Does anyone actually like Dragon Ball Evolution?

[MarCas92]

I'm not going to lie. I love it!

WAIT! Before you go off on that keyboard, let me explain.

I love movies. My minor is in Film Studies. I've dedicated a significant portion of my life into the study of cinema.

By no stretch of the imagination is Dragon Ball Evolution a "good" movie. It's not a faithful adaptation of the source material, and as a stand alone film it fails on every level. I love Dragon Ball, so I should hate this movie right? Well, it's not that simple. Every person I've ever spoken to, hates this movie. I can definitely see why. But, I just can't bring myself to hate it.

I enjoy it in the same way I enjoy "Batman and Robin". I just have a good time every time I sit down to watch it. I love laughing at the badly written dialogue. I love seeing it with people who also love Dragon Ball and watching them cringe at it. I love the awful special effects. I love how much people bash it. It's fun to laugh at it. It's the ultimate guilty pleasure movie for me. Anybody else feel the same way?

[TheDevilsCorpse]

Ignoring the fact that it's supposed to be an adaptation of Dragon Ball, it's still not a good movie. Though it's not an outright horrible movie either. in this instance, with it being such a departure from the original source world, I actually think the Dragon Ball elements might even weaken the film. Had they forsaken the Dragon Ball ties and just made it their own thing, it could have been a film I could have watched to pass the time on a Sunday night or something without any real complaints. But as it stands now, it pretty much fails at everything.

[Hellspawn28]

Evolution can be a fun bad movie if you watch it the same way that you do with Street Fighter '94, The Phantom, the second Mortal Kombat movie and House of the Dead where it's so bad that it's funny. The movie is a terrible movie, but I don't think it's the worst movie ever made. Evolution had no hopes on being good, the casting listing for the movie back in 2007 already give you a idea that this movie was going to be horrible. Bad acting, terrible CG that makes the movie look like it was made in the late 90's (1996 - 1999), poorly written story and no character development makes DBE a bad movie, but it can be fun for a bad movie night with friends.

[One_Instance]

I'm with the majority on this one, I don't like this movie at all. However, I can see where you're coming from. I, like yourself, am a film fanatic. There was a period of two years in my life where I watched one, and sometimes more, movie(s) each day. The point is, I enjoy good movies and bad movies alike, although, there is a grey area between the very good and very bad that I don't enjoy, but I can completely understand why someone would like Evolution.

[Kid Buu]

My main degree was in Film Production but my minor was in Film Studies like you. I prefer Evolution over all the cartoon films, most of which don't even feel like films.

[Basaku]

Ignoring the fact that it's supposed to be an adaptation of Dragon Ball, it's still not a good movie.

Pretty much sums it up. However, I absolutely do think the casting of Bulma and Goku was good, if we ever got a quality live-action adaptation again, I wouldn't mind seeing the same 2 actors in these roles.

[Lord Beerus]

Dragon Ball Evolution definitely fails at being a Dragon Ball movie but if I were to look at the movie as if it were a low budget made-for-tv action movie on SyFy, I wouldn't be offended by it that much.

[Hellspawn28]

I'm a big movie person myself since my second major is film next to art. I do think Evolution will still be a bad movie if you take out the Dragon Ball name and rename every character in the film into different names. Despite being terrible, the movie is fun if you're drunk. I would watch Evolution over Bio Broli in my opinion.

[Chuquita]

While I don't like DBE, I do like the domino effect it produced in regards to Toriyama and Toei. I feel like DBE's DBE-ness played a big role in getting Toriyama fired up to be involved with Dragon Ball again, and a big role in getting Toei and Shueisha to want to create more new animated Dragon Ball.

DBE is partly to thank for BOG, F, and Super; so on those grounds I can't hate it. :3

[dbboxkaifan]

I do. It's not necessarily what you'd expect from a Dragon Ball live action film, but as a movie itself, it's quite entertaining and comedic at times plus you have the Shameless couple or should I say, ex-Shameless couple.

The one thing I wanted more out of was the final battle of Goku Vs. Piccolo, it just was too damn short!

[Basaku]

While I don't like DBE, I do like the domino effect it produced in regards to Toriyama and Toei. I feel like DBE's DBE-ness played a big role in getting Toriyama fired up to be involved with Dragon Ball again, and a big role in getting Toei and Shueisha to want to create more new animated Dragon Ball.

DBE is partly to thank for BOG, F, and Super; so on those grounds I can't hate it. :3

I don't really buy that story tbh, seems to me more like fans enhancing the "Evolution was such a disaster!" narration to make it more dramatic Toriyama was already working on DBO and 2008 special when Evolution was getting shot and released. After that, it took 4 years for BOG to get released. I think he was just very slowly getting over the 90s workload aspect of his relation with the franchise and it simply took time for him to get interested in it again. Maybe Evolution made it fatser but I think we would still end up in the same point anyway, Toei would sooner or later court AT to get reinvolved even if just for the sake of being able to stamp "from the original creator!" label on new content which they know increases sales

[ShadowDude112]

I saw it with my dad cause I was 13 when it came out. My dad liked it. But my dad has never read or watched the series. So, there's that.

