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Kamehame...huh?! The Failure of Dragon Ball: Evolution! || Dragon Ball Month
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In the year 2024, a red panda, a wrestler and a chibi co-host power up to defeat the forces of evil in Dragon Ball Month! From transformations and fusions to live action and musings of living in this world, you will not want to miss this month!
In the third episode of Dragon Ball Month, Satsu is joined by Andrew to discuss one of Dragon Ball's most infamous entries: Dragon Ball: Evolution. But why did this film fail? What could have caused such issues? And why are there googly eyes on my sandwich?! All this and more in the next exciting episode of Dragon Ball Month!
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Transcript
Introduction to Live-Action Adaptation Concerns
00:00:00
Speaker
oh oh You know what, Andrew? I'm really surprised you agreed to adapt Chatsunami into a live-action film. I think it's just what the podcast needs right now. Oh, just you wait until you see the changes I've made. You are going to love it. Wait, what do you mean change? OH MY GOD! What's wrong? I kept everything faithful to the original ideas. I know, but you've got a six-foot guy over there dressed as a red panda. The guy playing Martin McCallister who's just flexing his muscles at a mirror. Yeah. Did you add Google the eyes to my sandwich? Relax. It's all part of the vision. Well, I guess it can't get any worse. Just out of curiosity, who's playing you? Well, you don't happen to have Henry Cavill's number, do you? That's it. Now I'm pulling the plug. Welcome to Dragon Ball month everybody.
Dragon Ball Month and Anime Adaptation Challenges
00:00:54
Speaker
Hello everybody and welcome to the third episode of Dragon Ball Month. My name's Satsunami and joining me for this live-action abomination is another than the one and only, Andrew. Andrew, welcome finally to Dragon Ball Month. Thank you for having me. You've gathered all seven of those mythical space orbs and you've summoned me to be the one chosen by prophecy to finally kickstart Dragon Ball Month.
00:01:23
Speaker
You were trying not to say balls weren't you? We are adults by the way. the magic orbs that you have to compile together in order to summon the magical lizard. And on that note, how are you doing today? I'm doing well, thank you. It's been an eventful few weeks. It was enjoyable going through some of the stuff for Halloween, October's spooky month. I know it's good to come out from behind the sofa and witness something even more horrifying. Yes, of course. And that is the absolutely wonderful, fantastic... Wait, sorry, what's that?
00:02:00
Speaker
Alright, this is one of the bad films, okay. The absolutely terrible, horrific Dragon Ball Evolution and oh my god, it's not good, is it? We really don't have to spend 10 hours telling you guys this is not a good film. Saying a bad Dragon Ball film, this is like, you know that meme from the Spider-Verse movie where it's like, can't say chai tea, chai means tea. Saying bad Dragon Ball is kind of redundant because they're all bad. Did you hear that in the background, by the way? How many people are powering up right now? In fairness, I am referencing live action. The animated movies are a hit and miss. Very true, because, and this is something I was talking to you about before we went into this episode, because initially I had a vision,
International Adaptations and Their Challenges
00:02:43
Speaker
okay? I had a vision thinking, you know what would be cool if we did a deep dive into two of the most infamous Dragon Ball live action films? And then I realised there was a third one out there and I thought, no way, no thank you. Because surprisingly enough, of all the countries in the world, do you would expect Japan to have made a live action Dragon Ball film? Yeah, but Attack on Titan and Full Metal Alchemist, we'll get back onto that at some point. But yeah, it was so weird, because in the 90s apparently there was a Korean adaptation, I watched a bit of it, did not like it, it was very uncomfortable to watch, and then there was a Taiwanese version, which again was pretty rubbish, not that great, and had very problematic moments, but the less said about that the better. So for such a cultural staple, especially in anime. It is surprising in a way that Hollywood and, you know, the general media machine, let's just say, didn't really capitalise on a live-action version. When it comes to live-action films of anime films, it is very difficult to adapt it and make it fit in with the rest of the world and things because anime is obviously very bright, vibrant, fantastical, and unless it's a very realistic slice of life one,
00:04:06
Speaker
it doesn't really translate well does it no unfortunately it does not translate well into western film lens it just doesn't work when you try and adapt these properties maybe they'll get it eventually but they just are not well-made so far a lot of them keep trying to do their own original thing and it just doesn't work And before we go on to talk about this a very, very, as I said before, infamous and you're going to hear that word a lot, but before I get into it, because you and I of course are old as hell, for legal reasons that's a joke, but where were you when this film was announced and came out? Did you go see this in the cinema out of curiosity? No, i I avoided this film like the plague. I saw trailers for it. I I very much struggled with this film and so when it came out I was seeing all the people just ripping on it as well. I saw loads of the different jokes about the weird fart airbending that they were doing. This was a more faithful Avatar movie than the M. Night Shyamalan one was. It's absolutely baffling what was going on in this
Failed Adaptations and World-Building Issues
00:05:21
Speaker
movie. I honestly can't disagree with that because did these two films not come out relatively close to one another in terms of year that is? Yeah I think that the M. Night Shyamalan Avatar came out in 2010 if I'm remembering correctly and this came out in 2009. I could be wrong on that but I'm pretty sure that that's the case. But it was just kind of an example of just how live-action adaptations of what are either anime or anime-inspired content just didn't really work. yeah It so much depends on the type of property. Some can be adapted easier than others, but when it gets quite so fantastical like this, and I'm told that's what Airbender was, it becomes an awkward kind of compromise of do you create a faithful adaptation and worry about the limitations that you have either from a budget standpoint from a technological standpoint and being able to sort of create kind of CG elements? Or do you compromise on that and you adapt it into a more workable format that allows for the technology that you have at the time by changing much of the story, the themes, and just how it plays out? That is kind of where it often falls.
