Mixing the movies with Super - The Ultimate Fan-cut!

[Ajay]

I was thinking about this last night, and thought I'd reach out to this community for their perspective. Who knows, if the ideas are good enough, I may just go ahead with it.

With Super retelling and somewhat expanding on the events depicted in the previous two films, we're in a unique position where we have the ability to create a perfect "ultimate cut" of the series. What scenes from the anime would you use to supplement or replace a scene from the film? Would you re-order the events somewhat? What's your take on things?

As far as I'm concerned, Battle of Gods is mostly fine on its own, but there are a couple of things I'd change. For one, I think showcasing Beerus' terror was an interesting change, but I wasn't a huge fan of their persistence in portraying him much darker than necessary. Instead, I'd love to produce a Toriyama-esque bait and switch, where the audience believes Beerus to be this terrible creature before finally revealing his true nature. We had this to some extent in the film version already, but to be able to amplify it further would be great.

I enjoyed some of the Super Saiyan God scenes in Super, but felt they were very poorly directed, and ended up dragging unnecessarily. I'd love to chop up those scenes and cut together a really interesting fight. My only concern is that you'd end up losing Shida's great bit of animation as Goku loses the god form on Earth, as opposed to in space as seen in the series. They do dip back and forth from ground to space quite a lot, so perhaps through some clever editing, it'd be possible to fake Goku and Beerus dropping into the cave. Not 100% sure on that one.

Bridging the gap between the two films should be relatively easy. Though I'd be interested to hear what ways you think would be best to trim the padding from those intermediary episodes. After that, it's all up in the air. I'll revisit it once the anime retelling is over.

Anyway, let's hear your thoughts!

[VegettoEX]

I think the only real huge problem we'd run into would be the location difference of the cruise ship and Capsule Corp for the nitty-gritty of the early/mid Battle of Gods material. It might be possible if you avoid any longer location shots at all and keep everything tight, but it's bound to come up.

[Ajay]

What sort of scenes from Super would you want to throw in for those early portions? I hadn't really given much thought to it as I was pretty content with what the films had to offer there.

[Doctor.]

Wasn't this done for the Madoka series a few months back? Did you get inspiration from there or is this something you thought of?

I'm more curious about the soundtrack, you'll have to replace it in some scenes or remove it entirely in others I'm sure. Are you gonna use Battle of Gods'? Super's, even though it's unreleased? Maybe even go further beyond and just replace Sumitomo entirely?

I'm sure the difference in animation quality will be the most jarring thing of all.

I think I'll write a brief outline of what I'd personally like later.

[Ajay]

Wasn't this done for the Madoka series a few months back? Did you get inspiration from there or is this something you thought of?
I'm more curious about the soundtrack, you'll have to replace it in some scenes or remove it entirely in others I'm sure. Are you gonna use Battle of Gods'? Super's, even though it's unreleased? Maybe even go further beyond and just replace Sumitomo entirely?
I'm sure the difference in animation quality will be the most jarring thing of all.
I think I'll write a brief outline of what I'd personally like later.

I haven't followed anything Madoka related for years. This was just something that happened to pop into my head.

Regarding the soundtrack, I'm not too concerned about that. Battle of Gods has a 5.1 track, so isolating sounds from there isn't too difficult. Super being 2.0 only makes thing a little harder, but Toei tends to mix dialogue far louder than music, so isolating the dialogue is fairly easy without leaving too many artifacts behind. All of the sound effects from Super would be replaced by the original ones for the sake of cohesion with the film.

I'm also a little concerned about the animation working together. Despite the most useful episodes being well animated, the entire aesthetic of Super is very different. From the line-art to the backgrounds, I'm a little worried that's what would stand out the most. Sadly, there's not a lot to be done there. Hopefully it's not too jarring.

Again, this is all hypothetical right now. I'm just interested in what people think narratively would work rather than thinking too hard about the technical side of things.

