Unpopular DB opinions

[JulieYBM]

Goten didn't have trouble getting a girlfriend, though. Palace was draping off that man like a she'd won the Big Dick Boyfriend lottery in Dragon Ball GT. I think the influences for Goku in Dragon Ball Evolution are more-or-less just American film tropes and archetypes.

[MasenkoHA]

. I think the influences for Goku in Dragon Ball Evolution are more-or-less just American film tropes and archetypes.

This. I don’t know why people are acting like anyone working on this movie knew all that much about the series beyond whatever quick reference material and handbook they might of have been given.

Evolution!Goku has zero in common with Buu saga Gohan and GT Goten. He was a stock Hollywood high school character dealing with bullies and just wanting to be popular and win the love of the most popular girl. Not only is it a generic trope that predates Dragon Ball existing it’s not even close to how either Gohan or Goten were portrayed.

It’s a generic Hollywood kung fu film complete with a bland white guy lead and a bunch of other overdone Hollywood cliches with the Dragon Ball IP slapped on it. Had Fox somehow lost the film rights while the movie was in production they could have switched out all the Dragon Ball names and it would have been the exact same movie

[jjgp1112]

I know I'm not the first person to say this, but Goku in DBE is clearly written to be more like Gohan & I imagine this was because Gohan was a more relatable character to the teen demographic Fox wanted to appeal to, not to mention a fan favorite. It may also be that, similar to FUNi when they dubbed Z, they may have thought that a more accurate Goku would've been off-putting to the average movie-goer, so they changed his personality in the adaptation process.

His relationship with Chichi is also clearly influenced by Gohan's relationship with Videl for similar reasons. Since they made Goku 18 in the movie, they couldn't really adapt how Goku & Chichi met from the series like it was originally written & they didn't wanna bother trying to do the Eastern fantasy world Toriyama wrote into the manga, so they changed it to taking place in the first 3rd in a city heavily modeled on West City or Satan City. Chichi being more of a fighter in the film is also a big giveaway, as, while Chichi DID become a martial artist when she & Goku re-met at the 23rd World Tournament, but she quickly gave that up when she & Goku got married & started their family. Now, Videl also kinda did that, but she's not the same as Chichi & I doubt that she would let Pan start training if she completely gave up martial arts.

Once you realize this, Evolution's character writing starts to make SO much more sense.

I doubt anybody working on that movie knew enough about the source material to even make those decisions with that reasoning

Given how the Majin Buu arc isn't looked upon favorably in a wide sense in the West? I kind of doubt the DBE writing team had Gohan's time in high school in mind when doing this movie and writing Goku and Chi-Chi.

What's more... there's something I've always thought about regarding DBE that I'm both surprised and NOT surprised that nobody's ever made the connection to given Goten's... lack of relative popularity to his dad and brother, I guess.

Given 'Goku's' personality in the movie? Aside from going to high school and all, the whole thing of him wanting to be popular and get a girlfriend all screamed 'Goten' to me rather than 'Gohan', the latter of whom I doubt had ANY of that stuff in mind when he was attending Orange Star High School.

Yeah, it's more that Gohan just so happened to fall into the typical coming of age superhero archetype that a lot of studios default to, especially in a post-Raimi Spider-Man world.

[Michelle91]

DBE is not even the first Goku to be a whimpy kid in school. GT did that with Goku Jr, who is a whimp that get pushed around bullies in school. I also get tired on how DBE is treated as the spawn of Satan. It's a bad movie for sure, but it left no impact whatsoever on both the series and the IP as a whole. The movie bombed and just faded away as no one remembers it outside of fans. Even back in 2009, no one wanted to see it as everyone was hating on the film before it was out.

It's like how Ghostbuster 2016 or Jem and the Holograms was with everyone hating on it before it was out. Bad word of mouth pre-release can effect a movie or game big time.

[Koitsukai]

Probably speaks volumes about how disconnected the production was from the DB franchise that they wanted to tell a story about a character who doesn't fit their bill at all, while being unaware of a character who did fit that bill, yet went right past them.

Not that a Hollywood studio would ever tell a story about the son of the main character when they couldn't even get the main story right. On that note, I'd definitely watch a live-action movie about Gohan in high school.

[JulieYBM]

I keep forgetting that Dragon Ball Evolution even exists. It's just not a movie with any prescence on any level, especially in terms of being a part of the franchise that is continually referenced.

The film was produced in a completely, vastly, massively different time in the Hollywood machine. These days, it would have probably just been a single throw away season of television dumped on a streaming service.

[WittyUsername]

There’s no way that DBE was trying to take cues from Gohan and Videl with the high school thing. Again, the movie was just copying Spider-Man. It’s as simple as that. Even the scene where Goku stands up to his bullies plays out in a similar way to the scene where Peter fights Flash Thompson in the Sam Raimi movie.

[MasenkoHA]

There’s no way that DBE was trying to take cues from Gohan and Videl with the high school thing. Again, the movie was just copying Spider-Man. It’s as simple as that. Even the scene where Goku stands up to his bullies plays out in a similar way to the scene where Peter fights Flash Thompson in the Sam Raimi movie.

Evolution!Chi Chi and Videl really have nothing in common. And like before Toriyama had Spopovitch beat the personality out of her Videl’s character pretty much was Chi Chi as a City Gal. Chi Chi in Evolution didn’t have have the hot and cold personality of either. She was a generic hot popular rich girl who is “more than she seems” and in this that case meant knowing martial arts and being knowledgeable about ki.