00:06:36
Speaker
And Dragon Ball was very much the latter in the case where they tried to do something different. They kind of made it Resident Evil weird in terms of what the characters kind of looked like. A lot kind of weird cyberpunk-esque alternate reality future timeline. It's such a weird world that it creates because it has like a combination of Eastern influences and Western influences in this world that they try and tell but don't expand enough.
00:07:02
Speaker
upon to fully actualize what world we're in. It just kind of comes out as quite confusing as to where actually they are. And of course, the Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z TV series had hundreds of episodes to explain the world they're in. Albeit within the first episode of Dragon Ball, you can already kind of tell what this world is. is. And that was 22 minutes long. This took what around an hour and 20 maybe an hour and a half to create a very confusing world as to what was actually going on because it did not come across very coherently. But that's my little monologue there. What do you think? an hour 25 would you believe?
Detailed Critiques of Dragon Ball Evolution
00:07:43
Speaker
I was pretty on the dot then. Juneau was actually really surprising. Last week Martin McAlliston and I actually did a review of Fusion Reborn, one of the Dragon Ball Z animated films, and that came into 56 minutes or so. They made a more fantastical experience with that film than whatever the hell Dragon Ball Revolution was. But going back to what you were saying there, Yeah, I have to say I think I was in a summer war boat because I remember 2009 I would have been in the kind of latter half, maybe the last year or two of high school and I was still kind of into Dragon Ball but not as much. It used to be something that I watched as a child and I kind of started moving away from it and it wasn't until obviously when I started watching Dragon Ball abridged. Huge shout out to Team Four Star of course. that Don't associate them with this movie. I'm sorry. As the only way that would notice us.
00:08:42
Speaker
ah For legal reasons, that is a joke. Police consultant, right? Panda lawyer. Excuse me, I actually got Scott Ferrix, how's an echo from Team Forster, telling me to fuck off from time. What? He said that he loved Iron Man 3 and I said that it was one of my least favourite Marvel movies and he told me to fuck off. Wow. How does it feel to brush? Good greatness. Yeah, to brush with anime abridged greatness. It's the dizzying heights there. I got so mad for a while that I stopped following him for a bit. Well, I'm going to only watch your episodes two times a day. Yeah, wow. That is very rude of him. Terrible. If you want a red panda lawyer, we've got one in standby. Scott, just in case. well
00:09:22
Speaker
ah Anyway, going back to the film. I know, what we're putting it off but yeah, I think I was genuinely the same that I didn't see this film when it came out but yeah, I think I must have seen this film later because I'm sure Martin and I, we watched it in one of his bad movie nights and that was an experience. Ironically enough, it's not the worst problem I've ever seen but it was probably up there because of just how bad it was. I think because of the way it adapted the source material as you were saying and didn't really have any coherent world old building and whatnot. It was all over the place and they were trying to adapt it to make it more realistic but you can't really make it realistic because it's a dragon ball. They really shot themselves in the foot and had this weird parketry kind of middle ground that I don't think appeased anyone. And the thing is, usually this is the part when I say that obviously I don't hate the actors and everything and the director, obviously I don't. But I think this is one of the rare occasions where even the actors
00:10:26
Speaker
actors themselves have come out and said that they really didn't like this film because I was actually listening to a really interesting podcast. I don't know if you've heard of this, the Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum podcast. I've heard of him, but I don't recognise the name of the podcast. So, he's actually got a really good podcast. Basically, he interviews a lot of his celebrity friends and other celebrities, and he actually interviewed James Marster, the guy who plays Piccolo in this film. And he was also, I think, was in Buffy the Vampire Slayer or something. He's from Buffy. That's so funny. I can see his face shape now from Piccolo. I think he was in Torchwood as well, the doctor who spilt off, but he's been on a lot of things and his latest interview with him was really, really good. He actually talked a little bit about it, saying that he wanted to keep him quite gritty, he didn't want to prytify piccolo and things, but the saddest thing was on the podcast he actually talked about taking his kids to see this film. And there's a moment where he's saying how he went into the cinema and they really wanted to show his kids, obviously, that, oh, this is me on the screen. And he went into the cinema and the screening was apparently packed to the brim. He was like, wow, I can't believe so many people are out here for this. Well, he turned around to one of the kids beside him and he said, excuse me, is this the showing for Dragon Ball Evolution? And the apparently way the kids scoffed and went, what, Dragon Ball? No, this is fast and furious. So he took his kids out and they got to the right screening, and apparently, including him and his kids, there were only five people in the cinema. Oh wow. Yeah. The thing is, this isn't one of these films like The Room or Birdemic or something where are the creators are so, you know, tone deaf that they don't... Well, maybe Tommy Wiseau does recognise, but I know James Nguyen definitely doesn't, that they don't realise that, oh, this film is terrible instead of them thinking, oh, I'm an artist, genuinely, I think. all the actors, everybody involved, just do not like this film and for good reason. And again, this episode isn't going to be directing hate towards any of these actors or the director, producer, whatever. We might question their decisions. to be and as well um paul yeah no hatred here for you maybe
00:12:48
Speaker
well without any further ado as you charge your hatred kami harmi hard times ten we will be ah right back after our therapy um watching that film oh no Welcome to Shatsunami, a variety podcast that discusses topics from gaming and films to anime and journal interests.
