Live Action Movie

[SSJFinny]

Will there ever be a good live action movie of Dragonball, DBZ, or DBGT? Thoughts?

[Sinestro]

Will there ever be a good live action movie of Dragonball, DBZ, or DBGT? Thoughts?

No, there won't. Even if it was extremely faithful, I don't think it would translate well into live action.

[Gyt Kaliba]

I can't say for sure if it 'will' happen, but I'm among the few that do think it 'could'. It'd just take the right director and almost more than that, the right writer. That said, it would have to have some changes made to make it work as a movie, that's a given - so some people wouldn't like it since it wouldn't be 100% faithful to the original story even if they did the characters right.

[Insertclevername]

I believe it's possible. Just takes the right vision to make it translate well. I certainly believe that a plot akin to Path to Ultimate Strength would be a great first film.

[Makaioshin]

I think it is possible. There have been many wuxia movies with chi blasts and all that I find entertaining.

[Kuwabara]

A live-action movie should only be handled by a high-caliber director that loves the source material, but herein lies the problem; with Christopher Nolan's love for Batman being one of the rare exceptions, truly top-notch directors aren't typically engrossed by, or even remotely interested in things like Dragon Ball. Even if the planets were allowed to perfectly align for this singular moment, there's also Hollywood tampering to consider. I just don't see it happening any time soon.

[the original ero-sennin]

I believe it's possible. Just takes the right vision to make it translate well. I certainly believe that a plot akin to Path to Ultimate Strength would be a great first film.

Agreed. That'd be the type of thing I'd like to see. But it would almost be too terrifying a prospect because the film would need to be reliant on a child actor's performance. Those can be pretty sketchy. Then again, all the kid'd have to do is act better than Justin Chatwin did.

[Gyt Kaliba]

I believe it's possible. Just takes the right vision to make it translate well. I certainly believe that a plot akin to Path to Ultimate Strength would be a great first film.

Agreed. That'd be the type of thing I'd like to see. But it would almost be too terrifying a prospect because the film would need to be reliant on a child actor's performance. Those can be pretty sketchy. Then again, all the kid'd have to do is act better than Justin Chatwin did.

Yeah, I definitely think it'd be a better idea for a film to start when Goku was a kid. They used a teenage "version" of Goku for Evolution, but I still think that was one of the things they did right, was starting with something from Dragon Ball instead of Z. I'd personally start a little further back myself, probably Red Ribbon Army...so actually yeah, something very akin to that movie now that I think about it.

There are some good kid actors out there too. Not saying he'd be right for the role, but Dakota Goyo I think his name was, completely upstaged Hugh Jackman in Real Steel. That's no easy feat.

[Hellspawn28]

I think a live action DB could be good, depends who writes and directs it. I think you are going to have to changed the characters looks no matter what since DBZ characters will always look silly in live action. Nothing wrong with change depending how you handle it. JJ's Star Trek is a good example of change since it had a good story and good characters you can care for. DBE had a weak story, bad characters, bad acting and many other things wrong with it.

[DBZ Mick]

Will there ever be a good live action movie of Dragonball, DBZ, or DBGT? Thoughts?

No, there won't. Even if it was extremely faithful, I don't think it would translate well into live action.

This for me too.

Even if they get the action/fights down I really doubt they could get the characters/acting right. Or the comedy...

But maybe if they don't do a direct adaptation and just use the universe as a starting place. Evolution was terrible but I did appreciate it trying to do something fresh while trying to be true in some aspects.

[SSJ4_Zankuto]

I've been asking myself lots of times whether live action movie of DBZ or DBGT could work. Peter Jackson, who turned the Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit books into successful movies on the big screen lead me to believe it's possible for anime or manga to translate well to big screen. The movie would have to be 'based on authors manga' for it to work, or could be set in different universe so it's possible too for something like Dragon Ball GT to work.

[B]

It can't be faithful and good. It's too silly-looking to work in live-action.

I don't know what's going on with that "Runaways" project, but that'd be my preferred way of doing it; toning down the whimsy drastically.

[Kaboom]

Sure, Dragon Ball can be adapted well into live-action. It just needs the right people backing and participating in it.

Even today, I still think Dragon Ball: Evolution had the right idea in terms of general tone and how the overall world itself was adapted. What ruined it was bad handling of some key characters(mainly Goku), bad acting, bad writing, etc... More specific things. But those could easily be fixed. Heck, just "fixing" Goku himself would have made DBE 10x better, if you ask me.