[LuckyCat]

It would be a no-brainer to add the first 2 episodes. I also liked how Vegeta's flashback to meeting Beerus was handled in Super. Then, there's that point where Goku post-God form gets a whole punched in the chest, which would have been a cool addition to the film.

As for RoF, I would love it if someone spliced the scene of Gohan getting tortured by Freeza and Piccolo's death. That scene could lead to Gohan getting angry and beating down Shisami.

[Doctor.]

I think BoG functions well on its own. You don't need to add much, just parts of the two first episodes like Goku farming, Vegeta's family trip and Beerus destroying a planet to set him up as a threat. Then as for the party stuff, I'd add the wedding picture of Gohan and Videl, I'd replace the Bingo scene with Chef Vegeta (even though I imagine this may be hard considering Super's on a boat, not at CC). I'd add Vegeta's flashback of Beerus and every scene where Beerus torments Vegeta and, later, tortures and steps on his head. As for the fight, episode 11 in almost of its entirety has to stay. The climax is a bit difficult, I like the scene of Goku punching the sphere and telling Beerus to shut up, but I don't know how that would fit with BoG, considering in BoG's climax, Goku gives up and respects Beerus, while in Super the opposite happens.

[Lord Beerus]

I certainly think adding Beerus' exploits from Super to Battle Of Gods would create more of an understanding of just how Beerus works a as "God Of Destruction", then the title being just given lip service like in the movie. The rest of the movie is fine in itself.

Resurrection F is... a bit of challenge. The movie wasted Tagoma's character, but Super managed to utilize him better... only to throw it all away. Then of course you have "1.3 million" line that the movie has that Super got rid of, the awesome Z-Fighters/Freeza Army battle scene which shits on what we got in Super, Goku and Vegeta's training with Whis being given much more depth in Super than what was given in the movie and Super excluding any mention of Whis' ability to turn back time. There is gonna be a lot of chopping and changing with that movie, and we still have seen how Freeza vs Goku/Vegeta evolves, so everything could change. And that's not even mentioning the elephant in the room that is Piccolo dying the Super retelling of ROF.

[Ajay]

It would be a no-brainer to add the first 2 episodes. I also liked how Vegeta's flashback to meeting Beerus was handled in Super.

So I just did a rough cut of this to see how it worked out. I chopped out Goten and Trunks' adventure, and put Vegeta's day out in there instead, but his day out only really comes to about 2 or 3 minutes in length due to cutting out the night time scene. This is because I want to cut back to Goku receiving his money from Mr Satan to sort of end that section of the film. The issue is, the transition to dusk feels weird because I can't include the natural dusk transition from Episode 2 due to Bulma talking about wanting to have her party on a cruise ship. If I can solve this issue, I have a really nice first 40 minutes:

1. Recap of Dragon Ball and Z from the extended cut to open the film.
2. The two Kaioshin talking about Beerus' awakening and needing to alert Kaio of this.
3. Fade down to Goku on his tractor.
4. Cut to Vegeta's day out where Episode 1 would normally cut to Beerus on the "this food is too salty/fatty" planet.
5. Fade out to dusk as Mr Satan gives Goku the money that sets him on course for Kaio's.
6. Introduction of Beerus and Whis from Battle of Gods.
7. Cut to the original opening scenes of Battle of Gods with Kaio receiving news of Beerus' awakening while Goku trains in the background
8. Intro title: BATTLE OF GODS
9. Party scene opener from the movie up until Beerus arrives and Vegeta recalls his encounter with him
10. Insert Super's take on these events, while splicing in Battle of Gods' version of young Vegeta.

That's basically all I've got so far. It works pretty well, actually. It's really just the opening day to dusk transition that's causing issues. I hope I can find a suitable work-around. If I can, then I estimate the final running time for the Battle of Gods arc to be around 2 and a half hours. Pretty much the only additions after that will be the final fight.

[Lord Beerus]

It would be a no-brainer to add the first 2 episodes. I also liked how Vegeta's flashback to meeting Beerus was handled in Super.

