Dragonball Evolution: A DISASTER!

Some movies get negative reviews but become a hit nonetheless (eg: Fast and Furious - rottentomatoes: 26% and domestic box office $118 million so far). Others are praised by critics but unfortunately fail to impress at the box office (eg: Milk - 93% - $31 million). Then there are those that win everything (eg: Slumdog Millionaire - 94% - $140 million). 

And then there's Dragonball Evolution...

Facts

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RottenTomatoes: 15%

IMDB: 3.2

American Box Office for Opening Weekend: $4 million - 8th!

Dragonball Evolution: A DISASTER!

Interview with the Dragonball Evolution Cast

ComingSoon.net/Superhero Hype! talked exclusively to the main protagonists of Dragonball Evolution: Justin Chatwin, Emmy Rossum, James Marsters and Jamie Chung.

Interview with the Dragonball Evolution Cast

Official Dragonball Evolution Site Is Live and Ugly

Behold the official Dragonball Evolution website: www.dragonballthemovie.com. The flash website looks decent but heartless and cheap. For a movie with a $100 million budget we were expecting something much better. The background 'music' or noise is very annoying. It is definetly aimed at young kids, just like the movie (yeyyy!). If you have nothing to do then you can check it out and tell me what you think.

Official Dragonball Evolution Site Is Live and Ugly

The Fans Were Right

"In short, it's as bad as the fans said it would be." says Zac Bertschy, Executive Editor for Anime News Network, in his review.  You can check out the review to see why he gave Dragonball Evolution the worst rating possible.

An extract from the review: "Fans who do know what the general story is will be furious at just how unbelievably badly they screwed this entire thing up. Kids are used to better writing than this in their weekday afternoon cartoons (although you may run into a kid who has never actually seen a movie before, and they might dig it until you show them another movie). It's a clunky, tiresome, badly executed, horribly written pile of shame that deserves no quarter."

The Fans Were Right

First Dragonball Evolution Review Since Release

Well, it seems Dragonball Evolution does not suck. :) Or so says the first review since the movie was released in Asia. Source: AICN

How was the movie? In a word, Kawaii. Cute. There's lots of little bits here and there that fans of the series will enjoy such as a pervy Master Roshi played by Chow Yun Fat, even the animated series they showed in the states and UK cut out those bits. Yamcha is kinda funny in that he sounds a lot like the Yamcha from the American dubbed DB, Emmy Rossim as Bulma was unimpressive. At times I felt I was watching Charactures on screen, they all have their trademarks personalities but not much else behind that.

I can understand why a lot of characters aren't in it such krillin, Tien and Chiaotzu. It's hard to fit so many characters and story into a film such as this. Especially one with a running time of 88 minutes. The story is very condensed but it mostly hits all the marks to be near enough to the basic story of Piccolo in the DB Manga.

James Marster is coolness as Piccolo however he is on screen for too short time. If there is a sequel I hope we get to see more of his character. Justin Chatwin seems to be channeling Goku a bit. At times he shines as the character. Other times it's a little wooden but I blame that more on the script as he doesn't have much to work with.

As for the story it starts with the introduction of the Dragonballs, Piccolo and Oozaru who tried to take over the world 2000 years ago. Piccolo was stopped and put in a prison and Oozaru disappeared. For fans of the show this won't be a big spoiler but for anyone who hasn't seen the animation or read the Manga the spoiler is that Goku is Oozaru. But he doesn't find that out till later.

Piccolo somehow escapes but it's not shown how.

Goku after his training with his Grandfather Gohan heads off to School. His School scenes are basically a rip off of the first Spiderman film and all those typical films where the guy defeats the bully and takes the girl, Chichi. Anyway, Goku can't kick these guys asses because if he did (and he could) they'd end up in a hospital or worse. So he has to control himself and not fight them. Later he decides to confront them at a party but doesn't fight them and instead lets them hit each other as he dodges their blows in super slow mo, how original....

Fortunately the story moves past Goku in high School pretty quickly and moves onto the real story. Piccolo offs Gohan while Goku is away. Goku Teams up with a girl he meets called Bulma who thinks the dragonballs can be used as an unlimited power source. They find Master Roshi and set out to search for the Dragonballs with the help of a bandit named Yamcha they meet along the way. But Roshi knowing they don't have enough time before a solar eclipse decides he has to learn a special technique to trap Piccolo once again but this will cost him his own life. The film speeds along to the end with Roshi Teaching Goku the Kamehameha, Goku does some training. Chichi has a fight with herself and they all head off after Piccolo.

The final action scenes are a bit disappointing. Goku as Oozaru looks a bit silly. I don't think Goku even throws one punch at Piccolo. Instead he uses the Kamhameha against him. By the end after using the Dragonballs to summon Shenron and save guess who they all set off again to find the dragonballs once more.

The film isn't bad. Just not great.

Suited for kids and curious fans.

I guess a lot of stuff was cut from this film. There are scenes in earlier Trailers that aren't in this and gone is the grey looking Piccolo, now he is only green.

If they make a sequel and I hope they do. I hope that they find someone else other than Wong to direct this. Make it bigger, more epic, add some more mythology and bring on Vegeta!

Nasty Nick

First Dragonball Evolution Review Since Release

Worldwide Release Dates for Dragonball Evolution

In Asia, they are already watching Dragonball Evolution.

12 March 2009

• Hong Kong
  
• Malaysia
  
• Singapore
  
• South Korea
  

13 March 2009 

• Japan
  
• Taiwan
  

14 March 2009 

• China
  

1 April 2009 

• France
  

2 April 2009 

• Russia
  

8 April 2009 

• Belgium
  
• Egypt
  
• Norway
  
• Spain
  
• Sweden
  
• UK
  
• USA
  

9 April 2009 

• Argentina
  
• Australia
  
• Brazil
  
• Croatia
  
• Czech Republic
  
• Germany
  
• Mexico
  
• Netherlands
  
• New Zealand
  
• Portugal
  
• Slovakia
  

10 April 2009 

• Iceland
  
• Italy
  

16 April 2009 

• Greece
  

17 April 2009 

• Poland
  

23 April 2009 

• Turkey

12 June 2009 

• Finland
  

Worldwide Release Dates for Dragonball Evolution

Two Clips From The Actual Movie!!

What will Dragonball Evolution exactly look like? Well, here's two clips. What do you think?

Two Clips From The Actual Movie!!

Dragonball Evolution Composer At Work

Film composer Brian Tyler conducts his score to "Dragonball Evolution" with the Hollywood Studio Symphony. The soundtrack will be released on 17th March.

Dragonball Evolution Composer At Work