If another US Live Action Movie was made, would you want a remake, or a reboot?

[WittyUsername]

A CG Goku in a live action movie would have way too much of an uncanny valley vibe to it. Same goes with a CG Roshi, which would be downright creepy. There’s no reason to do something like that, unless you want people to compare it to Mars Needs Moms.

[ABED]

A kid with messy hair just wouldn't feel like Goku to me. I would want the movie to have a very animated feel to it

Then watch the anime. What is the purpose of a live action movie if it's not live action? If it has a very animated feel, you might as well make it fully animated and spend way less money on the CGI.

[jjgp1112]

I just don't feel like those characters would translate well to live action, so I'd make them CG. Dragon Ball has a very cartoonish quality to it, and making all of it live action just wouldn't feel like Dragon Ball to me.

I could understand Pilaf, Shu, and MAYBE Chiaotzu...but there is absolutely no need to make Goku and Roshi CG. None whatsoever. At most, CG hulked up Roshi for his Kamehameha but otherwise...why spend money rendering an old chinese man with a beard and shades? And Goku? Find a short Jackie Chan looking kid, grease up his hair and plop a tail on him. CG for two perfectly human looking characters is a ginormous waste of money and defeats the purpose of live action.

A kid with messy hair just wouldn't feel like Goku to me. I would want the movie to have a very animated feel to it, so half of it would need to be CG, and I'd make the animals and dinosaurs look like 3D versions of Toriyamas art instead of realistic. An actor could do Roshi, but if I'm doing half CG anyway and I had to pick a human character to be a 3D version of their manga counterpart, it would be Roshi.

Doing live action comes with the expectation of losing some of the cartoony aspects. Doing a weird halfway thing satisifes nobody, and there's no way in hell they'd waste CG on GOKU of all people - you're bringing Dragon Ball to life and yet the main character is a CG character because of his hair?! Throw a Sora from Kingdom Hearts-esque wig or something like this.

And why would Roshi be CG? It seems pretty arbitrary to have an ordinary looking old man and an otherwise normal looking kid be computer generated among the rest of the humans.

[ZeroNeonix]

Ah yes. Turning Goku into a stereotypical, misunderstood, high school kid. Original.

Anyway, if they were to make a new Dragon Ball movie, I think they'd be better off actually doing an original story. For example, set it in the future of the original series, with a distant offspring of Goku as the protagonist. And the villain could be the offspring of Vegeta, who's so full of himself and his royal Saiyan heritage that tries to use his power to take over the world. It probably wouldn't be great, but I don't really trust them to do an adaptation of Dragon Ball right. Nor do I think viewers would have the patience for it, even if it was.

I mean, where do you start? With original Dragon Ball? With Emperor Pilaf trying to steal the Dragon Balls and wish to become emperor? Well, that is where the story started, but the original story is really goofy and weird. Good for a manga or anime, but I don't think it would translate well to Hollywood movie form. Maybe you squish it together with the Piccolo saga? Eh. You get to the more action heavy stuff people expect from Dragon Ball faster that way, but that's a lot of material to just gloss over. Plus, to me, it seems like it would be very difficult to translate the original story into a form that general audiences would find entertaining. Dragon Ball fans might be interested, but...they've seen it already. They know where the story is going. If there are sequels, how far could one get before even the die hard fans lose interest?

So, IMO, the best actions are to either do something completely new, or just leave it alone. I don't think Dragon Ball could pull off the Disney strategy of rehashing all of their old material again, but in "live action." I don't even know how Disney gets away with it. I know nostalgia is a powerful thing, but come on.

[ABED]

If you spend at least tens of millions on DB in live action, not having the characters the audience knows and cares about is ridiculous.

[jjgp1112]

Ah yes. Turning Goku into a stereotypical, misunderstood, high school kid. Original.

Anyway, if they were to make a new Dragon Ball movie, I think they'd be better off actually doing an original story. For example, set it in the future of the original series, with a distant offspring of Goku as the protagonist. And the villain could be the offspring of Vegeta, who's so full of himself and his royal Saiyan heritage that tries to use his power to take over the world. It probably wouldn't be great, but I don't really trust them to do an adaptation of Dragon Ball right. Nor do I think viewers would have the patience for it, even if it was.

