It has come to my attention that things outside
the basement may not be as fine as we initially
thought.
My general coping strategy in times like this
is to stare at a screen with something fun
on it until my brain can pretend it’s not
happening. But when things are this bad, that
doesn’t always work – hence all the venting
just now – and I have to go with my backup
plan, which is to expose myself to something
so unfathomably horrible that the real world
seems manageable when I’m done with it.
So, I watched Dragonball Evolution. And now,
to help all of you inoculate yourselves against
the mindshattering horror of our shared reality,
I’m gonna talk about it. A whole bunch.
Too much, even.
I’ve roasted some some absolutely DOGSHIT
live action anime adaptations in my time,
but nothing quite like this. Fullmetal Alchemist,
Ghost in the Shell, and even Attack on Titan,
with that weird single mom thing, all at least
resembled their respective anime, conceptually
and aesthetically. Dragonball Evolution, meanwhile,
completely guts its source material of all
substance, leaving behind only a tattered
Goku skinsuit, hanging loosely on the orange-and-teal
tinted action movie skeleton of Michael Bay’s
Transformers and its way too many derivatives.
And while the meaningless dramatic camera
sweeps, gratuitous slow motion, and seizure-inducing
fast cut close-up action typical of that style
didn’t work all that well for… most things,
they are COMICALLY ill-suited to martial arts
movies in particular.
The whole draw of a good kung-fu flick is
the choreography, which is best appreciated
through long cuts and wide, steady shots that
emphasize the motion of the actors. Filmed
in the bay knockoff style, even good choreography
– which this film doesn’t have much of
to begin with – devolves into barely comprehensible
slapstick. Which actually pairs quite nicely
with DBE’s hilariously awkward performances,
terribad special effects, and cartoony, over
the top sound direction.
If you’re looking for something so bad it’s
funny, this movie is a laugh riot. But of
you go in as a fan hoping for an exciting
big screen rendition of the father of modern
action manga, it’s gonna send you into a
blind rage in like a minute flat.
That’s not an exaggeration. Dragonball evolution
opens with this awkward CGI prologue that
exists solely to regurgitate information that’s
already in the actual movie because I guess
they just assumed only idiots would watch
this. Fair enough. And in just its second
sentence, it manages to sink the entire franchise
it’s trying to build. I’m kinda impressed,
honestly.
“A warrior named Pee-ccolo came from beyond
the stars”
“aided by his disciple Oozaru, the evil
pair brought the human race to the brink of
annihilation.”
Even people who actively dislike Dragonball
can tell you that the only connection between
Goku and Piccolo is that they’re both from
space, but this isn’t just any old inaccuracy.
By changing Goku’s backstory and making
him the servant of a Namekian specifically,
this movie makes it functionally impossible
for its potential sequels to adapt either
the Saiyan or Frieza sagas. Which is kinda
like making star wars without the death star.
Of course, only folks familiar with dragonball
will be appropriately disgusted by that, and
this movie was meant to reach a broader audience,
so to make sure everyone else is on the same
page, the film proper begins with almost thirty
straight seconds of Justin Chatwin sweating.
Like, the real drippy stuff, getting all up
in his eyes in super slow motion. That’s
sure a thing I wanted to look at up close
in HD. This is followed by a wider closeup
where he looks like he’s just… high as
balls. Which it turns out he is! A wild Grandpa
Gohan appears and hops up on the ropes to
fight his stunt double, and… I’m pretty
that’s what happens next?
“First rule is… there are no rules!”
Like I said, this style of filmmaking is totally
at odds with everything a martial arts film
should be. The movie cuts to a different angle
for every punch, kick, and goofy-ass reaction,
making it impossible to follow the flow of
the fight or appreciate the sometimes genuinely
impressive acrobatics involved. Though to
be fair, the erratic editing also does a good
job of hiding some sloppy filmmaking.
This shot, for instance, goes by so quickly
that your eyes don’t have time to register
this guy who’s definitely Justin Chatwin
going prone against the ropes before he’s
shown standing upright in the next one. And
the shot of Gohan springing back up that follows
is likewise so fleeting that you don’t even
notice Justin is very obviously standing on
solid ground and waiting for his queue to
do this awkward little wiggle thing like the
ropes are shaking.
