How far away are we from a "proper Hollywood treatment"?

[Anonymous Friend]

It's going to suck if it happens, just like most, if not all, of todays Hollywood blockbusters.

There are a lot of things they'd need to do in order for it not to, among them are :

1- It needs a big budget : I honestly don't see any major studio offering anyone 200 or so million to work on an unproven franchise like this.

2- They need to be willing to have it as long as possible if the arc(s) demand it : like the above, I don't see this happening either cause the longer a movie is, the more it costs to make.

3- They need to get a director and actors who not only like the source material but also understand it : pigs will fly before this requirment is met. You'll have directors wanting to make "their" DB and actors who look and act nothing like the characters they're playing.

The secret to a good (Dragonball live action) adaptation is

1. Being creative enough to do great things with whatever budget they get. This is primarily a martial arts series. Ki blasts and explosions aren't that expensive.

2. Knowing what to trim, or adapt, from the source material. Any movie called "Dragon Ball" should be about the dragon balls. I personally think we should start at Goku and Bulma's meeting. A decent "find the mcguffin" plot would be fine. If that movie mirrors the original and how close, is up in the air.

3. Being competent at your job is more important than being a fan. Being a good director and actor is more important than being a fan. Being respectful to the source material is more important than being a fan.

Making a live action version of Dragonball would be very tough. I'd be happier to have someone take various elements and make their own creation.

[Draconic]

Pretty much as far as any other property. Hollywood really sucks at adapting unconventional stuff like comics, cartoons or video games to the big screen, no matter how good the source material or regardless of culture, western or eastern.

And let's be honest here, if they ever adapt DB it's going to get the franchise treatment. The best way to make a live action movie is exactly how the treated the Z movies: Original stories with familiar characters, cause trying to make justice to the manga/shows is never going to work, but adapting those would be exactly what would happen.

Unless it's somekind of colaboration between the Japanese side, financed by a big American company and with a director passionate about the series (not to the dubs!) there's no way it would come out good. Even like this nothing is guaranteed, cause not every movie can be Snowpiercer. That itself was only a graphic novel, not a series with great lore, memorable characters and multiple arcs.

I hear Valerian was good, but to adapt that has been Bessoin's dream ever since he became a director, so I wouldn't be surprised if it did turn out like that. Need to check that for myself soon.

[sintzu]

Being creative enough to do great things with whatever budget they get.

Knowing what to trim, or adapt, from the source material.

Being competent at your job is more important than being a fan. Being a good director and actor is more important than being a fan. Being respectful to the source material is more important than being a fan.

Making a live action version of Dragonball would be very tough. I'd be happier to have someone take various elements and make their own creation.

Regardless of how creative someone can be, they need a budget for actors, directors, chorographers, etc. Sure DB isn't going to cost 300 million but it won't be a small busget movie either.

Of course it's not going to be a page for page adaption but it still needs to follow the basics of each arc.

This is true to a degree but you still need people who like what they're doing in order to get the best out of them. If someone's working just for a pay check then the end results will show.

That's what we got with evolution.

If they ever adapt DB it's going to get the franchise treatment.

The best way to make a live action movie is original stories with familiar characters, cause trying to make justice to the manga/shows is never going to work.

The manga has 10 arcs with some that could be split into 2 movies so there's no lack of content.

It's already there to base them on so I don't see why not. The manga's arcs can be the main movies while side movies can be made around the other characters. We could get a Tien origin movie, a movie about Roshi and his master fighting king Piccolo, How Freeza's empire grew, Vegeta's life before meeting Goku, etc.

[jjgp1112]

Pretty much as far as any other property. Hollywood really sucks at adapting unconventional stuff like comics, cartoons or video games to the big screen, no matter how good the source material or regardless of culture, western or eastern.

And let's be honest here, if they ever adapt DB it's going to get the franchise treatment. The best way to make a live action movie is exactly how the treated the Z movies: Original stories with familiar characters, cause trying to make justice to the manga/shows is never going to work, but adapting those would be exactly what would happen.

Well, um yeah, it goes without saying that a direct, 1:1 adaptation of the source material wouldn't work. That's never really worked, and all of the successful comic book movies have been at best composites of various different storylines with plenty of creative liberties taken.

[sintzu]

The successful comic book movies have been at best composites of various different storylines with plenty of creative liberties taken.

The difference is that comics and their media have multiple different takes and variants. DB as a whole is one story in one style across all media.

[Hellspawn28]

The successful comic book movies have been at best composites of various different storylines with plenty of creative liberties taken.

The difference is that comics and their media have multiple different takes and variants. DB as a whole is one story in one style across all media.

Not all of them. You do have comics with one story that is adapted from start to finish like Watchmen.

[Pluto]

[shittysarcasm]Keep talking guys, the directors are taking notes[/shittysarcasm]

Not all of them. You do have comics with one story that is adapted from start to finish like Watchmen.