[TheDevilsCorpse]

I don't really buy that story tbh, seems to me more like fans enhancing the "Evolution was such a disaster!" narration to make it more dramatic Toriyama was already working on DBO and 2008 special when Evolution was getting shot and released. After that, it took 4 years for BOG to get released. I think he was just very slowly getting over the 90s workload aspect of his relation with the franchise and it simply took time for him to get interested in it again. Maybe Evolution made it fatser but I think we would still end up in the same point anyway, Toei would sooner or later court AT to get reinvolved even if just for the sake of being able to stamp "from the original creator!" label on new content which they know increases sales

...but it's not a story? We have an interview with him for Battle of Gods where he says the movie was bad and that's what pushed him towards becoming more active with that film.

[Rocketman]

DBE is partly to thank for BOG, F, and Super

This is pretty much the only real reason to hate DBE.

[Lord Beerus]

DBE is partly to thank for BOG, F, and Super

This is pretty much the only real reason to hate DBE.

Oh, Rocketman...

[TheBlackPaladin]

Yes, I do like it in a "it's fun to bash" kind of way. Watching it with a bunch of my friends with Team Four Star's riff track was one of the funnest "bad movie nights" we've had in years. *

I don't know for sure if it's what caused the new Dragon Ball movies and series, but if it is, then I guess I owe DBE one for that at least.

*In fact....'ya know what, screw it, that's what I'm gonna do right now. I HIGHLY recommend TFS's riff track, if you don't already have it. It's free now!

[Basaku]

...but it's not a story? We have an interview with him for Battle of Gods where he says the movie was bad and that's what pushed him towards becoming more active with that film.

But he already worked on DBO and 2008 special? And it ain't like Toei was making a live-action adaptation. Ohh whatever, analyzing what Toriyama says in interviews could be a series on its own

[TheBlackPaladin]

...but it's not a story? We have an interview with him for Battle of Gods where he says the movie was bad and that's what pushed him towards becoming more active with that film.

But he already worked on DBO and 2008 special? And it ain't like Toei was making a live-action adaptation. Ohh whatever, analyzing what Toriyama says in interviews could be a series on its own

Especially since he doesn't have the greatest memory in the world.

[Hellspawn28]

The biggest issue with Evolution that fans act like it's Satan and that the movie is so bad that Hitler would hate it. Yeah the movie is bad, but there are films much worst out there. The movie had zero expectations since no one was hype up for the movie and everyone was hating on the movie before it was released. Everyone including people who are not fans or never heard of the series said that the movie looked terrible. I remember people where laughing and yelling boo at the movie trailer when I saw the trailer with The Day the Earth Stood Still remake and Watchmen at the time. I personally dislike GT more then DBE since at least GT had high expectations put into it since it was a sequel to DBZ. I admit DBE is worst critically, but I knew that it was going to be bad when going into it.

However there are things that I like about Evolution such as:

- The music score
- The used of practical effects. I take old fashion filming on special effects over CG and I'm glad that they use sets, and rubber suits for the films then green screening everything.
- James Marsters as Piccolo
- Chow Yun-fat as Master Roshi
- The movie bombed, so no sequels got made and the movie was quickly forgotten about after the release.

While I don't like DBE, I do like the domino effect it produced in regards to Toriyama and Toei. I feel like DBE's DBE-ness played a big role in getting Toriyama fired up to be involved with Dragon Ball again, and a big role in getting Toei and Shueisha to want to create more new animated Dragon Ball.

DBE is partly to thank for BOG, F, and Super; so on those grounds I can't hate it. :3

Well Toriyama seem happy back in 2002 that Dragon Ball was going to become a big blockbuster picture. IGN did reported this back in the day, taken with a grain of slat.

"I have always drawn my manga with the desire to create something unique to comics, something that can only be expressed in the form of comics. I felt that if I didn't do so, the reason for the existence of my comics will become weak. But recent movies have surprised us by entering such territory that used to belong only to comics with wonderful technology and wisdom."

http://www.ign.com/articles/2002/03/13/ ... -the-movie

[TheDevilsCorpse]

...but it's not a story? We have an interview with him for Battle of Gods where he says the movie was bad and that's what pushed him towards becoming more active with that film.

But he already worked on DBO and 2008 special? And it ain't like Toei was making a live-action adaptation. Ohh whatever, analyzing what Toriyama says in interviews could be a series on its own

There's a distinct difference between those examples, Evolution and Battle of Gods though. For Dragon Ball Online, he was drawing characters and okaying other things people were doing. He might have contributed to the timeline, seeing how it was written in Japanese and then translated to Korean, but we don't know for certain and probably never will. He's credited with the original version of the JSAT special too, but that alone doesn't tell us his level of involvement. He might have just said "Give Vegeta a brother and have some Freeza remnants chase him to Earth after Buu's defeat" and that's that.

After Evolution came along and they weren't listening to his advice, it changed his attitude. His constant remarks these days are things like "there are only some things that the original author would know", calling out Evlution for being a bad movie, for some of Watanabe's script not capturing the tone of the series he wants to set and the dialogue not sounding in-character. He's effectively saying that the other people working on the franchise don't understand his characters, so as the original author, he's going to step up and do things. Thus we're getting content these days almost directly from him, to the point where he's doing almost everything prior to animating except scripting the fighting scenes, leaving that up to the staff.