The similarities between Evolution!Goku and Buu saga Gohan were more incidental than by design but at least they were there

[jjgp1112]

Coincidentally yesterday I saw a fan in the Resident Evil subreddit trying to justify fans not liking the recent movie by citing Evolution as an example of an adaptation that was a great movie on its own but poorly recieved by fans because it didn't follow the source material and I was like "Motherfucker this is a brand new sentence!"

[JulieYBM]

I know that I'm preaching to the choir here, but lol in what universe is Evolution a good movie in general?

[WittyUsername]

I actually think DBE could’ve been okayish as an adaptation if they dropped the high school stuff and had an Asian actor play Goku. On paper, an adaptation that mixes the Pilaf and Piccolo Daimao arcs isn’t a bad idea and I don’t think it’s a big deal that they aged Goku up. If you still need to include Chi-Chi in the movie, just introduce her as a participant of that tournament and obviously remove the part about Goku pining for her.

Even that whole thing about Oozaru being Piccolo’s servant doesn’t really bother me. From a movie standpoint, it makes sense to tie Goku’s great ape transformation to the villain of the story. It does make you wonder how they planned to address that if they somehow got a sequel that introduced the Saiyans, though.

To be clear, I absolutely consider DBE a bad movie. I just think there could’ve been ways to sort of salvage it.

[Koitsukai]

I always wondered why they would start with the Piccolo arc when a saiyan saga based movie would be much more Hollywoodesque and appealing to audiences. It also features the most well-recognized rivalry and some pretty good fight choreography.

I remember that the movie bummed me out even before I watched it because it had no saiyans or anything "new." Fresh in my mind, I had Buu, Vegito, Cell, Baby, SS4, SS3... so going back to the franchise and skipping all the stuff that had made it a worldwide hit wasn't what I was expecting.

[Michelle91]

I don't even think Dragon Ball Evolution is the worst movie of 2009. I would rather it through it again than Transformers 2 again. At least, DBE doesn't have tateless unfunny humor and something of a plot. It's not over 2 hours long either.

[KingVegetto]

I know that I'm preaching to the choir here, but lol in what universe is Evolution a good movie in general?

I recall VegettoEX saying it was a perfectly fine movie on it's own merits even if it wasn't very true to the franchise. As someone who grew up watching the series I thought the film was fine for what it was, I didn't really expect it to be true to the series so I didn't get that wounded sense of betrayal that others did from it.

It was definitely taking after Spider-Man movie for sure, but I enjoyed that film so I didn't see that as a bad thing. I do remember being surprised by how much it pushed the PG-rating violence wise.

I feel like out of all the characters, Bulma came closest to being true to the original character. Haven't seen much of the original DB in quite some time, so can't really speak to how true Piccolo was to his original evil incarnation in that show.

[KingVegetto]

I don't even think Dragon Ball Evolution is the worst movie of 2009. I would rather it through it again than Transformers 2 again. At least, DBE doesn't have tateless unfunny humor and something of a plot. It's not over 2 hours long either.

TF2's issues apparently largely stemmed from the 2007 writers strike(which come to think of it might've potentially impacted DBE as well depending on when it was written)which left the crew unable to make any alterations to the original screenplay, which explains why there's a lot of scenes that don't really need to be there.

I honestly did find the movie funny and didn't despise it, but it definitely needed some trimming, I feel like if it wasn't for the writers strike the film wouldn't have been nearly as hated.

[Scsigs]

The thing is, even just taken on its own merits & not comparing it to the source material, Evolution isn't actually very good. It has interesting things about it, but the lack of a lot of good direction, creativity, & production values really lets it down. Like, the movie has the production values of a general Kamen Rider series nowadays, the lack of good direction lets down a lot of the performances (Justin Chatwin, on top of being horribly miscast as Goku, suffered from this the most), & the lack of creativity both lets down what they do with the world, the characters, & the fighting. A Dragon Ball movie with bad fight choreography from a lack of real ambition. I don't even think GT or Super got that bad with their fight choreography.
I don't know. Unless you have a bad movie night with friends where you roast it, I don't see how this is even just an "ok" movie.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Evolution is just a bland action movie on its own merits.
Goku is your typical high school boy with a crush afraid to talk to girls.
Chi-Chi is just the main character's crush, and she fights I guess.
They try to make Grandpa Gohan wise and profound with saying "normal is overrated" but he's still nothing to write home about.
Bulma was fine from what I remember.
There was nothing interesting about Yamcha.
Piccolo had no character at all, just evil for the sake of being evil.
The fight choreography is not very good, and the Kamehameha is really weak looking. Shenron didn't look very impressive either.

[PhantomSaiyan]

Yeah it just ain't good, even in a vacuum

[Zephyr]

It's just such an overwhelmingly boring movie. Friends and alcohol couldn't even salvage it for me.

[MasenkoHA]

I feel like Dragon Ball Evolution has been getting the Batman and Robin treatment where people try to turn criticisms around in its favor which ignores the real problem that both movies are boring as fuck and not “entertaining bad movies”

“People hate Batman and Robin because it’s a modern adaptation of the Adam West show and not dark and serious like Batman fans have been expecting since the 80s” okay yeah but also it’s actually a really boring two hour toy commercial and no amount of ice puns, homoerotic art direction, or Uma Thurman disregarding her ability to act to do a Drag Queen performance is going to change that.


And now Dragon Ball Evolution is getting the “it’s hated for being an unfaithful adaptation to the original story but it’s a fun kind of bad or something” but no, take away the Dragon Ball IP and it’s every Hollywood Kung fu movie ever. Chosen one narrative to justify white guy lead! Hong Kong stars too good to be in this crap! Like maybe 12 people would have known this movie existed if it was just called The Prometheus Orbs