How the hell did i forget that one. That's nearly 4 hours of madness. Many people aside me left or slept...but to me it was as entertaining af, and many historical facts are told coherently (how did that come to be moments), just like DB would need one if said, the people wish to start from Z was the case here, you'd still need to at least cramp a story of at least 50-60 episodes of DB in to that.

That's why i said a TV show would be way better, a lot more time to explain stuff, and fuck the budget crap, everything can change with the right approach (which i clearly have no clue about, unlike some absolute-hipster-opinions here).

[ABED]

The difference is Watchmen was one story. That's more akin to adapting a novel than an ongoing series.

[jjgp1112]

The successful comic book movies have been at best composites of various different storylines with plenty of creative liberties taken.

The difference is that comics and their media have multiple different takes and variants. DB as a whole is one story in one style across all media.

But there's still plenty of things you can do to compress the story. Look at how Path To Power combined the introduction arc with the Red Ribbon arc, for example. You can also move a lot of less important characters around, or combine certain ones, too. A vocal minority of accuracy geeks will bitch about it, but it's the best approach to a long-running serial property.

[sintzu]

There's still plenty of things you can do to compress the story.

If we were to get movies I'd expect things to be compressed to some degree like having the villains of Namek just be Freeza and the 5 Ginyus.

What I was talking about is getting something completely different from the source material like what we got in Evolution and what Netflix did with Death Note (I haven't seen the anime yet so I don't know what they did but fans aren't happy about it).

[ABED]

DB Movie 3 also did a really good job of compressing the story and it felt a lot more like DB than even movies 1 and 2 which were adaptations.

[Anonymous Friend]

Whenever people site bad adaptations, they usually use the ones when they changed stuff and it wasn't as good or interesting as the source material. At best we get the original FullMetal Alchemist where they finished the anime without a manga conclusion. Middle ground is the Iron Man 3 Mandarin, where you take a lot of problematic elements and do your own twist in it with mixed results. At worst you have the Resident Evil live action film series (which I like a lot more than the CGI film series that tie in more with the video games) and Netflix's Death Note where you go off the rails. You can tell they've put a lot of effort into it and tried to make it their own but, especially in the case of Death Note, the original was just so good and the new thing is very not as good.

[ABED]

Am I the only one on here that doens't care for Death Note? Even as bad as the movie might be, at least it's just a movie and not a whole series that shoves a 300 page story into 500 pages.

Movies have to condense and change a number of things by virtue of it being a different medium. There's less time, so writers have to be even more selective. DB isn't even that complicated. I have no fundamental issue with making changes, provided they are executed well.

[sintzu]

I have no fundamental issue with making changes, provided they are executed well.

If they were to make major ones the only way I'd be OK with them is if they were directly form Toriyama.

[Pluto]

As i said, you'd barely get anyone in the cinemas with Gokus hair. It's acceptable on drawings, but not on a human head. Take that as a reference that needs to be changed up to a point that you'd accept it.

[ABED]

Hair is like superhero costumes. There are things that look great on a page but don't work nearly as well when you have to put costumes on a real human body.

[sintzu]

You'd barely get anyone in the cinemas with Gokus hair.

People said this about gaurdians of the galaxy as well and look how that turned out.

[Li'l Lemmy]

Hollywood runs away from everything that makes the source material great. So until they actually embrace the core concept, no adaptation will ever be "proper".

[Pluto]

You'd barely get anyone in the cinemas with Gokus hair.

People said this about gaurdians of the galaxy as well and look how that turned out.

Mate i'm sorry but, I'm really trying hard to understand what you just said, and i really fight to death with my dyslexia. Can you elaborate?

The movie is a bout to hit a billion, so i guess people had shitty predictions, which ended up being huge. Whoever sees the damn movie, will fucking be impressed by the CGI.

If by your sentence you meant to raise an parallel/analogy there, all i meant in my original post is that whenever there is a humanoid alien that even has similar skin color to humans, it is hard for that character to have non-humanoid features, at least cosmetic wise.
Now shit happened and the rest is history, whoever knows what a Saiyan is, will have immediate prejudiced expectations from the experience, and one of that is spiky unnatural hair. If you shove those hairstyles as they are in a movie, it will look ridiculous and only a small group of people (who happen to be die hard fans) will find some love on it, the rest will moan. Do the opposite, and you are bound to reach that billion number (but hey, that 200mill budget though)...

[sintzu]

I'm really trying hard to understand what you just said, Can you elaborate ?

I mean if something as crazy (I don't mean this in a bad way) as gaurdians can work then surely they can find a way to make the Saiyans hair look natural. If you can create real life looking animals and galaxies with CGI, make actors look older or yonger then surely something as simple as hair can be done.