00:13:08
Speaker
Previously on Chatsunami, we've analysed what makes a good horror game, conducted a retrospective on Pierce Brosnan's runs James Bond, and listened to us take deep dives into both the Sonic and Halo franchises. Also, if you're an anime fan, then don't forget to check us out on our sub-series, Chatsunani, where we dive into the world of anime. So far, we've reviewed things like Death Note, Princess Mononoke, and the hit Beyblade series. If that sounds like your cup of tea, then you can check us out on Spotify, iTunes, and all big podcast apps. As always, stay safe, Stay awesome and most importantly, stay hydrated. Howdy Beans and welcome to my podcast trailer. Now you're probably wondering who's this weird English fella talking to me about Beans? Well, great question. I am the host of the Nerds Nostalgia Podcast, Luke the Human. Nice to meet you. Hope you're doing well. Hope you're all good, as always. Now, you're probably wondering what is the Nerds Nostalgia Podcast? Well, another good question. Let me answer that for you. The Nerd Stagit podcast is a variety podcast talking about all things nerdy and nostalgic, from books, to video games, to movies, to TV shows, basically, if it is nerdy, and even if it just has the smidge, the hint of nerdism to it. Rest assured, I will cover it. Among all platforms, from Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music,
00:14:28
Speaker
And YouTube all you do is search no target of podcast and you'll find me so I hope to see you there really soon In an ancient time earth was nearly destroyed Not by man, but by gods from the sky
00:14:51
Speaker
Seven mystics banded together to fight the invaders. They created the Dragon Balls.
00:15:01
Speaker
Now the signs have appeared again. The evil has returned. Only one chosen warrior has the power to defeat this threat.
Casting Choices and Character Discrepancies
00:15:15
Speaker
I'm not ready for this. You are the only one who can do it. With this dragon, ball i take my
00:15:25
Speaker
upon We have to find the dragon balls before the eclipse. Let's go. We'll go. But we go together.
00:15:36
Speaker
This spring, the battle for our world. are you
00:15:47
Speaker
yeah
00:15:57
Speaker
Dragon Ball Evolution. And we are back. Woof, what a great therapy session that was. So, as we said, we are reviewing Dragon Ball Evolution today, the 2009 introspective piece. We have Justin Chaplin as Goku, the aforementioned James Marsters as Lord Piccolo, Chow Yun-fa as Roshi, how the Hell, they got him. I don't know for this. Emily Rosen is Bulma. Jamie Chang is Chi Chi. We've got an absolutely stacked cast. So today we are going to find out what the hell went wrong. And I'm reading this list and I just realized that Ernie Hudson is in this film. Oh, from Ghostbusters. Yeah.
00:16:37
Speaker
ah ah How did they get Ernie Hudson? So random, who'd he play? Sifu Norris. Oh yeah, he was the monks in the temple. Can I just say, and maybe this is just a by-product of me learning Mandarin, but I'm really starting to hate characters that are called Sifu because it literally translates as master. So basically, you're calling yourself that.
00:17:01
Speaker
yeah like Either that or you have some very weird parents that are like, oh yeah, let's call them Sifu. And I know the Kung Fu Panda right panda's called Sifu but let's not get into that today. But yeah, as I said, this has a surprisingly good cast. And I just don't understand where it went wrong Andrew. Because before we go into it, do you want to summarise it or would you like me to take the burden for this one? Do you have something locked and loaded? so for that oh No Alright, I can sum it up. Alright, so you have Son Goku, or is he actually ever called Son Goku in this? I think he's just called Goku or Giku according to his high school bullies, which is something I never thought I would say. I know. I mean, yeah, we've we've already diverted from the discussion of what the film's about to just say, why have they added that? Why is Goku a loser in school? Anyway, get back to that later. So we've got our boy Goku or Giku chilling out on this weird earth planet called Earth.
00:17:56
Speaker
but We've got this galactic warlord called Piccolo, who seemingly has been about and causing shenanigans. And you have these mystical dragon balls. If you gather all of them, then you get to make a wish. And there's a prophecy around gathering the dragon balls together and around this mystical Uzaru beast that could end the world. So we have our boy Goku, who is getting bullied in school. He's getting trained by his granddad. His granddad's like, I know you could beat up those guys, but you just have to really hold it in. You can't do it because you'll kill them. And Goku's like, Oh, grandpa, but I really want to. And also how do I speak to girls? And then he meets a girl he really likes. And then when he's about to go to
00:18:40
Speaker
first base on her, he's like, oh, Goku, sense activated. Something wrong has happened. And he goes back home to find that his grandpa has been flat packed furniture down by the house. It just collapsed on him. Really, really poor infrastructure. Please, Andrew, the appropriate term here, the sensitive term is getting IKEA. Thank you very much. He did. He got ikeed. The whole thing just fell apart on him. I saw this like a week and a bit ago. I don't remember if he survived a little bit and gave some parting wisdom, but in my headcanon he did and he was like, Goku, go and find Master Roshi. He'll show you the way. Go to Turtle Island, but not actually because he goes to a city and a townhouse that is actually Master Roshi's house.
00:19:21
Speaker
And he also meets some girl who's a super alt girl activated who has a gun and they fight each other and they're like, actually we're on the same side. Let's go find this master Roshi guy together. And they like go find master Roshi and he's kind of weird, which master Roshi is in the anime, but this guy's a bit of a different weird. And there's a very awkward, funny scene where he yells that he's Roshi the immortal and he's so great. And then midway through that Goku's like, my grandpa's dead. And then he's like, Oh.
