Dragonball Evolution

Dragonball Evolution was the 2009 movie that killed the franchise of famous Shonen fighting anime and manga, Dragon Ball Z, but was also the one that ironically brought it back to life. After the show finished in 2003 and with nothing Dragon Ball related coming out in the near future, 20th Century Fox (in their ‘’great’’ ability to appeal to fans of written-based material shown ”brilliantly” through their X-Men films) decided to make this movie as a means to hold onto the product from being bought away, which resulted in a travesty of a film. The creator himself, Akira Toriyama, saw how his creation was turned into a movie that looked nothing like his story, and felt obliged to revitalize the series as recompense. That was the only plus side fans could take away from this live-action film version of their beloved anime. Set in a world vastly different from its source material, a teenage boy named Goku, or as he’s called by the ‘’big bad bullies’’, Geeko (played by Justin Chatwin) finds it hard to fit into normal life as even though he has superhuman powers, he’s constantly bullied at school and can’t seem to talk to his crush, Chi-Chi (played by Jamie Chung). On the night of his 18^th birthday, Goku’s grandfather, Gohan (played by Randall Duk Kim) is killed by an evil overlord named Piccolo (played by James Marsters) who is searching for The Dragon Balls, seven magical orbs that will grant the user any wish they ask for. After his grandfather passes, Goku along a rich girl named Bulma (played by Emmy Rossum), Gohan’s teacher, Roshi (played by Chow Yun-fat) and a desert bandit named Yamcha (played by Joon Park) to search for a way to stop Piccolo’s world domination. From being based on something that was held to such a high regard to fans, this movie seems to spit on those fans and distance any newcomers as nobody fell for this movie when it was released, receiving terrible reviews from both critics and audiences, flopping at the box office, and setting a bad influence for other anime-adaptation in the future. Though Dragon Ball has its fair share of problems, they don’t even compare to the bucket load of awfulness that this movie produces.

The story of Dragon Ball was honestly a little lose and focused on more its creative ideas and its various allusions to Japanese culture, myths and overall lifestyle to create a weird, but charmingly adventurous anime which would later transform into a battle sci-fi franchise. Its not a flawless series by any means, but it has its fans, knows how to appeal to them from both a charmingly small but also action-heavy scale, and contains its own unique elements to make it feel distinct and timeless. With the writer of the film, Ben Ramsey, flat-out apologizing after the film’s abhorrent release and outright admitting he had no knowledge of the franchise and only did it for a cash-grab, it makes more sense that the film is riddled with the most obvious and predictable clichés that not only feel completely unlike the original source, but actively go out of their way to destroy what it did differently by replacing with bare-bones material. The show, to its credit, was so strange and out-there that it was never cliche and boring. Despite the film minimal running time of only 85 mins, it feels like an eternity drudging through such stale and thoughtless scenes with aimless direction, annoying/bland characters, and visuals that are so dull and uninteresting that you wouldn’t even imagine this would be based on an anime to begin with. For fans of the series, its going to feel like a slap in the face to everything they love, and for non-fans, it’ll feel like being stuck in a large patch of fog that never seems to go away (they won’t be angry, but they’ll hate the experience regardless). The director for this movie was James Wong, who’s only credits as a director included Final Destination (along with its third film) and the 2001 Jet Li film, The One, with only TV credits for writing and directing on shows like X-Files and 21 Jump Street, so he doesn’t really feel like the right person to lead this movie. With no care put into making this story interesting or even different, it can’t hide how the only reason for this film’s existence  is to continue to shill out a popular brand without any attempts at trying to make something good out of it. Even with the idea of changing things up, nothing is better and nothing is interesting, it’s never engaging, its never different, it never feels like its own movie rather a copy of other films, and it has practically nothing to do with the material it’s based on, name alone. Anyone whose heard a story about an outsider, a prophecy foretelling the end of the world, a villain trapped away but whose escaped years later, a mentor figure whose killed as a means of motivating the lead, a group being formed to take down a world-ending threat, all these cliches are front and centre without any thought put into them at all.

