Dragonball Evolution - 7 years later

[Kunzait_83]

One of these days I might even watch it.

I wouldn't recommend it. Not when there's perfectly good paint you could watch dry instead.

[Kaboom]

DBE was and is a kinda-decent generic kids' action flick, but obviously it's a pretty terrible excuse for a Dragon Ball adaptation. There's a few things they did right, which I'd like to see adopted and built upon by an eventual better do-over, but those things were far outweighed by the bad elements.

[JulieYBM]

I can't remember there being anything good about Dragon Ball Evolution. It can't decide if it wants to be like Dragon Ball or a generic Hollywood film. The references to the original comic or cartoon are obvious, desperate attempts at trying to keep the built-in audience but the movie doesn't even try to really please fans or general audiences. The whole thing doesn't work.

*Flips up hoody hood and pouts menacingly*

[Hellspawn28]

It's not a very good movie, but it's far from the totally offensive insult that I see people label it. It's kinda just... there.

I have to agree. Yeah it's sucks, but it's not the worst movie ever. Unlike a movie like Episode I, everyone knew that the movie would be terrible. I don't even think that Dragonball Evolution is the worst movie of 2009. I would rather watch Dragonball Evolution over Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen and Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li. At least DBE didn't go on for over two hours and had terrible humor like Revenge of the Fallen did.

[Soppa Saia People]

I hate the movie with all my heart... but I'm glad that it exists. I truly think that if DB Evolution didn't suck as much as it did then we wouldn't have gotten Toriyama coming back to tell new original stories.

Agreed, if this movie wasn't made and didn't suck so hard then I doubt Toriyama would come back. It's the Sonic 06 of Dragon Ball.
As for movie it's bad, and it's the worst kid of bad, not so bad that's it's funny (The Room) or just so bad that you can't forget it, it's just bad.

It's still a terrible adaption, but I do have it to thank for getting Toriyama upset enough to get back into the Dragon Ball game. We arguably wouldn't have the Jump 08 special, BOG, F, or Super if Toriyama hadn't experienced the loss of control during DBE.

T
DBE came out in 09 the 08 special came out in 08, what the sense make ?

[TheBlackPaladin]

DBE was a huge let-down for me...one that I anticipated before I even stepped in the theater based on the previews and behind-the-scenes stuff, sure, but a huge let-down nevertheless.

The biggest beef I had with it was that, considering how much they changed, I'm just not sure why it was even made. I'm not saying that I wanted a panel-by-panel adaptation of the manga, but it's like...if you're gonna take as much liberty as they did with the source material, why still call it Dragon Ball? It was just too much of a departure from the source material...source material that, for that matter, was an excellent story to begin with and could have made a great film franchise. Why change that much? How do you expect not to piss fans off by slapping the name "Dragon Ball" on something, only to do something so drastically different? It's not infuriating, but it is frustrating trying to figure out the logic.

On the other hand, we got three great things out of it:

-Renewed interest from Akira Toriyama.
-Something that the divided fanbase could unite over.
-Team Four Star's f***ing HILARIOUS riff-track. Seriously, add that on and Dragon Ball Evolution actually becomes a pretty enjoyable comedy.

[Hellspawn28]

From what I remember reading, Fox made Dragonball Evolution because the license was about to expire and the license would go back to Shueisha if they didn't start filming soon. Fox got the rights to the series in 2002 because X-Men was a big hit and they wanted to make as many movie franchises as they can. A lot of behind the scenes stuff happen between 2002-2007 with Toriyama not getting full control and the story being re-written so many times.

[Chuquita]

Re: all the your maths

I made a math mistake, that's all I really got concerning. ^^;

[Iberian_Saiyan]

An interesting fact about Dragon Ball Evolution is that the actor and actress that played Gokou (Justin Chatwin) + Bulma (Emmy Rossum) were/are also on Shameless which ended up in a really strop intimate relationship leading to a scene where Fiona-- well, Bulma getting porked by Gokou. When I say "were" it's in regards to Jimmy/Steve/Jack because he left Season 3 abruptly and hasn't seen back since. I and many others from the Shameless fanbase really hope that he comes back for Season 7.

I'd guess from the standpoint of someone who's somewhat of a fan of these two actors then it could make DBE a tad more enjoyable.

Shameless

Spoiler:

Evolution

Spoiler:

P.S. In a strange way one could see this as Gokou dating Bulma which some Dragon Ball fans seem to have wished for rather than having Son ending up with Chichi.

[dbgtFO]

@Guy above
Yes, I remember a DB parody about this on YouTube.
It was pretty funny. It used footage from the 25th tournament, where the Z fighters react to Mr. Satan's Cell Games documentary.
If only I could find it..

[sayian_nation_]

No one can tell me and especially for this day and age that a proper Dragonball/Z movie can't be done. I don't want to hear it and I'm not saying it has to be 100 percent like the anime but come on now.... I've seen better fan made trailers out that can prove it so imagine what a bigger budget to work with can do.

[dario03]

I think what a lot of people mean when they say a Dragon Ball movie can't be done right, is that it can't get the feel of the non-fighting parts right. They could make a full on action movie of Z fights no problem. And by no problem I mean tons of money spent on cgi to give us Superman vs Zod played by Goku and Vegeta.

Which is why I still say that they shouldn't bother with a live action movie but if they make another one it shouldn't be a whole new reimagining. It should just be a continuation. Like how BoG didn't retell anything(well except Goku beating Freeza), it was just a movie that assumed you have seen the show. I actually think they could have even made BoG a live action movie. I can picture it now...As the opening credits are rolling a narrator starts telling the story of Goku while live action remakes of key scenes from DB and DBZ are shown. The image at this point will have some flashback style effects over the pictures (for non action scenes) and the video (for action scenes) which would slowly go away as it gets closer to the end of the retelling. And then when it gets to the end of Buu the camera would zoom out and we would see it was Whiz telling the story to Beerus using his orb to show him everything. Then you could basically just have the movie go from there and anybody who hadn't seen DB would know the basics.