00:19:47
Speaker
Can we just talk about that scene for a second? Because yeah, you go from this fight scene, and I'm using that term very loosely because all of the choreography is absolutely dreadful, but you go from that, and then of course he says the whole, oh I'm Roshi, the invincible, the immortal,
Narrative and Tonal Issues in Dragon Ball Evolution
00:20:03
Speaker
hahaha. And then he's like, my grandpa's dead. And you're like, don't trauma dump him.
00:20:09
Speaker
I'm like, yeah, this is a weird awkward pause in the middle of the laugh that he's doing. What is this movie? Anyway, all right. So Roshi gets brought into the fold. The three of them are now traveling. Goku is doing some weird little running alongside with the big backpack while they drive on a motorbike. And then they fall into a hall. Yamcha, the desert thief, has trapped them. And he's like this California bro who's like, Yeah man, I'm Yamcha. I have this weird digging machine and they dig their way through the hole and tell stories and there's like law dumps and then they go to a martial arts tournament for some reason. I've forgotten why they went there and they bump into Goku's love interest Chi Chi again and they have a whole thing and Piccolo's chasing them down and Piccolo's weird sidekick girl who can shapeshift sometimes and they have a fight and then they have more fights and they gather all the dragon balls and then Goku turns into Uzaru who saw that coming but then through the power of friendship they're like Goku this isn't who you are and he's like you're right that's not who I am and then there's a big old fight and Goku kami hamihas piccolo then it's all sunshine and rainbows in Goku land and that was the movie so So what you're saying is the audiobook for Dragon Ball Evolution narrated by yourself, of course, is coming out next month, the month after. Yeah, I think what I did there was very cohesive and people are definitely going to really enjoy listening to what I did there.
00:21:36
Speaker
and Ironically enough, it's also what you said to your therapist before the ad break was over. I was ranting hysterically about this movie. Honestly, this film is all over the place and I'm not just saying that about your recap of it because let's face it, it is a very succinct recap. It pretty much hasn't skipped over any of the major things that happen in this film and it is just so baffling because it's something that we talked about in the intro that this film especially if you compare it to the anime because the anime was loosely based on the Journey to the West, the Chinese mythology story where are of course in this version it's a young hybrid between a monkey and a young human boy who I find it's the same later but not in Dragon Ball but it was more very much fantastical when you had
00:22:28
Speaker
dinosaurs. You had all of these demons and things. and It was a really cool idea. You had shape-shifting, all the like. But then then Dragon Ball Z obviously became a lot more grittier and it was more sci-fi for teenagers and you had the fights, you had the big bombastic action sequences. So I think when they were coming up with this film, they were trying to marry the two things together, but obviously they couldn't have things like dragons and dinosaurs and whatnot floating around in the background. Why? I don't know. But they decided to go for, as you said, a kind of cyberpunk aesthetic. It's like a techno-Western Asian society. It's an interesting concept and it's something that the anime does in itself. There's an element of that in the anime. You have the capsule core the bubble building kind of things going on, and whilst also having very traditional East Asian kind of architecture and symbolism and that kind of thing. They seem to try and do that in this movie in a very different way. They still have Bulma whipping out the capsule motorcycle kind of thing, but
00:23:31
Speaker
I don't feel like they utilised that enough and then build out the world really enough in the movie. They focused on all the wrong things. like They focused on the relationship between him and Chi Chi way too much instead when they could have been building out this world a little bit more. Yeah, and one of my main problems with it, and obviously it's not the main main problem for a lot of people probably, but I don't even think they decided what Asian society to base.
00:23:55
Speaker
it's one old off of, because obviously, as I said, this story is heavily rooted in inspiration from Journey to the West, the Chinese mythology, the anime itself is Japanese, and of course we get Goku and the Gi later, which is a really weird scene because see when he goes to put on nii the Gi, the orange and blue one for the first time, and he picks it up and his granddad laughs from the grave, and it is so weird.
00:24:24
Speaker
Why are you laughing so creepily? Goku, it's not your time. There's a good chunk of that movie that's such a blur to me. I don't know what happened, but I don't really have many notes in that little gap. I have stuff at the very end. I have stuff for most of the film, but there's just this gap in the film. I do not remember and do not have any notes about, it so like it is complete blur for me. Well, you might not remember this next scene then, because when they go to Ernie Hudson ah to talk to the Sivu, I feel very much like they didn't really know what they were doing in terms of direction for this film. Even the opening scene, I mean, you have that little monologue thing about Piccolo being a Galactic Warlord, which, okay, but then actually cut into where we see Goku for the first time, we're zoomed in on his face sweating, watching a slow-mo sweat drip down his face.
00:25:13
Speaker
It was such a weird introduction to the movie. It already made me be like, oh, what is this? Well, if you'd been listening to Grandpa Gohan and his rules, the first rule is, there are no rules.