I mean, where do you start? With original Dragon Ball? With Emperor Pilaf trying to steal the Dragon Balls and wish to become emperor? Well, that is where the story started, but the original story is really goofy and weird. Good for a manga or anime, but I don't think it would translate well to Hollywood movie form. Maybe you squish it together with the Piccolo saga? Eh. You get to the more action heavy stuff people expect from Dragon Ball faster that way, but that's a lot of material to just gloss over. Plus, to me, it seems like it would be very difficult to translate the original story into a form that general audiences would find entertaining. Dragon Ball fans might be interested, but...they've seen it already. They know where the story is going. If there are sequels, how far could one get before even the die hard fans lose interest?

So, IMO, the best actions are to either do something completely new, or just leave it alone. I don't think Dragon Ball could pull off the Disney strategy of rehashing all of their old material again, but in "live action." I don't even know how Disney gets away with it. I know nostalgia is a powerful thing, but come on.

You can make an original story with the characters that the fans would actually WANT to see. Dragon Ball isn't just cool fights and transformations - it has characters that billions of fans are invested in and would want to see on the big screen.

A live action "sequel" is an utter waste.

You can get the viewers willing to wait for 'The Good stuff" if you actually pull off the movies right. Being impatient and rushing to get to the money maker is how you get the DCU clusterfuck.

I mean have we not learned anything from Marvel?

Marvel took 4 years and 4 movies from C-List heroes to get to "the good shit" and made a fuckload of money. Think in broader scopes here: it's not just about satisfying fanboys, it's also about drawing in a whole new audience and getting them to love DB too. If you pull of a stylish and enjoyable adaptation of the early stuff, fans wont be saying "WEN Z." They'll be wanting more of Goku and the gang's adventures.

You can loosely adapt DB's story with little regard to the original outcomes. It's all about respect the characters, themes and setting, not the story as it was originally written.

[ABED]

Evolution is garbage, but starting with Piccolo Daimao wasn't a bad idea, though I like the idea of mixing the early arcs together. Maybe some mix of movie 2 and 3 with Goku meeting Kuririn. To piggy back off jjgp1112's point, the first film shouldn't commit the cardinal sin of a lot of modern franchises and spend much of the runtime setting up future films. People aren't interested in the films because of the franchise, they are interested in the franchise because of the films. It's an important distinction. We become fans of franchises because we enjoy the journey along the way, not because of the constant promise of more or some future payoff we might never see.

[TheBlackPaladin]

Y'know, I once heard somebody say that the most difficult part of Dragon Ball to adapt to a live action movie....

.....would be the hair.

I was taken aback when I first heard that, but honestly? Upon further reflection, between the crazy hairstyles of some of the characters (such as Goku and Bulma) and the further craziness that comes when Super Saiyans enter the picture, I think that the hair, ironically enough, actually would be the hardest thing to adapt. Kind of ironic considering that, in a story about dragons and laser beams and aerial kung-fu...the hardest thing to get right? The hair.

For clarity, when I say "the hardest thing to get right," I'm not saying they can't use CG to make someone's hair go spiky and blonde--of course they can do that--I'm saying that it would be difficult (at least for me) to imagine the overall sense of how realistic they want it to look VS how "stylized" they want it to look. Over-the-top and colorful works beautifully for animation, but not always for live action. If they make it look too realistic, that serves the purpose of a live-action remake, but it runs the risk of losing its "Dragon Ball flavor," for lack of a better term. If they make it look too animated, then it looks silly and fake, like the Speed Racer live-action movie.

So yeah, I'd personally be in favor of all the characters being played by humans whenever possible, but those damn hairstyles would admittedly be a bit of a conundrum in terms of how they should be approached artistically.

[jjgp1112]

With Bulma, I always figured a dark teal hair would be the best route to go, with a naturally brunette actress playing her. Something like this:



A more muted approach actually looks not-stupid. There's an old picture of Emmy Rossum from the super early days of DBE shooting wearing a bright blue wig like Bulma's hair in the series...and it looked fucking ridiculous. Apparently she refused to keep wearing it .

As for Goku, that video I linked above could be reasonable...although honestly, Justin Chatwin's hair near the end of the movie was pretty good, too.

(And it's a shame that Emmy would like not want anything to do with another DB movie because Shameless proves she would CRUSH a proper Bulma character as opposed to a Spy Kids reject)

[WittyUsername]

I don’t see why the characters would need to have hair that looks identical to the manga/anime.

