Well, always fearing for my life whenever I click into the DBE thread, I guess this is a better place than any to comment on your guys' comments as well as bring up some of my own. I pretty much took notes on Word while listening to the episode and expanded on them afterward, so apologies if it comes off like I'm jumping from topic to topic, since well... I am.
Right from the get-go, it was pretty weird that the beginning immediately showed Piccolo and Oozaru. I was always under the impression that those two characters especially were, at one point or another, kept heavily under wraps since they're one of the more "out there" designs that the movie would have had to try and pull off in live action. So to have both characters literally being the first things you see on screen once the movie starts was quite the shock for me.
Talking about "mentally preparing" yourself before watching the movie was pretty true. I think in general in the case of something being loosely adapted to something else relies on people having to take away all biases. Stuff like "oh, this isn't the Goku I know" really just comes off as people not giving any kind of new change a chance. Granted, Goku's character was heavily changed from the original, but that doesn't mean that the Goku portrayed in the movie must be downright hated. If anything, it seems like they made a good amount of changes for the sake of raking in a broader audience. Whether that was a successful move or not... well, I'll bring that up later.
I agree that the Fullum attack scene was just so dark and choppy. During that entire scene, I was expecting the Fullum to eventually be in a clearer shot, but was disappointed when they just cut to the following scene.
Besides Roshi, I think she was one of the characters that best resembles her manga/anime counterpart. While she's smart, she uses her feminine wiles when she has to, but can also be pretty crafty as well. Seriously, the whole throwing of the capsule was one of the better parts of the movie. It's always nice to have something brought up early in the movie brought up again near the end
.
I also agree that the bug at the beginning did look pretty robotic. Though do you think that's a possible foreshadowing to Red Ribbon and Gero's spectator bugs following Goku around? Though that would be quite some planning ahead if that was true.
Shenron was pretty weird. I remember reading in an article that just seeing the dragon burst out from the skies and noticing how he's so massive that you can't even see his entire self without the camera having to pan out so much in the manga and anime came off as just so fantastic... and now we have some kinda lizard thing that pops out and shrinks back into some kind of dimensional hole in the movie? Kinda lame. Honestly, the could have just kept his original design, since they know damn well they'd be CG-ing most if not all of him.
While I was entertained by the smaller scale fight scenes at the party and at Roshi's place, the final fight with Goku and Piccolo, while on a grander scale, didn't come off as so grand to me. Maybe it was because their powers seemed more weakened to me, similar to how some people talk about how Superman's powers have been weakened over time. The problem is grand scale fights define the Dragon Ball series, that when I saw how they did them in the movie, I was pretty let down since I assumed that those fights would be one of the easier things to pull off. In particular, having Goku not finish off or even check if Piccolo was really dead seemed surprising to me. Then again, I guess if he did that, we wouldn't end up with our awesome post-end-credits scene
.
Seriously, the after credits scene was pretty... awkward. Throughout the whole movie, things seemed so rushed, so it was just so weird to have them take their sweet time on this one scene. And yes, Piccolo seemed pretty well tucked into that bed. I can't even guess as to why some random person would decide to take some bruised leather-suited green thing in.
There were actually a crapton of stuff concerning Piccolo that needed some explanation. As mentioned, he seemed perfectly capable of blowing up cities and demolishing old people's houses with the clench of a fist, so why did he need the dragon balls at all? It couldn't have been to regain his youth, like in the series. And having him just say that he needs them to "take vengeance upon the Earth" is just so vague. In that sense, the movie kinda came off as one of those nineties action movies. I wanna say it's similar to the live action Ninja Turtles flick for that reason, but I haven't seen that movie in so long, and I honestly think that that one holds up slightly better than DBE.
I know it was mentioned when Julian was on, but the whole thing with the fake Chi-Chi sneaking out of Goku’s bed was pretty iffy. It's stuff like that that really makes me ask just who the audience the movie was aimed for, which I think all movies, this one especially, have to clarify. I mean sure, you have somewhat recent PG movies like The Incredibles that get away with innuendo-ish stuff, too, but that movie ended up being pretty far reaching in terms of their audience. DBE being what it is really should have clearly specified just who their audience would be while fleshing out the movie.
You guys mentioned how it seemed weird that they never made a connection on who made the dragon balls, but I thought it was explicitly explained that the monks were the creators of the dragon balls for this movie.
I really like how you guys brought Speed Racer into the discussion. Its live-action movie is a perfect example of a movie that gave in to a certain demographic of fans and rolled with it. While it bombed in the box office, I personally thought it was rather enjoyable. It pretty much took the "typical" fair weather fan's perception of the series and rolled with it. It's not exactly sort of movie I'd buy right when it came out, but I'd definitely pick it up for around $10 or less if presented with the chance to.
I went to the midnight showing in my area, and the audience was pretty well... predictable: there were your standard college students (myself included) that grew up with the series, the raucous college students who wanted to catch a standard fighting movie, the younger fan that was accompanied by his parents, and the older (read: ooolder) fans that were probably introduced to the series while they were in college themselves. And comparing that to the audience the movie was supposedly aiming for, I agree that the intended audience was significantly different from the actual audience. I personally think they should have stuck with trying to appeal whoever they thought were the majority of hardcore fans out there like Andrew mentioned.
But yeah, all in all I personally thought it was a nice, basic popcorn flick. Though maybe it was because the previous movie I watched in theaters was Knowing, which was horrendous, so I ended up just comparing the two. I was actually planning on typing up an actual formal review of DBE, but I just couldn't do it without going off either covering one rant or another or just completely being generic about my opinions on the movie.
All I can really say, though, is that it's an alright movie if you go into it ignoring all your biases and whatnot.
Son Wukong wrote:For me this episode (overall) has got to be the worst one of DaizenshuuEX I have listened to so far. Why? I really don't know exactly the reason for why I am displeased but if I had to take a long shot, I would say the lack of seriousness. [...] I will also state that on this podcast I have heard nothing that I hadn't read on the forum or thought of myself before.
I gotta say that these were the exact reasons I wasn't that big when the daizEX crew covered the remastered GT sets. It's just one episode out of
(counts) a crapton, though, so it's not like it's a bad thing or anything. It's just one of those things is all.