00:25:25
Speaker
Well, he does that and he uses our hand to push Goku off the practice wires. Yeah, and he has the weird cheek-rapple thing, which doesn't help at all. No, it's so bad. Who's this movie for? The movie is a silly movie by its own concept, even if it was true to form into silly movie. But like, that's such an immature joke to do. It's just so weak to to do like a cheek-blowing in the wind visual. It's so cheap. Yeah, and then he goes face first then to a bunch of watermelons. Yeah, and don't they like flick a bug at one another or something? Yeah, he flicks a bug at Grandpa Gohan and then he goes to hit him or something and then he avoids him and then he kicks him. Oh no, he cammy hammy has him. of watermelon. And that's kind of something that annoys me about it as well, that the attacks on this just do not feel as weighty as they did in the anime. If they're wanting to draw inspiration from Dragon Ball Z, because let's say that Dragon Ball Z had ended long, long before this film came out, and you know you had balls of energy, you had the blast, you had essentially the showmanship of it, Just to interject, I think they were going for more Dragon Ball than Dragon Ball Z, just from like the general story from what they were showing off, but they also aged Goku up to a point that you more expected it to be a Dragon Ball Z and more people know about Dragon Ball Z than they know about Dragon Ball. I do think they should have done Dragon Ball before they did Dragon Ball Z, but they did it in not necessarily the worst way, but they did it the wrong way. getting a hero that is so iconic like Goku who is very laid back, he's very much a free spirit, he doesn't care about anything except for food and justice and to then suddenly take that relatively innocent character and then turn him into a mopey teenager that just wants giros and always gonna fight the high school bullies. Nobody wanted to see that, nobody wanted to see Goku turned into a guy that slides across a car on his head oh my god i made a note about that it was so ridiculous what was that why did they do a weird head slide across the car also can i just say see that whole fight scene can we both agree that they were trying to kill Goku oh yeah see genuinely that wasn't oh you messed with the wrong punks kind of them up that was potential manslaughter are going on full-on murder there. That's what they were trying to do because there's a scene where obviously it's like the cool slow-mo, he flips and everything. One of the guys aims for his legs and the other one aims for his head. If he wasn't like a kung fu prodigy, he would be dead. He he would be 100% dead. Yeah. They make him such a loser as well. Why have they made him a loser? He says to his grandpa, teach me how to get the girl. This mofo looks like Jesse from Breaking Bad. He does not come across as the character of Goku from the anime did, where he seems innocent and playful and generally very strong. They make him strong. They don't want him to show it because they've made him into Superman in this where Clark Kent can't reveal his true strength. or he can't get angry at any point because other people in the world couldn't handle his strength and his anger, which we have Superman for that. Goku is his own character. Goku is the simplistic, very childlike in his mentality, in his psychology. We don't need this.
00:28:46
Speaker
They've kind of essentially created Gohan's arc when Gohan goes to high school, but made it Goku and just made it even less interesting. At least Gohan pretended to be a superhero while he was in high school. Whereas Goku was just like going about his day being bullied and being upset and having weird visions about Chi Chi in a strawberry field. Yeah, that was weird. What the hell was that about? I'm going to be honest, I don't think I've ever looked like when I was younger, I've never looked at a girl and then thought, wow, she's so pretty. I think we're even more pretty. Berries and cream. Berries and cream! Oh, I got that as a blast from the past. Yeah, that. No. My note is, what is this flower field eating strawberry vision that he's having of the girl? This film is stupid. I mean, I think you're under selling that there.
00:29:33
Speaker
Just to kind of rein it back a bit because I put out my usual tweet of saying, oh you and I, Andrew, we are going to be talking about this film, we're going to be reviewing it. What did you guys think about it? I got two responses. ah Both of them were just pained gifs. So the first one comes from the history of China podcast and they've got the meme of I think his name's like Harold or something. but he's basically just sent a gif of that, just the pained exp expression looking on. And then the other one that I got was from the superhero thing podcast of the character Ted Lasso turning around slowly and just the one thing like, oh, that has never happened before. Whenever I've asked a question like that, I'm like, oh, what do you guys think? And people will say, oh, it was great or all was it wasn't good. No one's done that.
00:30:25
Speaker
This is real new territory. Yeah, I can't think of anyone that hate watches this for enjoyment. I don't know how you could, though, because I was thoroughly bored. I had to get through this in two sittings. There's some ridiculous moments that you can heckle and whatnot, which might be semi entertaining. I watch it by myself because my parts are refuse.
00:30:42
Speaker
to watch it which fair play good for her i'm glad she didn't and she'll be glad that she didn't as well but if i'd had someone there to heckle with it might be more enjoyable but the fact that i was just watching this by myself it was so boring it's like a slog to get through the same moment where i was just like what the f- the weird shot of grandpa gohan eating the chicken wing i was like why are we watching him go to town in this chicken wing was it not a chicken foot. It might well have been, but it was really gross just watching him just munch on this chicken. I was like, why am I seeing this? This isn't beneficial to the movie at all. Is it supposed to endear us to grump out Gohan before he's about to get absolutely marked by Chad meme face piccolo? Why are we showing this scene? James Wong, there is blood on your hands.
00:31:23
Speaker
Have you heard some of the trivia for this film?
Production Revelations and Actor Discontent
00:31:26
Speaker
No, I have not. So I've got a list up here of it, and this is very eye-opening. Actors like Chew Young Tha and James Marsters, both amazing actors, partly they were told it was going to be like a large blockbuster with, and the quote here is, $120 million dollars budget, but then they were heartbroken after they discovered it would only cost 30 million, and would mostly be shot in an abandoned gene factory to save costs. I can't fit jeans in my car hold. That's what it sounds like, kind of a Dragon Ball movie in my car hold. But because of contracts and legalese, as it were, they can back out of it. James Marsters and Emily Rosen have both said that this is the films that they really don't appreciate in their CVs. I think Emily Rosen especially said that this is the one film in her career that people shouldn't watch. Is that Balmer? Yeah, that's the one. Should I pick Ariana Grande? Oh, don't you stop.
