Post your Battle of Gods Theatre Experience

[Metalwario64]

I was going to go Wednesday, but my Dad is going to church. I saw that my theater extended the showing to Thursday as well now, so that's when I'm going, with my Dad.

[SaiyanBaller22]

For those who have seen the movie, did they include the extra 20 minute footage?

[TheKingOfKamehamehas]

*Clears Throat* Let me present the Battle of Gods Theater Experience:

The Crowd: When I first walked in, I didn't expect so many people but Holy God was it packed! I didn't expect so many people to be there and it was pretty amazing. Sadly none wore costumes but, there were a few people who wore Dragon Ball shirts which was pretty cool. The crowd was always laughing whenever there was a funny moment on the screen which was really cool yet annoying in a way also... Some boys left their girlfriend or wife to watch this movie which was pretty amazing. Best Part was when they were clapping at the end.

The Theater: There isn't really much to talk about here so all I have to say is the Theater screen was pretty big. One thing that kind of took away from this experience was it was actually really loud. I don't know why but it got better I think when the movie progressed which was good

Acting: The acting might be just as good original Japanese if not better. The actors gave their heart out because it was truly amazing. As other people have said King Kai was the only problem I really had and everyone else was just truly amazing. Beerus and Whis were pretty good at their respective roles and by far and Trunks and Goten sounded pretty good although I think their Gotenks sounds only a little bit different. I really liked Sean being more goofy with his Goku which was better than his Kai performence. Videl just sounded sexy!

Overall Experience: 9/10

For those who have seen the movie, did they include the extra 20 minute footage?

No extra footage

[CashmanX]

IT. WAS. AWESOME.

The Audio system of the theater completely blew away my experience watching it on my TV! I could feel every blow! The audience and their reactions alone really enhanced everything, as I found myself smiling along with them throughout the film. As always, Pilaf and Oolong's voices were hilarious, and I now see what the hubbub about Bulma's new actress was; she was hilarious! and Beerus and Whis's actors completely stole the show! Props Funimation!

were the theaters packed, half empty or completely empty for the movie?

Packed. I'd say about 88% full.

[Shiyonasan]

To sum it up in one sentence: best theater experience I've ever had.

I went with my sister (who also enjoys Dragon Ball, but not to the extent that I do), and we got to the theater about an hour early to make sure we got our tickets. After eating some Subway for dinner to kill some time until the show, we got back to the theater with about 45 minutes to spare. My sister suggested walking in half-an-hour early to get good seats. Twas a good idea, because I had no idea the theater would be so packed.

There were probably a little over a hundred people in the audience, something like 110-120 people. It was neat seeing so many fans of the series in one place. Some of the conversations beforehand were ridiculous, but funny nonetheless because it was like walking into a physical version of another online Dragon Ball forum. However, I must say that the audience in my theater was the best audience I've ever been part of. Many laughs were had, and many applauses were had. I still remember the audience really getting into Vegeta taking revenge on Beerus for slapping Bulma. Probably the best moment though was when the movie went silent during the scene before Goku absorbs Beerus's energy ball when he's "floating" and he gets a vision of his family members calling his name. You could hear a pin drop in the theater. I'll never forget that moment.

There weren't many people dressed up, but one guy had a really nice-looking Super Saiyan mohawk going on. Otherwise, many people chose to wear Dragon Ball Z t-shirts. I wore an orange gi shirt, which apparently was a big hit because there were seven or eight other guys with the same shirt. I jokingly referred to them as my "brethren". Most of the audience was teenagers and young adults, but there were a few older people probably in their 60s or 70s, and a couple kids around the age of 10.

This experience was one of the highlights of my 15 years (and counting) as a Dragon Ball fan. I couldn't have asked for a better audience. Also, FUNimation did an excellent job dubbing the movie. Lots of great one-liners and voice work. I hope the 2015 movie gets a North American theater run as well. I would love to be part of an experience like this again.

[ricecake]

Arundel Mills sold out both of it's showings.

I'm going today (Wednesday), my girlfriend and I are supposed to meet at 5:30 and get dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings before the movie. I hope we can get out of there early enough to get a good seat, as it looks like this showing is sold out too!

[Son-Kun!!]

So here is my theatre experience seeing it this evening at 7:00.....IT WAS AWESOME!

I missed the first few minutes due to bathroom however the first thing I noticed was how damn packed our theatre was, way more then when I went to see guardians of the galaxy at midnight! Now I sat in the front row with my brother and friend and sadly we got paired with VERY obnoxious people infront of us making unfunny jokes throughout the entire film except one or two parts. The crowd itself was amazing, laughing at all the gags, especially at Pilafs joke. The crowd loved Beerus and Whis, and it was so epic when Goku went SSJG again stopping Beerus's last attack. I think the English cast did a phenomenal job and seeing it on such a big screen left a memory with me I'll never forget.