I think something like that would of worked perfectly for BoG if it had been live action. Just a longer version of what they did with Whiz showing Beerus the Goku Freeza fight. I think it would be best to show that at the very beginning like I described but having the Beerus waking up scene first could work too I guess. Heck for a while there movies were putting the first 5 minutes online to get people interested. They could of used that.
Or hey maybe a fan could still do that. If people want a darker tone to it, I think that would be great for those guys that made the Future timeline live action, or that guy that made the Power Rangers Unauthorized and Punisher shorts on youtube.

When I try to find the good things in the film I always only notice two things.

1. James Marsters is good as Piccolo. Chris Stuckmann described him perfectly by saying that he's like Ewan McGregor's Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequels; a good performance amongst several bland or just outright bad performances in a film.

2. The movie actually has a really good soundtrack. Listen to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eHIDkwTNt4
It really does not deserve to be in a film like this.

That's about it really. Everything else is just bad.

That is a pretty good score. Though I gotta say it really reminded me of Batman, like the Tim Burton movie and 90's animated series. And looking at the comments it seems like some people agree. You could put the part at 2:26 over a scene or the opening of the animated series and I don't think I would even notice it wasn't from the show.

[Lord Beerus]

It was shit when I watched it seven years ago and it's still shit to this day.

Fuck that movie and everyone involved in it.

[omaro34]

Has it already been 7 years? I've totally forgotten this movie even existed. I don't really view it as the 'biggest stain" in Dragonball's legacy. It's not Toriyama's work, so I won't view as a legitimate piece of work that is cannon.

The fact that Toriyama spoke up against this movie amplified the level of hatred and over the top criticism, some of it in my opinion was unnecessary. In their defense, they did try something that has NEVER been done with this series before which is extremely RISKY, and prior to the film's release I remember that people were raving about how a live action film could open the door to a new unexplored chapter of Dragonball.

Now, is it a good movie? No. The acting, movements, and overall production was sup bar. It didn't even come close to meeting expectations, and the plot was lackluster. They were going to make a second live action film with the arrival of the Saiyans to Earth, but the first film's performance changed that narrative.

In the end, I believe it's legacy is that of a failed experiment, rather than a walking abomination and a disgrace of the highest order that many believe.

[Cipher]

I also wonder just how many movies people have seen in their lives if Evolution is the worst thing ever. To me, Evolution is a totally serviceable, mediocre, forgettable children's movie. It appears that people started jumping back on the hate-bandwagon after Toriyama's comments, but he has far more of a reason to take things personally than anyone else does.

I pretty strongly disagree that it's a serviceable kids' movie, or that it even tries fully to be one.

It's an awful film from script to execution, and that overrides pretty much any relationship it has to the source material.

Definitely not a "stain" though. I doubt it's even one of the first ten things anyone thinks of when they think of Dragon Ball, and it's not offensively bad as a movie in the way that it would be memorable to me only that ground. It is, quietly, though, really, really bad. I think there are Disney Channel movies more coherent than it (and weirdly similar) and it was a tentpole franchise-adaptation from a major studio. So, yeah, probably one of the worst "big studio" releases I've seen, but not in a way that's interesting enough to recommend it for an irony or curiosity watch.

As far as a Dragon Ball movie adaptation goes, I agree with Kunzait_83's thoughts that part of the problem was trying shoehorn a genre-crossing martial arts fantasy (which there are filmic templates for) with a mid-2000s Hollywood superhero origin script, the safe approach at the time. The other problem, with this particular production, was everything.

One of these days I might even watch it.

I honestly can't recommend doing that, even granted that you work for an authoritative Dragon Ball site. We're all going to die one day and that's ninety minutes of your life.

[Soppa Saia People]

It was shit when I watched it seven years ago and it's still shit to this day.

Fuck that movie and everyone involved in it.

Overreaction much

Re: all the your maths

I made a math mistake, that's all I really got concerning. ^^;

It's okay

[Lord Beerus]

It was shit when I watched it seven years ago and it's still shit to this day.

Fuck that movie and everyone involved in it.

Overreaction much

Not in my opinion. Everyone's contributions in that movie were responsible for it being as horrible as it was.

[Hellspawn28]

I think that there are way worst movies out of there that are worst than Dragonball Evolution. I could give you a list of movies that are worst than DBE. I bet if Fox made another Dragon Ball movie, it will be bad or worst. Fox only cares about the X-Men and Planet of the Apes movie franchises since those franchises only get good movies from Fox. 20th Century Fox is the EA of movie companies. The same company that screw over the Alien, Die Hard and Fantastic Four in recent history.

[Cipher]

I could give you a list of movies that are worst than DBE.

I could too. But how many of those were major releases?

Like, yes. In the vast realm of content ever to be put to film, this would hardly break a top-thousand list of most painful or incompetent. But it's still shockingly bad in its context, and far blander than a lot of "worse" films.

[Hellspawn28]

Movies like Transformers 2, Legend of Chun Li, 10,000 BC, Lost in Space, Godzilla 1998, Fantastic Four 2015, Silent Hill: Revelation, Battlefield Earth, Epic Movie and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem had wide releases and I consider them to be worst than DBE. Godzilla 1998 took a iconic character and ruin it by making him into a wild animal than a symbol of weapon of mass destruction. I also found movies like F4 (2015), Lost in Space and the second Silent Hill movie to be boring to sit through. At least DBE was cheesy and campy which made it somewhat watchable.