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.