With most comics characters, you have an origin story and they can get all their powers more or less simultaneously, and then you can just pick any bad guy you want and invent a storyline of your own.
With Dragon Ball, starting with the adventures of kid Goku would be unappealing to the general audience (often, people will go "a goofy kid as the hero in a magical world, that's a movie for little kids").
It would have to start directly with grown-up Goku and the most popular and serious parts of the story.
But then, how do you start like that with so many elements that are settled, and with relationships and abilities developped over the course of years? Can you really sum it all up in two minutes without people thinking "what kind of intro is this, the movie just starts and they just pull out of their hat the fact that the hero already has the habit of saving the world with his super strength?! And they bring a villain just for 10 seconds and we won't even get to see what happened in details with those fights?!"
Goku didn't know how to fly and fire blasts just because that's the way he is, he had to slowly learn one thing after another as sagas went by, and he didn't meet friends that magically had super powers from the start too, so it might be a bit hard and feel terribly rushed for the general audience to relate to a story that would start with "here's a superhero who has powers and already saved the world, and his super friends who also have super powers, deal with it, let the story begin! Oh, and magical ball that grant wishes and give its title to the movie itself, but you won't even get to see that!"
People like those new superhero movies cause they can start from the beginning and learn how they became what they became and better understand the logic behind a story that initially might have seemed farfetched and simplistic to them. But starting Dragon Ball at the beginning would not be appealing to the general public at a time where the successful thing is to show a grittier, deeper and realistic vision of superheroes.
And at the same time, skipping the whole origins of the characters with a quick 30 seconds to 30 minutes explanation might feel rushed for a supposedly "first movie of this new series of films". So, it's not easy to deal with an adaptation of Dragon Ball.
And that's also the thing with any other elements: how do you compact so many information and plot devices slowly building a certain situation into a two-hours movie?!
With everything happening on Namek, or with the whole Cell saga including the androids, would it be possible to compact it all withing two hours without the whole thing feeling messy and chaotic?
What could possibly be eliminated to make it quicker when the original is carefully organized so that one thing logically leads to another, which logically leads to the next thing, which logically leads to the next thing, which logically leads to the epic final battle?
So, to take on an adaptation of Dragon Ball, you have to love challenge, cause it's not the easiest plot and concepts to convert to movies!
Well, the kind of event that typically results in tributes and that struck a certain number of voice actors for Dragon Ball lately.DoomieDoomie911 wrote:By the way, I know I might seem ignorant for not knowing, but what "future event" are you talking about?Cold Skin wrote:(possibly due to a future event - that I'd rather not mention and don't want to imagine - that might prompt the industry to give a full-power tribute).
I'd have no problem saying it frankly myself, but it might offend people around if I did cause I hear in some cultures, it is believed that saying it directly will result in it happening!
Like, attracting bad luck on the person or something... So I'll leave it at that, there's no point in thinking about something that has no reason to happen anyway!