With a manga that did a pretty good job giving a lot of the characters distinct and interesting designs, this live action portrayal takes all that away and its poor competence arguably makes them even worse. All of them look like the most basic teenage archetypes of any movie, to the point that the entire project looks and feels like an even sillier version of a Power Rangers skit, except with all the goofy fun taken out and replaced with shallow emptiness (even they knew how to make some of their material less insulting). Even ignoring how practically none of them feel like they capture the roles they are supposed to be playing, none of theme even have defined traits to begin with, at least none that aren’t copy-pasted from other stories and characters. Goku is incredibly boring, Piccolo does nothing but stand around and moan a lot, the side characters don’t have much presence and they all fall flat in portraying who they’re supposed to be representing. Its weird because despite how poor this movie clearly looked on the outset, there’s a few talented Asian stars in this movie that seem way above this type of material (with even famous Hong Kong filmmaker and comedian, Stephen Chow, acting as a producer for the film). Aside from Goku who looks completely wrong, most of the other actors could work for the characters if they were written in a way that could make them fit despite looking and feeling so off, but the directing is so loose and seems unhelpful that it leaves everyone’s acting feeling incredibly awkward and stilted. Justin Chatwin especially suffers this with an incredibly uncaring performance filled with a lot of poor line reads and a lot of awkward faces. Emmy Rossum and Joon Park just feel lost half the time and are just doing whatever they want to try and stand out, and people like Chow Yun-fat, Jamie Chung, Eriko Tamura, and James Marsters occasionally sound like they almost get it, but also suffer from a lot of bad bland dialogue and a lot of bad reads as well. Everybody used in this film, regardless of how big or small their role was, is wasted in this film (they even had to drag poor Ernie Hudson into this).

For a franchise that would later be known for its high-flying action, the action in this movie is pretty pathetic. From the use of strings and slow-mo, its clear it was trying to replicate the feel of a classic Kung-fu movie, but with how poorly the action scenes are shot and paced, even when a stunt is actually there, its either quickly forgotten about through rushed editing, or just paired together with a terrible CG filter that it removes any of the actual cool stuff. Even the climax is just a computer-generated mess with horrible colors, boring set-design, and flimsy fighting. The world building in this movie is also atrocious; the world of Dragon Ball seemed filled with very uniquely designs and colorful locations, whereas here its feels like it’s been meshed together with other futuristic sci-fi worlds to the point that it never has its own identity. The lighting in so many moments is so saturated and ugly looking, it feels like its overcompensating for how dull and uninteresting the rest of the film looks like from a production design level created by Bruton Jones. Even though they do travel enough that they aren’t just stuck in the boring city for the whole time, but the large amount of time spent within the desert and a volcano don’t offer much in terms of visual variety and even color, so its not going to be a very visually pleasing movie in any format, especially when the effects look this poor.  The costumes themselves constructed by Mayes C. Rubeo, aside from Goku’s eventual fighting outfit, look pretty boring and too casual for fights. While the fighting outfits don’t look too bad, it doesn’t work when they so obviously don’t match the look and style the film has created for itself.

What else can be said about one of the weakest, most painful memories for any Dragon Ball Z fan in the history of its products lifespan, other than its greatest achievement is that it stands openly as a massive embarrassment that many hope to new repeat.  It managed to be such a dumpster fire of a movie that it revived the franchise it based itself off-of as almost an apology from the original creator who had to pick up from where this garbage film left this off on. With no respect for its material and no care for trying something different, the film went out as a cash grab on a famous property and failed at an overly extreme level. With a stale old and cliched story, boring and incorrect characters, awkward acting, horrible world design, ugly visuals and with no understanding of its own source material, the movie itself seems to only push away any newcomers from the show, and infuriate fans who have been waiting for a live-action movie. This movie is a lot of bad things, but the one thing it can hold onto forever, its definitely not Dragon Ball.  With no plans for any live-action movie in the future (this movie even pretending like it had a chance for a sequel is a little pathetic) its safe to say that this was a pretty rotten wish of a film.