Side notes: The whole crowd chanted with Goku when he used a Kamehameha!, And one odd thing, When the movie was over it went to a Blu-ray screen! They played the movie on a Blu-ray sooooo, Does that mean the Blu-Ray is already finished?

[Bullza]

I'm glad so many of you are saying how packed the movie is, that's a good thing. If this movie is successful it'll mean the next movie will be released in theatres as well possibly with more theatres and showings.

[TheAldella]

There was so much laughter. The dub blew my expectations out of the water and shot them in the face, burying them along with my hopes to match this cast in any way on acting talent. -sulk- -sulk-

[MarcFBR]

Side notes: The whole crowd chanted with Goku when he used a Kamehameha!, And one odd thing, When the movie was over it went to a Blu-ray screen! They played the movie on a Blu-ray sooooo, Does that mean the Blu-Ray is already finished?

These types of screenings are normally beamed in via satellite. More than likely the event provider for your screening (multiple companies did the BoG screenings) didn't pull the feed before the player reset (likely they had unique disks that were sent to providers since Blu-ray displays on theater screens rather well, and it's likely the best source they had for it anyways.)

I don't know all the providers, but as an example, I know not all of them had the dub notice screen (I know Fathom had the English dub screen and a pre-roll with some of their stuff, the company that did it at the theater I went to had no pre-roll at all.)

[Son-Kun!!]

Ah, Thanks for clearing that up.

[Pretorious]

Fantastic. And this is coming from a huge fan of the Japanese cast.

I saw it at the theater on Grove Barton Road in Raleigh, NC. Was anyone else there?

First of all, I finally watched the Japanese BoG for the first time a few days ago. Partly because I had low expectations for it, I ended up REALLY enjoying it. Easily my favorite DBZ movie of all. Love.

Sooo...I was worried the English version would not be enjoyable, having watched very little of the dub since 1999. And the movie opens with lots of dialog from Kaio-sama, which is my least favorite dub voice, so this made me more worried. But, besides that? So good. Particularly:

-Whis. Excellent voice.
- Goten and Trunks. I was stunned at their current voices. Miles better than their raspy versions from the original dub. Really blew my mind.
- Gohan, Goku, Piccolo, and Vegeta's delivery. Most characters' delivery actually. The actors sound SO much more natural now, and I just can't get over it.

Spoiler:

I was scared about Vegeta's bingo song, but even that was good enough to get a laugh out of me.

Spoiler:

- Goku's "MY BULMA" at the end was HILARIOUS.

For the most part, I was VERY impressed with the faithfulness of the translation. The songs and score were intact (songs seemed to be in English and sounded awesome). The audience had a GREAT reaction. LOTS of laughs. I was very surprised at how many laughs it got. There were a couple of moments where there was so much laughing you couldn't hear the next few lines of dialog.

Overheard in the crowd:

- "After the credits Nick Fury's gonna come out and ask Goku to join the Avengers."
- Singing along to Head Cha-La (though the guy was just making up words).
- Something to the effect of "You know this is real because it's by Toriyama." Followed by speculation about the next movie.
- A round of applause at the end

Went in thinking I wouldn't like it. Left wanting to watch it again.

I can't give it a better review than that.

[DB_Fan1991]

I saw it tonight/last night (whatever you're reading), and I loved the movie. Best DBZ movie to me along with Fusion Reborn. As a fan of the Japanese cast I found the dub enjoyable. It felt on par with Kai's dub to me. Like others have said Schemmel's Kaio-Sama was pretty bad, but every other voice in the movie was top notch. Schemmel's Goku was amazing as was Sabat as Vegeta. The audience was rolling when he did the Bingo song. I thought that was funny too. Sabat did that well. I loved hearing Meredith McCoy as 18 again. The audience was also rolling at Goku imitating Vegeta at the end. I heard some cheers when Vegeta said My Bulma. The theater was packed I couldn't believe it. It was nice to see the movie with other Dragon Ball fans. After the movie ended we all gave it a standing ovation.

[Pretorious]

I want to add that even though Kaio-sama's voice wasn't the best, even he had a couple of lines that made me and the rest of the audience laugh.