[UpFromTheSkies]

I could understand Pilaf, Shu, and MAYBE Chiaotzu...but there is absolutely no need to make Goku and Roshi CG. None whatsoever. At most, CG hulked up Roshi for his Kamehameha but otherwise...why spend money rendering an old chinese man with a beard and shades? And Goku? Find a short Jackie Chan looking kid, grease up his hair and plop a tail on him. CG for two perfectly human looking characters is a ginormous waste of money and defeats the purpose of live action.

A kid with messy hair just wouldn't feel like Goku to me. I would want the movie to have a very animated feel to it, so half of it would need to be CG, and I'd make the animals and dinosaurs look like 3D versions of Toriyamas art instead of realistic. An actor could do Roshi, but if I'm doing half CG anyway and I had to pick a human character to be a 3D version of their manga counterpart, it would be Roshi.

Doing live action comes with the expectation of losing some of the cartoony aspects. Doing a weird halfway thing satisifes nobody, and there's no way in hell they'd waste CG on GOKU of all people - you're bringing Dragon Ball to life and yet the main character is a CG character because of his hair?! Throw a Sora from Kingdom Hearts-esque wig or something like this.

And why would Roshi be CG? It seems pretty arbitrary to have an ordinary looking old man and an otherwise normal looking kid be computer generated among the rest of the humans.

It's not just his hair, kid Goku has odd body proportions too and I wouldn't like an actor playing him. It's just my opinion, but I think making the movie half CG and half live action would better capture the feel of the manga instead of doing a full live action realistic looking movie. Dragon Ball is a very cartoony world, there's animal people, a talking turtle, a rabbit that turns people into carrots, and dinosaurs and dragons walking around, so going full live action would feel weird to me.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

I'd love to see a good attempt at a live action Dragon Ball film happen at some point in either of the above forms, but given how poorly Evolution did over a decade ago and adaptations of other properties (the Wachowski Bros Speed Racer.etc) tried but still fell short of capturing the same feel of the source material despite all the CG flash and everything it's not looking like it will happen anytime soon. Heck, even when they've tried a similar approach with making live versions of animated properties over here like that Avatar: The Last Airbender movie it still ended up not really working all that well as a film adaptation of the show. Trying to transfer something already done well enough in comic and animated form especially this specific property into a live action format is a very tall order.

Personally, i think Dragon Ball is one of those few properties that you can't really capture the feeling of in live action and make it work without a lot of good writing and everything else.

[jjgp1112]

A kid with messy hair just wouldn't feel like Goku to me. I would want the movie to have a very animated feel to it, so half of it would need to be CG, and I'd make the animals and dinosaurs look like 3D versions of Toriyamas art instead of realistic. An actor could do Roshi, but if I'm doing half CG anyway and I had to pick a human character to be a 3D version of their manga counterpart, it would be Roshi.

Doing live action comes with the expectation of losing some of the cartoony aspects. Doing a weird halfway thing satisifes nobody, and there's no way in hell they'd waste CG on GOKU of all people - you're bringing Dragon Ball to life and yet the main character is a CG character because of his hair?! Throw a Sora from Kingdom Hearts-esque wig or something like this.

And why would Roshi be CG? It seems pretty arbitrary to have an ordinary looking old man and an otherwise normal looking kid be computer generated among the rest of the humans.

It's not just his hair, kid Goku has odd body proportions too and I wouldn't like an actor playing him. It's just my opinion, but I think making the movie half CG and half live action would better capture the feel of the manga instead of doing a full live action realistic looking movie. Dragon Ball is a very cartoony world, there's animal people, a talking turtle, a rabbit that turns people into carrots, and dinosaurs and dragons walking around, so going full live action would feel weird to me.

...why would you need to capture Goku's weird body proportions?

Like I keep saying, you can't get everything across when translating to live action. That's just one of the challenges for them to figure out. What's so "weird" about Goku's body proportions anyway that are so crucial that you'd need to replace him with a CG character and defeat the purpose of live action? His height? Who cares?!

Look at Guardians of the Galaxy or any of the various fantasy movies that have come out over the last two decades that pull off ridiculous looking fantasy worlds in believable live action. Harry Potter? Lord of The Rings? Fuck, the Godfather of live action CGI had believable dinosaurs in 1993!!!!

