Ok, there are so many things wrong with this movie it's hard to find a place to start. Created by Akira Toriyama and running in the Shonen Jump magazine from 1984 to 1995, Dragonball is one of Japan's most successful and influential manga comic strips ever created. Now I've read the Dragonball manga and I've even watched the anime series as well (excluding Dragonball GT!) so when I first heard they were making a Dragonball movie I was a little bit intrigued, my initial response was if this movie is done right it could be successful and alot of fun. I do try to keep an open mind and give these movies a fighting chance. However, once I read the cast list and saw the first trailer, my mind was made up: This movie is going to bomb...hard! I find it interesting that this movie bares almost no resemblance to the manga...or the anime, it's not even an amalgamation of the two. It's like they just took the name and created a whole new, exciting, craptastic story just for the movie. An albino Piccolo played by Spike from Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Master Roshi played by the guy from Bulletproof Monk and Goku, now an emo high school kid whose only spiritual power seems to be the ability to dress like an Abercrombie model. Seriously, who thought this was a good idea? Then I saw the studio backing the movie...Fox, well that explains everything. Fox has, over the years, become the slayer of comic book movies including Daredevil and has now apparently decided that destroying American pop culture is not enough. It truly saddens me that this movie will be laughed out of theaters because the books were really good, but the truth is Dragonball will join the ever growing list of movies that should've never been made. And then there was the leaked image of the Goku/lizard/man thing that Fox demanded everyone take down. To be honest, if my movie had make up effects that looked like they had been done by a middle school art class I would want those pics taken down too. Not to mention that Saiyans transform into giant apes...not into dinosaur lizard men. This film looks more like a Dragonball spoof than a serious action flick, the cast is mediocre and the director has clearly not read any of the manga or he would see just how big a travesty this movie is actually becoming. Piccolo looks like an extra from a Buffy episode, Goku's origin is completely wrong, there's no Krillin, Bulma/Chi Chi/Yamcha and Roshi have all had their characters mangled beyond recognition and thus the film moves forward. I don't even want to hear that all these "artistic changes" are just to "modernize" the stories for a new generation. These books and stories are classics and their tales became favorites for a reason: because they are fantastic the way they are! There are no changes needed to be made. As soon as the word change appears you wind up with a movie that bears no resemblance whatsoever to the source material it was created from. Chaos ensues, fans are pissed, movies bomb, fanchises are detroyed and the cycle repeats with another unsuspecting victim. So far the only group of people that have gotten a successful formula for creating decent movies is the Marvel Studio guys, with successes like Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, Marvel has shown it is tired of big name studios trashing it's big name properties. DC has yet to follow suit and we can all see what is happening with Dragonball. This movie will plague theaters next summer and Dragaonball fans everywhere are going to leave the theater scratching their heads and demanding their money back. Lead actor Justin Chatwin had better enjoy his experience as a lead actor because after this movie it's probably never going to happen again. Chow Yun Fat had better have a good back up plan for getting his career back on track and James Marsters will have to find another vampire TV show to get his rep back. Yeah...albino Piccolo with a English accent...God kill me now. Well, I'm sure there are plenty of you who disagree and for those people I say go read the books and tell me afterwards if you still think this movie will be any good. After it's release it's going to be a long while before we can all erase the mental stain this movie will leave on us all.
Caboose out!
Pics from Wikipedia.org and Comicbookmovie.com
Dragonball created by Akira Toriyama
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