I hope to see the franchise tackled again with a little more care and respect in a few years, once DBE is out of everyone's system.

[SparkyPantsMcGee]

It's possible but, in terms of Hollywood, I'd say give it 10 years or so. Currently, I don't think they're is a director out there who likes both the original Japanese version and the Dub enough to accurately target both audience. I'm sure they're are a handful of dub fans but, do they know the whole series? Do they know about the early errors, do they know how to properly pronounce these terms, do they get the puns? It's a bit nit picky but it's also very important. I think that's one of the biggest hurdles for anime titles, especially the earlier ones. You have people in the industry who know the titles but don't know them the same way they no internal properties like Spiderman or Batman. There is that cultural divide to the point were it would be hard and expensive to get people who worked on the original properties to come on set and help the director; in the way people from DC or Marvel can. Give it a few years and you'll start to see people from my generation who grew up with anime, to the point were it's the pop cultural norm, leaving college and going into Hollywood.

If Japan had a stronger cinematic industry, I'd say they more than anyone could pull it off. But as it stands now, there wouldn't be a chance for them to pull something off with mass appeal.

[Hellspawn28]

I think Japanese franchises are tend to be cruse when it comes to the US adapting them in America. Most American shows and movies based on a popular Japanese franchise always tend to suck. For example; The Guyver, Godzilla (1998), Saban's Masked Rider, Fist of the North Star, Speed Racer, Astro Boy and Kamen Rider: Dragon Kight. I think the Japanese could handle DB in live action better then the US. I think a Toku DBZ TV series might be a good idea. Let someone like Tsuburaya work on a DBZ live action series since they have a better budget then Toei does.

[JP6GAMER]

I don't say that a live action movie won't work, but I think we don't need one.

[Pretorious]

I think any live action adaptation would just be embarrassing. A huge part of the charm of Dragon Ball, for me, is the cartoonyness of it. And the character designs. I think it would have to be extremely tongue-in-cheek and way way over-the-top to even be watchable. I don't think it matters if the director is a big name or not. No actually, I think that would hurt it because they would be attached to a big studio who would want to change it too much, probably.

I'd rather see a version with puppets than live actors.

[Hellspawn28]

They would likely go for a serious tone if they try it again. DBE tone was pretty campy in my opinion and they can do a serious film without being dark & gritty like the Nolan Batman films. Something similar to The Avengers or Star Trek (2009) can work.

[Pretorious]

They would likely go for a serious tone if they try it again. DBE tone was pretty campy in my opinion and they can do a serious film without being dark & gritty like the Nolan Batman films. Something similar to The Avengers or Star Trek (2009) can work.

But there's still the look of Dragon Ball. I don't think there is a way to preserve the aesthetic at all, ever, with a live action movie. I mean, without it looking silly. Even if it somehow worked on other levels, the realistic look would take away from it for me. I guess to some people this doesn't matter as much, like when the X-Men wore hideous black leather in their movies, that didn't bother some people. Or when the Transformers in Michael Bay's movies looked like big wads of shrapnel. I don't know...character design is incredibly important to me.

Off the top of my head, the only cartoon-to-live-action adaptation that is relatively close to Dragon Ball and has worked was the TMNT movie. Well, I guess the second one too, even with it's goofier tone.

[Fizzer]

They need to stay faithful in everything other than character appearances. Just don't try too hard to match that spikey hair, or it'll look ridiculous. Simply give Goku realistically messy hair. When it comes to the story and characters, the film would have to stick to the source material pretty closely.

If they want to start from the RRA arc but keep a Z-like tone throughout, I think it could still work, and if they want to eliminate some more useless characters to tidy things up by combining the minor roles of multiple characters into one, I think that could work pretty well in the film's favour, maybe.

I really do think it would work, but it does need big DB fans working on it, it needs a lot of money, it needs a lot of thought. Personally, I'd like to tamper with the story as little as possible, but I don't see a first film with Pilaf as the villain ever working, to be honest. As long as they did something about Pilaf though, the series could transfer faithfully quite well into something like Hunt for the Dragon Balls / 21st Tenkaichi Bodukai / Red Ribbon Army / Piccolo Daimao / Piccolo Jr / Saiyan / Freeza / Cell / Buu. Two Piccolo films may also be a bit much, but they'd have to think really hard about how to combine them and still have Piccolo's future character development work out, unless they were ending the series with Piccolo.

Then again, if they replaced Pilaf in the first arc, people would start bitching about it being unfaithful.