00:32:23
Speaker
screenwriter Ben Ramsey has apologised to the film apparently and admitted he got death threats from Dragon Ball Vans since its release. He also admitted only having written the film for a paycheck. I mean they all do, that's the whole point of their job. but Now I will interject and say the given death threats to the guy. It was a terrible film but come on guys, it's just Dragon Ball. like us normal anime fans just write his name in your death note. Good. They probably did as well, didn't they? But yeah, apparently James Wong never directed another film since this. Good. This was his final destination. Well apparently it was reduced to working on television according to this. That joke was amazing and I hope people at home laughed at that because that was great.
00:33:06
Speaker
And yeah, last but not least, there's hundreds of these. I could honestly keep going. But apparently Ron Perlman was offered the role of Lord Piccolo, but he turned it down to a hell body too. Pick your poison. Yeah, neither were very good. I guess he made the right choices ultimately. but That's not a win-win, they think it is. Can I just point something else out? Don't worry, there there's only a few more of these left. But what was up with, see Pickle. I get Pickle being the evil warlord and whatever. What was up with Pickle Let that followed him around? was so confusing as a character. I couldn't fully understand who she was, what her motivation was, and this shapeshifting seemed to come out of nowhere very late in the movie. They could have set that up early, maybe they did and I didn't notice, but that was terrible. Because there's an absolutely terrible terrible scene early on where obviously in screenwriting 101 I assume they tell you that if you've got a villain in an action film you've got to show that he is very ruthless and whatnot, he is very aggressive blah blah blah and there was a scene where the Ravage essentially a village and Drawya, there's this woman who's hiding with her child or something. And then Pick a Let comes out. And I'm calling her Pick a Let because I genuinely don't know if they give her her name other than Shapeshifting Hange Woman, number one. So anyway, Pick a Let.
00:34:32
Speaker
but she goes into this room and this I think it's a Japanese woman she comes out and this woman comes out and she's trying to protect the life of her child and you know I don't have to even express this to the parents or the listeners listening to this episode you're trying to save a child's life the character should have adrenaline rushing through them they should be terrified she's May she's supposed to be the Red Ribbon Army girl No. yeah No way. Yeah, so they've combined our character who's supposed to be under P. Laff, and then they've made her Piccolo psychic instead. That's disappointing too. tila They didn't even give her the humanoid dog in P last time, it was. Man, the film we could have gotten. We were robbed. Yeah, you've got that scene where this woman, she's basically begging for her child's life. Only you would never be able to tell that because see if you muted this film, you honestly would know if she was begging for a child's life or is she just waiting patiently until they leave? There's no acting or whatever. Even to when she sees Piccolo, she just kind of looks at them and is like, okay, this is my end. Bye. the hell was that? And of course, we get the infamous, so infamous, infamous pronunciation of Namek, which is... Nameks? That's what they call them? I think so, yeah. It's a weird thing that the live action movies were doing at that time when they adapted from Eastern influenced properties. It was absolutely butchering names. I don't even remember the M.I. Shyamalan, Last Airbender calling Hang Ong. Yeah. There was loads of other little name things that they seemed completely unable to pronounce correctly. It's not difficult. You've presumably watched this property to adapt it in this way. How are you getting it wrong? Yeah, because as far as I remember, and I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure most of the actors at least, they knew about Dragon Ball and they knew that, oh, this is Goku, this is Roshi, Chichi, et cetera, et cetera. But yeah, Nemex was And again, this is such a fanboy nitpicky thing compared to the rest of the film, but it seemed really weird. Will we talk about the finale of this film? Because I just want to talk about Ozaru for a second and just vent about that. okay What the hell was up with Ozaru? Why are they making like a werewolf? Exactly! And again, this is me being their day but the Ozaru is this huge great ape, literally a huge monkey that stomps around destroyed cities. I was so convinced we were going to see him earlier as well because Goku directly looked at the moon. ah One part of the movie and I was like, oh my goodness, he's going to turn into Ozaru now and then nothing happened. And I was like, oh, all right, so we're not doing that then. Eventually they've been building up Ozaru for ages and then we get that. It looked like the lichens from Resident Evil. It was so weird, I don't know what they were doing with it but it came across so clumsy and it was like a weird point of Falma and Yamcha running from it and just trying to kill time for something else to happen that didn't really end up happening anyway. Yeah I think it was the Mafuba trapping them and yeah that was another thing they kept saying like oh the Mafuba drains your life resources or your life energy.
00:37:37
Speaker
Oh, it doesn't. I get what they were trying to do, but it feels as if they genuinely took the Cliff Notes versions of episodes from Dragon Ball and they're like, okay, we need a guy called Goku, we need a woman called Bulma. Yeah, through Roshi and Grandpa Gohan there. There was nothing holding this film together, to be quite honest. It's very loosey goosey and then by the end, spoilers, we get a Michael Bay after credits scene that is alive. Oh my god, it was so awkward. Maybe this was like a trivia thing that was supposed to be this but I'd heard there was going to be a Vegeta post-credits scene that didn't end up happening. Really? Oh my god. But just seeing Piccolo sad in a bed recovering made me laugh. So he was just like, oh, I'm like this now. This is my life. And I wonder if they were setting up Piccolo being bad guy again, or if this is going to be like next one, Piccolo redemption. For those who aren't aware, in the original Dragon Ball, Goku fights against Piccolo and kills him as a child. Goku as a child kills King Piccolo. As he's dying, King Piccolo spits out an egg, which hatches as his son, Piccolo Jr., who grows up and becomes Goku's nemesis. And they fight, and he's a bit diabolical, but he isn't quite as bad as King Piccolo was. And so when you eventually then get the redemption arc, which kind of occurs over the course of Dragon Ball Z, it's much easier to be like, okay, that makes sense, we all love Piccolo, Piccolo's awesome, we love Piccolo. Whereas this guy is like space Hitler. And so if they were trying to do that in a subsequent movie, they didn't end up happening. And again, I'm throwing a lot of hypothetical assumptions here. How would they go about that? Because there's no way to redeem that character. And if they weren't doing that and they were just going to do Piccolo bad guy again. Yeah. What are you doing? That's boring as hell. Yeah, because they make this huge. And again, this is something I really hate in films when they bring out the whole prophecy card and they're like, oh, the prophecy's doing it like.