[jjgp1112]

I'd love to see a good attempt at a live action Dragon Ball film happen at some point in either of the above forms, but given how poorly Evolution did over a decade ago and adaptations of other properties (the Wachowski Bros Speed Racer.etc) tried but still fell short of capturing the same feel of the source material despite all the CG flash and everything it's not looking like it will happen anytime soon. Heck, even when they've tried a similar approach with making live versions of animated properties over here like that Avatar: The Last Airbender movie it still ended up not really working all that well as a film adaptation of the show. Trying to transfer something already done well enough in comic and animated form especially this specific property into a live action format is a very tall order.

Personally, i think Dragon Ball is one of those few properties that you can't really capture the feeling of in live action and make it work without a lot of good writing and everything else.

The big problem with Avatar wasn't really the nature of them adapting a cartoon, but how horrible of a job they did at it. The abysmal casting, the bad scripting, the terrible martial arts coreography - those were the problems. Not the visuals. It actually looked okay - the bad filmmaking killed it. It's not a requiem for the futility of adapting animation to the live action big screen, just for the fact that shoddily produced movies will, well, suck.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

I'd love to see a good attempt at a live action Dragon Ball film happen at some point in either of the above forms, but given how poorly Evolution did over a decade ago and adaptations of other properties (the Wachowski Bros Speed Racer.etc) tried but still fell short of capturing the same feel of the source material despite all the CG flash and everything it's not looking like it will happen anytime soon. Heck, even when they've tried a similar approach with making live versions of animated properties over here like that Avatar: The Last Airbender movie it still ended up not really working all that well as a film adaptation of the show. Trying to transfer something already done well enough in comic and animated form especially this specific property into a live action format is a very tall order.

Personally, i think Dragon Ball is one of those few properties that you can't really capture the feeling of in live action and make it work without a lot of good writing and everything else.

The big problem with Avatar wasn't really the nature of them adapting a cartoon, but how horrible of a job they did at it. The abysmal casting, the bad scripting, the terrible martial arts coreography - those were the problems. Not the visuals. It actually looked okay - the bad filmmaking killed it. It's not a requiem for the futility of adapting animation to the live action big screen, just for the fact that shoddily produced movies will, well, suck.

Indeed, the issues with that movie were all of those aforementioned things. The visuals weren't too bad exactly as you say it's just the final product was a huge mess from a production standpoint though not the idea of them taking a really great looking animated series such as The Last Airbender and making a live action film out of that in of itself. Now DB: Evolution on the other hand...the same cannot be said as i really cannot say any good things about it at all.

[UpFromTheSkies]

Doing live action comes with the expectation of losing some of the cartoony aspects. Doing a weird halfway thing satisifes nobody, and there's no way in hell they'd waste CG on GOKU of all people - you're bringing Dragon Ball to life and yet the main character is a CG character because of his hair?! Throw a Sora from Kingdom Hearts-esque wig or something like this.

And why would Roshi be CG? It seems pretty arbitrary to have an ordinary looking old man and an otherwise normal looking kid be computer generated among the rest of the humans.

It's not just his hair, kid Goku has odd body proportions too and I wouldn't like an actor playing him. It's just my opinion, but I think making the movie half CG and half live action would better capture the feel of the manga instead of doing a full live action realistic looking movie. Dragon Ball is a very cartoony world, there's animal people, a talking turtle, a rabbit that turns people into carrots, and dinosaurs and dragons walking around, so going full live action would feel weird to me.

...why would you need to capture Goku's weird body proportions?

Because that's what Goku looks like? He's a cartoon character with an oversized head, and he's the height of a child but he has fat, muscular arms and legs. Normal people don't look like that, plus he's an alien so there's an excuse for him to look different and be CG.

Like I keep saying, you can't get everything across when translating to live action. That's just one of the challenges for them to figure out. What's so "weird" about Goku's body proportions anyway that are so crucial that you'd need to replace him with a CG character and defeat the purpose of live action? His height? Who cares?!

Look at Guardians of the Galaxy or any of the various fantasy movies that have come out over the last two decades that pull off ridiculous looking fantasy worlds in believable live action. Harry Potter? Lord of The Rings? Fuck, the Godfather of live action CGI had believable dinosaurs in 1993!!!!

