movie that one could more justifiably say was influenced by DBZ, was the third Matrix film.

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Re: Man of Steels fight scenes were inspired by DBZ

Post by Bullza » Tue Jun 05, 2018 3:53 am

Yeah I was going to say, The Matrix Revolutions and especially because the Wachowski Brothers also went on to direct the anime adaptation Speed Racer seems like that was almost surely influenced by DBZ as well.

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Re: Man of Steels fight scenes were inspired by DBZ

Post by Kunzait_83 » Tue Jun 05, 2018 4:53 am

As I've gone into absurd detail describing countless times in countless threads by now (particularly in the Wuxia thread linked in my sig), Dragon Ball Z neither invented nor originally popularized and made mainstream this type of super powered martial arts fighting in movies or TV.

With regards to the Matrix films, the Wachowski siblings have stated numerous times for almost 20 years now that they were primarily taking from countless Wuxia films when creating the Matrix's various superpowered martial arts fight scenes. They even notably hired legendary Hong Kong martial arts/Wuxia film fight director/choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping (whose Wuxia film work they'd been fans of for years prior) to choreograph all of the various high flying, high speed fight scenes, which then directly lead to Woo-Ping being brought on to choreograph other U.S. Hollywood film martial arts fights in the early 2000s, including Tarantino's Kill Bill films. This was absurdly common knowledge back in 1999 (when the first Matrix first came out), and remains so today. I even have a whole small section of the latter part of the Wuxia thread dedicated specifically to The Matrix and Wuxia's role in it.

This kind of fighting... soaring through the air at high speeds, knocking one another through mountains and buildings, firing beams and bolts of Chi to and fro, etc.... has been a popular and not at all obscure staple across countless Chinese movies and TV shows, and even other Japanese anime and manga, since years, decades long before Dragon Ball was ever a thing.

Image
(Don't make me start breaking out the gifs again)

The main audience among whom DBZ was primarily responsible for popularizing this type of supernatural, high flying/high speed kung fu fighting is among that of millennial Americans/Westerners (as well as arguably people in more rural/middle American and less urban/city dwelling areas of the U.S.): and while that's indeed noteworthy, millennial Americans/Westerners are in no way the be all, end all center of the universe around which everything else in the history of creative media revolves.

Hell, DBZ is not even responsible for its popularization among the original set of Japanese school children for whom it was aimed at, as they'd already seen their share of it in other anime and manga prior, including Weekly Shonen Jump's own First of the North Star/Hokuto no Ken (so its not even like this was new for the manga publication in which DB was first originally serialized).

This stuff is and always has been old hat to virtually all mainstream Asian film audiences going back to the silent film days of the late 1920s (and literally thousands of years prior across other, less modern forms of storytelling in general like books and stage plays), and even among older generations of American/Western film audiences going back to the 1970s and 80s, be it African American grindhouse audiences who popularized Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest Wuxia films in grindhouse theaters of the 70s, or young punk rock/skater/grunge teens and 20 something Gen X'ers throughout the late 80s and early 90s who came across it on bootleg VHS tapes and art house theatrical runs, among other venues (the latter wave leading to the Wachowski's embrace of this stuff, thus its place within The Matrix).

I know that a ton of people here (and other sites like this) prefer to buy into the idea that all of this stuff first began and first broke through into the mainstream when late 90s and early 2000s grade school kids (like most of you here were) first saw DBZ on Toonami circa 1999/2000, and prior to that its like had all existed within some sort of a vacuum of impenetrable obscurity where no one else in the whole world knew about any of it; but the actual reality is that you're in no way the first, nor most centrally important, audience who'd come across and popularized this style of superpowered martial arts fighting in TV and movies.

DBZ is indeed A noteworthy example of it for sure: it is in no way THE earliest nor is it even really the most centrally, crucially important of them all, nor was its breakout within America (or Japan beforehand for that matter) centrally key to first making this type of fighting widespread, considering it was already more than plenty widespread in many parts of the world, including many parts of America, well beforehand to begin with.
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Re: Man of Steels fight scenes were inspired by DBZ

Post by Ajay » Tue Jun 05, 2018 8:01 am

That's interesting... and a little weird that he said that. I wonder if that's the truth or if he's just playing into that common comparison/misconception.

Zack Snyder mentioned in a Japanese interview that the film's scenes weren't inspired by Dragon Ball Z, but rather Birdy the Mighty Decode (one of my favourite anime, by the way. Everyone should totally watch it).

I think the direct comparisons speak volumes:

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Re: Man of Steels fight scenes were inspired by DBZ

Post by Cure Dragon 255 » Tue Jun 05, 2018 9:51 am

Wow. So Snyder DOES have some taste after all.
Marz wrote: Wed Jul 21, 2021 11:27 pm "Well, the chapter was good, the story was good and so were the fights. But a new transformation, in Dragon Ball? And one that's ugly? This is where we draw the line!!! Jump the Shark moment!!"