[sailorspazz]

I went to see this movie with a couple of friends. One of them is a lucky bastard who happened to be in Japan when the movie first came out and saw it on opening day (by accident, no less...he and his girlfriend were planning to see a different movie that ended up being sold out, so they went to Battle of Gods instead. And she didn't even know anything about Dragon Ball! I'm clearly still jealous and will be forever bitter about this). So basically he was able to see it opening day in two different countries...that bastard. The other friend is a coworker who is mainly familiar with DBZ due to growing up watching the movies in Cantonese. He hasn't seen much of the series itself (and he pokes fun of my love for Vegeta by bringing up movie scenes where he acts like a pussy: "Hur hur, Vegeta getting dragged around by his hair and whining like a bitch", to which I respond defensively, "that's only in the movies, he's not that bad in the actual series!")

Anyway, we got to the theater about half an hour before the screening, and it was at least half full already. Saw many guys there wearing those orange gi shirts. I was wearing a Capsule Corporation dress, but couldn't really see if any other ladies in the audience had dressed up. There were also some guys wearing scouters who shouted out "over 9000!" several times before the movie started (I admit, I may have mumbled "shut up!" a couple times...and maybe got a bit louder than a mumble by the 3rd or 4th time ) By the time the movie started, the theater was mostly full (though not sold out), and the annoying douches finally behaved themselves.

As most others have said, seeing it with an audience really added to the experience. Lots of laughter at the jokes, and cheers and applause at key moments (biggest audience reaction was hands down the "MY BULMAAAAA!" scene. Couldn't help but squee and clap myself ) I thought Vegeta's bingo scene sounded more angry/frenetic than the Japanese version, but I still laughed just as hard as when I first saw it. And I couldn't even hear the rest of Gokuu's line after he did his Vegeta imitation (or Bulma's line that followed), 'cause everyone was laughing so hard! I certainly don't mind watching this again on DVD so I can catch the lines I missed.

I've seen the Kai dub, and this was pretty on par with that, as expected. It's a dub I can enjoy, but I certainly don't prefer it over the Japanese version. Though for this movie, it might be worth several viewings in English just to enjoy the different jokes it had. They really punched up a lot of the dialogue, and I didn't feel all of it was totally necessary, but it made for a fun viewing. These are no longer the days when they were changing plot points for the hell of it, so I can forgive some of the laxness in the translation since none of the added/altered jokes made an effect on the story. (I admit, I laughed very hard at Bulma drunkenly slurring, "look, Vegeta actually has friends!" Nothing even close to that was uttered in the original, but it was just soooo funny.)

After the movie, I was curious to know what my friends thought of it. The one who had seen it before really enjoyed it, and said he'd even consider picking it up on DVD when it comes out (as far as I know, he doesn't own any of the series/movies so far, so that's a pretty ringing endorsement right there). My coworker seemed to really like it as well. I'm the one who basically forced him to go (bought his ticket a few weeks ago and said, "you're coming!"), and he wasn't super excited beforehand, because, in his words, "it's just another DBZ movie." To which I said, "it's not like the other movies, it's fucking special." I asked him after the showing if he agreed with my statement, and he said I was right, it was certainly different from the others. Then the three of us enjoyed dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant where we boisterously discussed/quoted the movie, which certainly caused other people in the restaurant to silently think, "...the fuck are these nerds talking about?"

So to sum it up, a good time was had by all. I kinda want to see it in a theater again, but I'm telling myself I should just wait till the DVD comes out...we'll see how well I hold myself back. But my face was hurting from smiling so hard!

FUN-TIME BINGO, OLE!

[Nimbus]

I had a fantastic experience! As a kid who grew up without cable, I had to experience Dragonball through the odd VHS tapes I'd get for holidays and from the library. I remember imagining Japanese fans watching the same DBZ movies in theaters and being insanely jealous, so being able to finally experience that for myself was like a childhood dream come true. I nearly exploded from excitement when I saw the waves crashing into those rocks at the start. I went to the movie at a theater in Cleveland, Ohio and it was really nice. From what I heard, the show sold out before I got there so I'm lucky I bought my tickets online! I didn't see anyone in costume, but I saw a ton of people wearing DB t-shirts. The crowd seemed to enjoy themselves and there was a huge round of applause at the end.

I'm a dub fan, so I had refrained from watching BoG up until now. And man was I impressed! It seemed to recap events from the series a bit too much, but given that this is the first official movie in nearly two decades (wow had to check that date! has it really been that long!? ), I'll let it slide. I'm normally the type to roll my eyes at the silly type of humor in this movie, but I was nearly falling out of my seat from laughing so hard. By the end of the party segment, I was pretty much in tears. The dub cast pulled off an amazing performance, and you can really tell that they've all evolved so much since they first started at Funimation, especially Goten and Trunks. There were a couple of lines that sounded a bit out of place (like Goku calling someone 'dude'), but overall the script was both very well written and delivered.

