For the record, I've never liked the Dragonball series, but it's got such a long history that I can't help but be curious about it. The idea of a Dragonball live action movie has been tossed around for years and it hasn't been until the popularity of comic-related movies exploded that the movie has finally been made and--
It's a travesty.
The opening narration from Chow Yun Fat as Roshi is, well, I won't call it a high point, but everything just goes downhill from there. There's literally so much shine plastered all over this trailer in the form of explosions, fires, lens flares, poster poses and blazing dragonballs that you almost physically cannot see how bad the movie is behind all of the flash. If you squint hard enough, though, you can see how slow the action is, how many of the sets have that fake foam-block look, how awkward the transfer from super stylized anime to a modernized sci-fi/fantasy movie is, and good Lord, what did they do to James Marsters in that Piccolo costume?! He looks like a reject from Batman & Robin.
In the trailer, we're given the basic background lore of the story, but no character motivation aside from: "Save the world by getting the Dragonballs first." After that, we're thrown a lightning-fast collage of action scenes, none of which are particularly fascinating (the "Who are you?!" line from Chi Chi--the girl facing off against her doppelganger--was particularly cringe-worthy)
The effects have money behind them but it just doesn't have that extra level of polish that pushes a movie into realistic, believable CG. The movie tries to work that difficult line of staying faithful to the source material while adapting it to appeal to a more general audience. The overall effect is less then stellar.
Then again, perhaps this trailer captures the exact essence of the original Dragonball: long-winded fights that require ten chapters or fifteen episodes to complete and explosions on the nuclear level. After all, in a 2 minute preview, we have this many colossal explosions:
....and that's not counting all of the attacks near the end of the trailer, not to mention that painful looking Kamehameha in that second-to-last picture up there. For those of you die-hard Akira Toriyama fans out there, I pity you.
Dragonball Evolution opens on April 8, 2009. Visit the Official Website
*Crosses fingers*
Legend of Chun-li or Dragon Ball. I wonder which will upset me more...
I know Legend of Chun-Li's going to break my heart. She was the first kickass Asian female role model I ever had and... yeah. This is going to ruin my childhood.
Worst...Movie...Ever...
Btw the fight sequences in the manga of DBZ were awesome and not drawn out like the anime, get your facts straight panda!
Hey, hey, according to the wiki, chs 125-127 are the same fight, which then transition directly into another fight. If that's not drawn out, I don't know what is!
Do you OWN all 42 volumes?!?! They aren't drawn out fights, they're EPIC fights!