This forum is so over-dramatic that it's not even funny.
90sDBZ wrote: Mon Jul 01, 2019 2:44 pm19 years ago I was rushing home from school to watch DBZ on Cartoon Network, and today I've rushed home from work to watch DBS on Pop. I guess it's true the more things change the more they stay the same. :lol:

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Re: Man of Steels fight scenes were inspired by DBZ

Post by Forte224 » Tue Jun 05, 2018 12:56 pm

Nothing about the MoS fight ever screamed Dragon Ball to me. It had flying and punches but that's an extremely surface level comparison to Dragon Ball. I've always felt this way about the fight in the third Matrix movie too.

Anyway, the MoS fight contained none of the charm, color, style, or fun that Dragon Ball has. It was just a mess of a CGI fight that dulled the senses after running for way too long. It also contained a "superhero" that cared less about his surroundings than Goku, a non-superhero that consistently moves his fights to places where no innocents are around.

If it's true the fight was inspired by Dragon Ball, then that guy doesn't understand what Dragon Ball is all about and just put a fight on screen of what he thought Dragon Ball looked like in his head. I'm a little annoyed he drew a comparison at all, honestly. But, that video posted by Ajay is an almost undeniable relation that makes way more sense.

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Re: Man of Steels fight scenes were inspired by DBZ

Post by ABED » Tue Jun 05, 2018 2:00 pm

Forte224 wrote:Nothing about the MoS fight ever screamed Dragon Ball to me. It had flying and punches but that's an extremely surface level comparison to Dragon Ball. I've always felt this way about the fight in the third Matrix movie too.

Anyway, the MoS fight contained none of the charm, color, style, or fun that Dragon Ball has. It was just a mess of a CGI fight that dulled the senses after running for way too long. It also contained a "superhero" that cared less about his surroundings than Goku, a non-superhero that consistently moves his fights to places where no innocents are around.

If it's true the fight was inspired by Dragon Ball, then that guy doesn't understand what Dragon Ball is all about and just put a fight on screen of what he thought Dragon Ball looked like in his head. I'm a little annoyed he drew a comparison at all, honestly. But, that video posted by Ajay is an almost undeniable relation that makes way more sense.
To be fair, there's no way to do a live action fight of this type without CGI.
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Re: Man of Steels fight scenes were inspired by DBZ

Post by Forte224 » Tue Jun 05, 2018 2:35 pm

ABED wrote:
Forte224 wrote:Nothing about the MoS fight ever screamed Dragon Ball to me. It had flying and punches but that's an extremely surface level comparison to Dragon Ball. I've always felt this way about the fight in the third Matrix movie too.

Anyway, the MoS fight contained none of the charm, color, style, or fun that Dragon Ball has. It was just a mess of a CGI fight that dulled the senses after running for way too long. It also contained a "superhero" that cared less about his surroundings than Goku, a non-superhero that consistently moves his fights to places where no innocents are around.

If it's true the fight was inspired by Dragon Ball, then that guy doesn't understand what Dragon Ball is all about and just put a fight on screen of what he thought Dragon Ball looked like in his head. I'm a little annoyed he drew a comparison at all, honestly. But, that video posted by Ajay is an almost undeniable relation that makes way more sense.
To be fair, there's no way to do a live action fight of this type without CGI.
Oh of course. I don't mind CGI in general, but that film was just a CGI monstrosity with hardly any constraint. My senses were dulled about half way through.

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Re: Man of Steels fight scenes were inspired by DBZ

Post by ABED » Tue Jun 05, 2018 2:43 pm

Gotcha, that's fair.
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Re: Man of Steels fight scenes were inspired by DBZ

Post by Koitsukai » Tue Jun 05, 2018 11:38 pm

The final fight of Matrix Revolutions left me thinking that would be the way I would like a live-action DBZ movie to be.

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Re: Man of Steels fight scenes were inspired by DBZ

Post by KBABZ » Wed Jun 06, 2018 4:09 am

Kunzait_83 wrote:millennial Americans/Westerners are in no way the be all, end all center of the universe around which everything else in the history of creative media revolves.
Haha, try telling that to Hollywood and The Oscars!

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Re: Man of Steels fight scenes were inspired by DBZ

Post by Baggie_Saiyan » Wed Jun 06, 2018 10:17 am

A great film but I never once drew a comparison with DB.

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Re: Man of Steels fight scenes were inspired by DBZ

Post by Dbzfan94 » Wed Jun 06, 2018 12:18 pm

I thought that was obvious.

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Re: Man of Steels fight scenes were inspired by DBZ

Post by 8000 Saiyan » Wed Jun 06, 2018 12:27 pm

Nothing about Man of Steel's fights felt like DBZ to me.
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Re: Man of Steels fight scenes were inspired by DBZ

Post by Jodaku » Wed Jun 06, 2018 4:58 pm

Nice to get confirmation of this. The fight scenes in Man of Steel me have always got my DBZ senses going.

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