00:39:28
Speaker
under ah out They were so obsessed with the chosen one thing around that time as well. There were so many things about the chosen one, it was so annoying, really cliche. I mean he had harry a porter you had you had any young adult fiction adaptations as well. There were so many things that there were prophecies surrounding this one character that could they be the one and it was so overdone. It was really cliche and this just adds to it and this was not even executed well. Sometimes it can be done well and this was not one of those times.
00:39:58
Speaker
See as a closing question though, do you think that Dragon Ball can work in live action? I very much think that it can work. I'm not a film writer. I've said this in previous episodes. I don't think that I can necessarily write a better film or TV series than many of the things we've criticized. However, I do think I could put together a better draft of a script for a Dragon Ball movie than what we witnessed over the course of an hour and 25 minutes.
00:40:24
Speaker
I don't know about you, but I genuinely think I could do a better job. And I've not watched Original Dragon Ball in almost a decade now, but I could be much truer to its story from just my rough memory, and I would rewatch it! And maybe they did, maybe they rewatched it, and were just like picking and choosing bits they liked from it.
00:40:41
Speaker
I get that they were trying to condense down the story of introducing the character all the way to this final battle of Piccolo, which is it's tough. and You have multiple arcs happening throughout the original Dragon Ball run, and then if you try to tell each of those, then it would be too long and you wouldn't have a movie, and it would be kind of awkward if you try to make a film of original Dragon Ball and like cut it at the Garlic Junior arc kind of thing. That would be an awkward place to have the movie set. It makes sense to be against Piccolo. But you can still trim down the events of Dragon Ball into a way that makes sense to do a live action movie for it. One of the biggest issues is the story of Dragon Ball is essentially the story of getting a MacGuffin. MacGuffin being Dragon Balls, and there are seven of them. And so you have to do the MacGuffin seven times. And so you have to kind of weave in finding these. In the show, each time you acquire one is its own whole storyline, story art kind of thing, with the ah odd exception of sometimes just like, oh, there's one over there. But quite often, there's a whole kind of story residing around the collection of these. And that makes it a bit more of a fleshed out universe and story and it shows the effort of getting them. which is very tricky over a movie, and so which is why many live-action adaptations now are over a TV series. Because one piece, for example, it's much easier to tell a story arc over eight one-hour or 45-minute long episodes, and that's your season, and you've told the story through that way, which might be the best way of doing Dragon Ball, potentially. But with something like Dragon Ball, you need quite a big budget. Generally, TV series don't have that. The One Piece live action might be the best template you could have for it, but I think you would struggle within that template to have something that people wouldn't just completely rail on, that people would hate. I think that One Piece works in that way that Dragon Ball perhaps wouldn't, so I've kind of contradicted myself a few times here in that I think it can work,
00:42:36
Speaker
but I do think it would be tricky. I think you could have a much better movie than the one we got, but I recognize the difficulty of doing it. And unfortunately 2009 was not the year to
Comparison with Successful Adaptations
00:42:46
Speaker
do it either. We weren't there in terms of how live action anime could be adapted. It just was not there. Again, I was actually thinking that as well about the One Piece adaptation, which is probably, and maybe this is a controversial take, but I do think it's probably one of the best if not one of the more better examples of a live-action adaptation of an anime that succeeds in every way and makes it entertaining. Even if they do small changes here and there with the characters and whatnot, it's still a good example. And I do think As a closing point, I do think that Dragon Ball Evolution had to make changes to the characters, to the settings and things, because let's face it, Dragon Ball is inherently a very wacky universe, something which we will be talking about next week ironically enough. But The fact of the matter is you go from a series that is all about big muscly men punching one another and yelling and powering up and things and throwing energy balls at one another as you say collecting dragon balls to generate a dragon who gives you wishes not the weird CGI abomination that they somehow conjured for this particular film. It looks so bad, but that is a whole other rant. But the fact is that they had to make changes, I completely understand that, and I'm not against them trying to do their own thing with it. But you're completely right, I feel as if this came far, far too early. And I think even Akira Toriyama, the creator of Dragon and Ball, hated this film
00:44:21
Speaker
as much as everybody else. So even when you have the creator initially saying, oh be very open-minded, don't spread a lot of hate towards them and then all of a sudden you're getting him saying in the same breath, well actually it's um it's not very a good for them. I do think that there is a possibility that it could work, but I think they need to emphasise more of the martial arts aspect of it and even the philosophies of it, because this is something that Martin and I brought up in our Dragon Ball Transformations episode where we're talking about liking certain forms like ultra instinct because it's more about achieving a state of mindfulness and zen and whatnot, very much like the Buddhist philosophies that the journey to the west, which as I've said numerous times is the inspiration for this, is based on. So it's really weird how they didn't lean more into the spiritual side as well. I think if they did,
00:45:24
Speaker