So I just did a rough cut of this to see how it worked out. I chopped out Goten and Trunks' adventure, and put Vegeta's day out in there instead, but his day out only really comes to about 2 or 3 minutes in length due to cutting out the night time scene. This is because I want to cut back to Goku receiving his money from Mr Satan to sort of end that section of the film. The issue is, the transition to dusk feels weird because I can't include the natural dusk transition from Episode 2 due to Bulma talking about wanting to have her party on a cruise ship. If I can solve this issue, I have a really nice first 40 minutes:

1. Recap of Dragon Ball and Z from the extended cut to open the film.
2. The two Kaioshin talking about Beerus' awakening and needing to alert Kaio of this.
3. Fade down to Goku on his tractor.
4. Cut to Vegeta's day out where Episode 1 would normally cut to Beerus on the "this food is too salty/fatty" planet.
5. Fade out to dusk as Mr Satan gives Goku the money that sets him on course for Kaio's.
6. Introduction of Beerus and Whis from Battle of Gods.
7. Cut to the original opening scenes of Battle of Gods with Kaio receiving news of Beerus' awakening while Goku trains in the background
8. Intro title: BATTLE OF GODS
9. Party scene opener from the movie up until Beerus arrives and Vegeta recalls his encounter with him
10. Insert Super's take on these events, while splicing in Battle of Gods' version of young Vegeta.

That's basically all I've got so far. It works pretty well, actually. It's really just the opening day to dusk transition that's causing issues. I hope I can find a suitable work-around. If I can, then I estimate the final running time for the Battle of Gods arc to be around 2 and a half hours. Pretty much the only additions after that will be the final fight.

That really all sounds fantastic Ajay, and I can't wait to see how the final finished project will look like.

[Zephyr]

This sounds like a really great idea!

Are you planning to use a combination of both Sumitomo scores, or might you be considering placing Kikuchi in instead?

[Ajay]

Are you planning to use a combination of both Sumitomo scores, or might you be considering placing Kikuchi in instead?

I'd love to include Kikuchi, but unfortunately due to Super's audio being in stereo, attempting to hack out the score would lead too many distracting artifacts behind.

Here's a work in process that involved removing Sumitomo's Super score and placing a track from Revival of 'F' in there instead.

[ekrolo2]

While I think BoG is fine as it is, I think adding in some of Supers stuff should work fine as long as BoG Goku stays in-tact what with his arrogance and discussion about pride with Beerus.

[Doctor.]

While I think BoG is fine as it is, I think adding in some of Supers stuff should work fine as long as BoG Goku stays in-tact what with his arrogance and discussion about pride with Beerus.

Yeah, I agree with this. But I'd try to add in Beerus' development as well, it's just as important as Goku's. The thing is that the climax in both versions clash.

[LuckyCat]

1. Recap of Dragon Ball and Z from the extended cut to open the film.
2. The two Kaioshin talking about Beerus' awakening and needing to alert Kaio of this.
3. Fade down to Goku on his tractor.
4. Cut to Vegeta's day out where Episode 1 would normally cut to Beerus on the "this food is too salty/fatty" planet.
5. Fade out to dusk as Mr Satan gives Goku the money that sets him on course for Kaio's.
6. Introduction of Beerus and Whis from Battle of Gods.
7. Cut to the original opening scenes of Battle of Gods with Kaio receiving news of Beerus' awakening while Goku trains in the background
8. Intro title: BATTLE OF GODS
9. Party scene opener from the movie up until Beerus arrives and Vegeta recalls his encounter with him
10. Insert Super's take on these events, while splicing in Battle of Gods' version of young Vegeta.

Sounds awesome so far! One more addition I think you might want to add is Shenron explaining SSG as found in the Namekian book of legends because I think that's going to be important later. There's a bunch of fighting scenes from Goku-Beerus in Super that I like too, but I'd have to go back and watch second-by-second to see if any were high enough quality to be allowed to mingle with the BoG footage. It should be an interesting, though challenging project!