The animation was also top-notch! Everything was gorgeous on the big screen, especially the fight scenes. And I also really enjoyed the musical score and sound quality. Beerus was a neat character, and I really liked the whole premise of the story. Overall, this was possibly the best movie theater experience I've ever had! Based on some of the other DBZ movies, I wasn't really expecting much. But everything I was anticipating was completely blown out of the water! It had the perfect mix of action and comedy, and never took itself too seriously. It just seemed like a fun experience that was truly meant for the fans of the series. Bring on the sequel!

[Daimakku]

I'm loving reading all these different experiences, keep em coming!

I gotta wait till saturday to watch it myself. These next 3 days are gonna suck.

[BojGrass]

Reading these comments is a little bittersweet for me. I'm eternally grateful that everyone in the theaters across the country have gotten to see the movie in it's best form. At the same time, I'm entirely jealous that my experience didn't come up to par.

To start with: our theater started playing the wrong thing: some TV show (that in my opinion is a terrible show..apologies to anyone that may be a fan of it. I wasn't the only one in the audience that felt that way about it because everyone just started talking above it making fun of it and when they finally cut it off cheered and applauded.) show called Slugterra. When it finally got cut off the the lights went up for about 30 seconds with the screen black, then they dimmed the lights down again for about a minute and a half before raising them again. Then the movie started and they dimmed the lights about 30 seconds or so into the movie. Which they had playing in 4:3 (squashed so everything was tall and skinny) and not in surround. The audio literally sounded like I was watching the thing on my laptop. The picture was washed out and had lines flickering through it the entire time and the image was a bit jittery. I hate that it does, but technical things like that are a pet peeve of mine and kind of ruined it for me. If I'm going to spend $12.00 and drive an hour and a half so I can enjoy the movie with some of my close friends I think I'm entitled to a decent presentation. The reason we were given for the shoddy picture and sound as well as the Slugterra fiasco I didn't know I was going tonight until last week. I've got a ticket for a more localized showing tomorrow night and I think I will go see it again to attempt a true big screen appearance.

That said: Funimation's dub continues to surprise me. Some of the voices seemed off or perhaps not completely rehearsed to me, but I understand that these voices have evolved over time that I haven't seen since I don't follow the video games. The quality of the acting was nice and they fact that they stayed pretty accurate to the original was awesome for me. Though I was amused that they danced around the subject of Gohan being drunk, but then at the end said that Super Saiyan God gave Goku a hangover.

Glad everyone else had a great experience though! Wish mine could have been!

[Alchemist Ed]

My BoG theater experience almost didn't happen. For some reason, I didn't think to pick up tickets until the day of the movie. As I was on the way there, I checked the website for my closest theater, and it told me they were sold out. I called the theater, and they told me they still had more than 20 tickets, but the site wouldn't sell me tickets if they had less than 30. I decided to check once more to be safe, and it worked: I was able to buy my tickets. Unfortunately, I told most of my buddies about the lack of tickets a bit too soon, so they made different plans. It was still nice to go with my wife and brother-in-law, but I really wanted a few of my other friends to join us.

Once I arrived, I immediately took a picture of the movie poster to help remember this important event. Once I nearly entered the showing, I also got a picture of the LED label, "DRAGON BALL - 7:30". My showing was filled with a positive atmosphere: the people around me were so excited to see the movie, and many of them were wearing Goku gi shirts, much like me and my wife, or other DB related shirts. I heard a little bit of DBZ Abridged quoting before the movie, which was slightly irksome, despite my love for the parody. (I understand quoting the funny lines, but it felt like they were just re-enacting a good bit of an episode, or just quoting unfunny lines.) Thankfully, the only reference to "Over 9000!" was in the form of a shirt someone wore.

The dub was excellent. As someone who grew up with the unfaithful dub, I've come to expect the best from FUNimation when it comes to everything except DBZ. Thankfully, their poor decision making in regards to this franchise didn't carry over to this film. I laughed throughout, and as others have said, the bits of punched up dialogue didn't detract from the movie, but rather made it a more enjoyable experience, especially when an entire theater is laughing with you. The crowd reacted accordingly to all of the right moments, and it was wonderful seeing a good DB film with a crowd, instead of Evolution, which I also saw in theaters.

I can't wait to buy the Blu-ray. I really hope we can get the extended version.

[VegettoEX]

The audio literally sounded like I was watching the thing on my laptop.

There was definitely no surround sound in our screening. It felt almost like completely center-channel coming from directly on top of the screen. It brought down the experience for sure.