Those worlds were whimsical but not cartoony, while Dragon Ball is VERY cartoony. Trying to make it complete live action and realistic would be like the Sonic movie before they changed Sonic and made him look more like his cartoon counter part, or it would be like Space Jam with a live actor playing Elmer Fudd, it would just be weird.

[jjgp1112]

It's not just his hair, kid Goku has odd body proportions too and I wouldn't like an actor playing him. It's just my opinion, but I think making the movie half CG and half live action would better capture the feel of the manga instead of doing a full live action realistic looking movie. Dragon Ball is a very cartoony world, there's animal people, a talking turtle, a rabbit that turns people into carrots, and dinosaurs and dragons walking around, so going full live action would feel weird to me.

...why would you need to capture Goku's weird body proportions?

Because that's what Goku looks like? He's a cartoon character with an oversized head, and he's the height of a child but he has fat, muscular arms and legs. Normal people don't look like that, plus he's an alien so there's an excuse for him to look different and be CG.

Like I keep saying, you can't get everything across when translating to live action. That's just one of the challenges for them to figure out. What's so "weird" about Goku's body proportions anyway that are so crucial that you'd need to replace him with a CG character and defeat the purpose of live action? His height? Who cares?!

Look at Guardians of the Galaxy or any of the various fantasy movies that have come out over the last two decades that pull off ridiculous looking fantasy worlds in believable live action. Harry Potter? Lord of The Rings? Fuck, the Godfather of live action CGI had believable dinosaurs in 1993!!!!

Those worlds were whimsical but not cartoony, while Dragon Ball is VERY cartoony. Trying to make it complete live action and realistic would be like the Sonic movie before they changed Sonic and made him look more like his cartoon counter part, or it would be like Space Jam with a live actor playing Elmer Fudd, it would just be weird.

Goku's big head and chubby arms are not so essential to his character design that you have to render him, and otherwise regular kid that only sticks out from the others for his tail and hair, as a CG character. Krillin had the exact same proportions as Goku until Goku got taller - should he be CG, too?

Goku didn't have "unique proportions" that somehow need to come across - that's just how Toriyama drew kids in the 80s. Does GT Goku look "strangely proportioned?" Would you say this was so unique to every other human that it would need to be rendered in CG?



Nah.

[MyVisionity]

If Dragon Ball were turned into a film it risks becoming too "larger than life", too epic. That's not DB. Then again, I suppose that comic book movies have the same problem, so it wouldn't exactly be an all new struggle.

It also risks becoming too juvenile or too family friendly.

[ABED]

Those worlds were whimsical but not cartoony, while Dragon Ball is VERY cartoony. Trying to make it complete live action and realistic would be like the Sonic movie before they changed Sonic and made him look more like his cartoon counter part, or it would be like Space Jam with a live actor playing Elmer Fudd, it would just be weird.

Except the whole point of Space Jam is that Michael Jordan was interacting with cartoon characters. It's not the cartoon characters come to life like Robin Williams as Popeye.

I certainly see why (the royal) you would want to retain Goku's hairstyle. It's iconic and iconography matters.

The reason to do something with CG is if you can't do it in live action.

[ZeroNeonix]

You can make an original story with the characters that the fans would actually WANT to see. Dragon Ball isn't just cool fights and transformations - it has characters that billions of fans are invested in and would want to see on the big screen.

A live action "sequel" is an utter waste.

You can get the viewers willing to wait for 'The Good stuff" if you actually pull off the movies right. Being impatient and rushing to get to the money maker is how you get the DCU clusterfuck.

I mean have we not learned anything from Marvel?

Marvel took 4 years and 4 movies from C-List heroes to get to "the good shit" and made a fuckload of money. Think in broader scopes here: it's not just about satisfying fanboys, it's also about drawing in a whole new audience and getting them to love DB too. If you pull of a stylish and enjoyable adaptation of the early stuff, fans wont be saying "WEN Z." They'll be wanting more of Goku and the gang's adventures.

You can loosely adapt DB's story with little regard to the original outcomes. It's all about respect the characters, themes and setting, not the story as it was originally written.

I don't think Dragon Ball can do what the MCU does. It doesn't have the same broad appeal as comic book stories. The MCU may have had had success with stories most people had never heard about (like The Guardians of the Galaxy), but that was after they had proven themselves with well known characters like Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor. I'd love to be proven wrong, but I don't see a Dragon movie universe having much success. One or two movies, maybe.