and again it doesn't have to be Buddhism. There can be any form of of spirituality they want to really put in it but at the end of the day there's not really that reverence for the source material. This has beaten a dead horse or dead dragon whatever way you want to look at it but the choreography is not that great. The action that itself going off of that again it's all close-ups and hard cuts and things and really swift cuts away from the action and you're like well what's actually happening. The plot itself as we established is just not strong at all and I think it did need that expansion on it but unfortunately we just don't get that with this film. um And I think it is probably because it came too early and people didn't really know what they were doing with it. twin said you fuck
00:46:11
Speaker
Ramsay's script was too expensive to make. I'm not surprised given the source material. If you're going to make one of these movies, it's going to be a hundred to $200 million budget at least. They just wouldn't do that. And so they had James Wong do some rewrites of the script to cut it down and make it a more budget friendly final product. I'm very curious what Ben Ramsey's original script looked like. They initially approached Lex Nider and Robert Rodriguez to have a look at these movies. And someone called Stephen Chow, who, the name's unfamiliar, but I can't remember why. I think they even had George Lucas paint up. Really? I haven't heard that. That's funny. Kung Fu Hustle is what Stephen Chow made. And Shaolin Soccer. Oh, that would have been so good. That would have been amazing. Yeah, so instead we got James Wong, who didn't really have much background in anything that would have been close to this. He's best known for directing Final Destination, and he's worked on a variety of other projects as well, like X-Files, but he didn't really make sense to be the one to do this. I think I remember even at the time thinking, why James Wong? It was a very similar thing with M. Night Shyamalan and Avatar. I've referenced that several times today, because these movies came out similar time, had very similar kind of reception. You kind of need to find a director that is suited for the type of movie you're making. Neither James Wong nor Emily Shyamalan made sense for their respective movies. You did not mention the Rocky style freeze frame ending at the very end of the movie with Goku and Chi Chi, which I just was like mouth open to that. I was like, what was that? Honestly, Abbott goes far to say this film probably killed any possibility that we would get another Dragon Ball live-action adaptation. Yeah, at least for a while longer. I think we will get one eventually. It's only a matter of time. as you said, if they go the Netflix approach then I definitely see a possibility of there being something relatively good. And again, going back to the other live-action films, I'm not going to pretend the one from Taiwan or the one from South Korea were peak cinema, but that was essentially children who were dressed up as Goku, they had the silly hair and everything, and it felt more like
00:48:23
Speaker
someone pretended, I know that's what acting is, but you know they were pretending to be Goku in a kinda home movie. It wasn't really meant to be Goku, the hero. You were supposed to watch this and go, oh wow, I'm watching my hero. You're essentially watching a kid dressed up as Goku running around hitting people with a pole and you're like, huh.
00:48:42
Speaker
and interesting adaptation and again those aren't a official adaptations but in summary I honestly hope that if they do a live-action adaptation of Dragon and Ball again that at least they take their time that they actually respect the source material as long as they take other shows like One Piece Even as a template then hopefully we'll be able to get something good. But on that note to end the misery, Andre, thank you so so much for joining me on this adventure. Is that the right word?
00:49:16
Speaker
It certainly was a journey to the west, I'm not so sure. To the bank, very much no. To bed, quite possibly. And before you pass out from exhaustion after watching this film, where can these amazing Pandalorian listeners find your content? Well, you can find me on many prior episodes of Chatsunami. I've done some recently like the Ghost Stories episode we did in October, and we've done several other ones. The season just recently started, so there's not been any for a few months, but you could find a lot of my episodes prior to June. I want to say like May, when the previous episodes were. There's a whole bunch of episodes from Animated General Interest right there with me right on there. And you can find me also on the podcast Stop, Drop, and Roll Initiative. to Dungeon Dragon's Tabletop podcast with myself, Satsunami, the wrestler Mark McAllister, and Twitch viewer Robotic Battle Toaster. You can listen to that where all good podcasts can be found. That's Stop, Drop, and Roll Initiative, SDRI Pod on Twitter, and I'm greenshield95 on Twitter, or X, whatever you wanna call it, but where can the other fine listeners find you and your content? Well, I'm glad you asked, Andrew, and I'm a little bit offended that you forgot, but just for the listeners, let's recap.
00:50:26
Speaker
Of course, now jokes aside, you can find all of our episodes on the website, chattsunami.com, as well as all good podcast apps. I also want to thank our amazing Pandaloon Impatrons, Robotic, Battlestool and Sonya. Thank you so so much for supporting the show, and if you too would like to become a Pandaloon Impatron, as little as £1 a month. That is probably the same price as a copy of Dragon Ball Evolution these days. I have much better value. Exactly. So if you want early access, if you want behind the scenes content, if you want bloopers, commentary tracks, the works then you can check us out on our Patreon patreon.com forward slash chat tsunami. But next week for Dragon Ball Month, Andrew and I are of course diving into the weird and wonderful world of what it would be like to live in the Dragon Ball universe. So, without any further ado, we are going to go away and get prepared for that. Death. There's a lot of death. Well, Let's not spoil the listeners. Come on. We spotted the title card, don't you worry. Death? We're podcasters. Captain Satsu is a dead. On that note, stay safe, stay awesome and most importantly, please don't watch this film. Stay hydrated but please don't watch this film.
00:51:41
Speaker
With googly eyes on every sandwich in sight, will Setsunami be able to stop the diabolical directing of his co-host Andrew? Will they be done professionally? And will they be able to get Henry Cavill's number? Find out in the next exciting episode of Setsunami Z!