Audience "Stand-In" characters (Cole Young) and Narrative Liberties with Live Action Dragon Ball

[Kid Buu]

"Live action Dragon Ball" is a terrible idea without caveats because let's face it: when people say "live action Dragon Ball," what are they really saying?
Americanized Hollywood-created martial arts-themed superhero movie with Dragon Ball branding. They only ever view the live-action moviemaking process through the lens of Hollywood and its bullshit and trying to fit Dragon Ball into that doesn't work. Even if Evolution was more faithful to the source material, it wouldn't have worked. The people behind it would all but have to go meet the original Hong Kong filmmakers, learn how they did it right, and then come back and dedicate themselves to combining THAT with the special effects used for MCU movies rather than try "kung fu-ing" an MCU or DCU movie.
It's entirely because of Hollywood that we even have to discuss "audience stand-in" characters, whom for Dragon Ball would be some stale piece of shit suburban whitebread kid who is a big anime fan that everything's explained to because characters like Krillin and Bulma are just too unrelatable. If we ever get a live-action Dragon Ball movie, I really do wish it would just be the heroes, the villains appearing, some bullshit motivation, and then fight until the ending on a shot of Live-Action Goku thumbing-up the camera while laying in a field all bruised and beaten. That's how it should go. No BS with "here's a kid who learns about Saiyans and Namekians and whoever else and only heard about all this on his Japanese toons," no useless lore, no forced comedy scenes (save for anything Toriyama may approve), DEFINITELY no romantic subplot because you just know Hollywood or Netflix needs those, just do it right! FUCK.

Yeah, the fact that live-action Dragon Ball threads are dominated by talk of Hollywood directors and actors perplexes me. I mean, it's fairly universal that the majority here are purists for the original Japanese story, right? And we all remember what a trainwreck Evolution was? Yet a surprising number of people then go ahead and court the idea of Hollywood having another crack at it and undoubtedly making the exact same mistakes, in the same breath. "Fuck those talentless hacks from Texas who mutilated our favourite show... Oh hey, Hollywood, fancy mutilating our favourite show again?" I don't get it.

The majority of American directors who could feasibly pull of a Dragon Ball movie tend to be more invested in the media that inspired Dragon Ball. They're of the generation that were regularly popping to the pictures to see Jackie Chan in his prime. They don't care nearly so much about some kids' manga starring monkey-tailed bed-head Jackie Chan.

I think a great choice of director for a Dragon Ball movie made on its home soil would be Takashi Miike. He already has a strong calibre for manga and video game adaptations that manage to be entertaining while being painstakingly accurate to the source material (as live-action anime movies tend to be). He can do violence (boy, can he do violence), he can do tongue-in-cheek surreal humour. He's the man. Forget Hollywood.

I imagine most people are saying Hollywood since it's the one true global film industry. China and India have big film industries but most of the audience is domestic.

That said agree with your overall point. South Korea has a growing film industry that I think could be a good contender too.