Dragonball Evolution

For manga and anime fans around the world, the story of Dragonball has to be at the top, or at least in the top 3 of their most beloved manga/anime stories ever written. There is already an existing live action Dragonball movie called Dragonball: The Magic Begins (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0122050/) made in Taiwan back in 1989. That movie tried really hard to stay as close as possible to the original story of Dragonball as written by Akira Toriyama, but it ended up being more of a comedy. The entire story also only went up to the Pilaf storyline, which was way before the first Piccolo appearance. This movie, although aged and not exactly a direct interpretation of the Dragonball story, was still appreciated by most fans due to the comedic entertainment value.

Now, another live action Dragonball movie has come, called Dragonball: Evolution. When the first few pictures of this movie appeared on the internet, a lot of the fans already predicted that the movie would turn out horrible because the characters don't look like themselves. The characters were heavily changed and westernized too much, especially Piccolo, the main villain, who didn't look like the one from the manga and anime. Fast forward to a few weeks before the latest Dragonball movie was released, a trailer was leaked on the internet. That trailer spelled the certain doom of the movie to the fans of the show. Most of the comments described the movie as "Not Dragonball, but another action movie".

This writer was fortunate enough to be invited to a private screening of the movie, and boy was I surprised! I was already expecting the movie to be bad and not a "real" Dragonball, but what I witnessed was something much more horrible! Granted that the movie was really different, but the way the movie progressed, the introduction of characters, the fight scenes, oh wow, you'd think it was a movie created by elementary kids who had no idea what Dragonball was about, except for the "Kamehameha" move and the 7 dragon balls, just with the financial backing of a millionaire.

Everything seemed rushed in the movie and characters would just pop out of nowhere and decide to join together to beat Piccolo. The love angle in the story seemed forced as well, everybody was simply out of character. Goku's a powerful but lame school boy, Chi Chi's a martial art school girl who can't even open her own locker, Master Roshi's some crazy dude living in the city (at least he still wears a Hawaiian shirt and seems a little perverted), Bulma became Lara Croft and Rambo combined in another body with a bizarre voice, Mai (originally one of Pilaf's hilarious henchmen in the manga) became a cold blooded, shape-shifting killer, Yamcha became a weird cross between a desert bandit who can't fight and a hobo with unwashed hair, and Piccolo became a weird vampire whose outfit seems to be inspired by the Matrix. I think only Grandpa Gohan was close enough to the original character, except for the way he exits the movie early on.

The fight scenes were lame. Dragonball was about epic sized battles that could not be contained in one ___location. Characters would get punched through mountains, cities would be destroyed, the earth would rumble and split up due to the massive forces of the fighters. In this movie, everything seemed so lame. Even the Kamehameha attack was used to light some candles! Talk about total weakening!

The only "good" things about the movie were the special effects, although the energy blasts seemed very weak.

My advise is, if you're going to pay to watch this movie, DON'T DO IT. Listen to what almost everybody has been saying because they're right, the movie is worse than what you currently have in mind!

This movie is just plain disappointing to say the least. I don't care if this is an adaptation of Dragonball. The only reason why I gave it a 3 out of 10 rating was for the special effects and production value which were semi-decent. I don't understand what was wrong with the original storyline that needed to be changed and messed with. It's the original storyline that made fans love Dragonball in the first place. "If it ain't broke don't fix it." I think this movie would do a lot better if they stuck with the original story and had better casting. The real fans would flood the theaters to watch it which would bring hype to the movie for new viewers that don't know about Dragonball, kind of like how Watchmen did. Street Fighter was horrible and they expect to do a sequel to it, this movie was a travesty...I guess next up will be Thundercats and Voltron for Hollywood to mess up for me. Thank you Hollywood for ruining my childhood memories.

This is a total butchering of what I had held great hopes of seeing. The movies attempts to follow the dragon ball story line, meanwhile adding a "modern" spin on it (ie. chi chi's castle, and Master Roshi lives in a regular semi whats up with that?). What the viewers want to see is a storyline that follows the cartoon series without any changes, and additions. Overall, the plot is weak, the characters do not look like the cartoons (ie. Yamcha, Master Roshi), the 2D cartoon series had better special effects than the movie (and the series had NO special effects, thats how terrible it was). I created an IMDb account JUST to comment on how they butchered Dragonball for me and I hope that Hollywood is smarter next time as to when they bring such a strong fan based series onto the big screens or they will only infuriate more of the audience.

As bad as Inspector Gadget and The Last Airbender are, they look like masterpieces compared to Dragonball Evolution. The TV series was very, very good, the movie was half-baked and bland. The only good thing was James Marsters, while he mayn't look exactly like Piccolo he at least tries to capture the essence of the character. Just a shame he isn't in enough of the movie to elevate it even more.

Why do I say that Dragonball Evolution is a contender for the worst live-action film for an animated TV series? The scenery and costumes are nice to look at, but the cinematography does nothing for me, the editing is shoddy and the lighting is dull. The special effects don't impress either, they do distract rather than enhance and it doesn't help that some of them are half-baked.

The film is also too rushed, and in all honesty I was left bored by the end, nothing really interesting in my view happens. The story is juvenile and predictable, the dialogue is terrible either being cheesy or due to the delivery very rarely ringing true and the direction is bland. The acting is nothing to smile about, Goku and Yamuka especially are complete disasters and show a complete lack of acting ability. Not only that, the characters here are treated in the most banal way possible and are difficult to like as a result.

Overall, a very poor movie. 1/10 Bethany Cox

This Movie plain and simple insults our intelligence, I mean I'm no Geek, but tham they were way off!, this should not even be called dragonball, because of stupid 20th Century Fox, now dragonball is ruined, if someone wanted to make a better movie with the real story that Akira Toriyama made, they made so many changes and mistakes that the dragonball that we know is gone forever, on Watchmen they made some changes but only so the essence of the show could be shown on film, but Dragonball is dead they killed it, I'm sorry Akira Toriyama they ruined your work and about every Anime , and dbz fan out there, like my Grandfather just to say "there's cheese all over that movie" It is illogical to spend the money on copyrights if you're not even going to use the story.

Zac Bertschy of Anime News Network, originally disgusted at Otaku decrying the film via leaked set shots and trailers even before the movie was released, gave the movie an overall F grade, admitting that "The fans were right." Criticizing the films lack of explaining plot elements to its hackmead storyline and lackluster effort by the actors, he suggested that the film "Might be fun when you're hammered and surrounded by friends. Or suicidal, and need something to push you over the edge."