But even fast cut no jutsu isn’t powerful
enough to hide the super Saiyan 3 brow bulge
from all his blood rushing to his head when
he’s hanging upside down , or the godawful
form of his wire-fu jump side kick.
Okay, I know it sounds like I’m nitpicking
here, but I think it’s important to establish
just how bad Justin Chatwin *specifically*
is at pretending to do martial arts. Anyone
who knows the first thing about Dragonball
can tell you that Goku NEEDS to be played
by a skilled martial artist, yet Chatwin’s
only preparation for this role was a six week
MMA “Boot Camp” – in other words, he’s
a goddamn white belt. And with all due respect
to white belts – the first step of the journey
is one of the hardest – a goddamn white
belt has no place playing Son fucking Goku,
son.
Ignoring the stupid grimace on his face, if
justin had actually connected the kick with
his knee locked like that, he’d have spent
the rest of this movie in crutches. So he
should really be thanking Gohan for scaring
him off with deadly juul vapour, instead of
bitching about it like a sore loser.
“shadow crane strike, you fell for it again!”
“Yeah well it’s hard to block a move I
can’t see”
That’s Justin’s first spoken line in the
movie, and it is COMPLETELY at odds with who
his character should be. Goku takes everything
in stride, and few things excite him more
than the prospect of learning a new martial
arts technique. But generic American action
movies need reluctant heroes to do the whole
journey thing – and thus, one of the most
iconic, purehearted protagonists in all of
fiction must be reduced to a typical, whiney
teenager.
Also a horny one. And while it’s already
WILDLY out of character for Goku to be interested
in Chi-Chi at all, the sheer degree of thirst
which Justin displays toward this film’s
version of her is straight up embarrassing.
Creepy even. Just watch the way he bad-touches
the camera with his eyes while imagining her
mouthfucking a strawberry in a field of flowers.
Ugh. Can you get a restraining order against
a movie?
That whole bit is so gross that it might distract
you from the film’s pathetic attempt to
justify an exposition dump about “The Nameks”
by having a teacher ask a room full of people
with drivers licenses how eclipses work.
Then again, you can apparently not know that
and still be president. But, either way, I’m
getting ahead of myself.
I know I’ve already spent a lot of time
harping on the opening scene, but as the film’s
introduction to its version of Goku, it’s
kinda key in understanding everything that’s
wrong with him and it. And I think the way
he whines to his grandpa in the greenhouse
encapsulates that nicely.
“What friends? Everyone at school treats
me like I’m nothing, grandpa”
“They push me so far that I wanna explode.
Y’know I could tear them apart with one
hand”
“Teach me how to get the girl.”
“Teach me how to be NORMAL.”
“Normal is also overrated. You must have
faith in who you are.”
This movie doesn’t understand that Goku
is a character people like and want to see
on the big screen. It thinks of him only as
a superhero power set, and its main narrative
goal is to take that power set, along with
his hot wife, and give them to an angsty,
white, teenage geek to whom the presumed target
audience can presumably relate. Y’know,
basically just make him spiderman, but goku,
and with none of the things people actually
like about either character.
Now, to you and I, that’s a very obviously
bad idea, but you’ve gotta consider things
from the perspective of someone who’s really
dumb, but who thinks they must be smart because
they have a lot of money. Someone whose only
exposure to people with common sense is reading
focus test summaries. You know, A fox executive.
As they saw it: hey, nerds like spiderman.
They made superman into spiderman for that
one mediocre WB soap opera and that shit got
like… 10 seasons. And Goku’s basically
superman already. So just go out there and
fuckin… give goku some high school bullies.
Tragedy the shit out of his surrogate father
figure. HURRY. WE’RE NOT PRINTING MONEY
FAST ENOUGH!
To be clear, my issue with this isn’t necessarily
that Goku’s been “whitewashed” – he’s
an alien; any casting choice is *theoretically
valid,* and aside from him, Dragon Ball Evolution
has more Asian representation in its main
cast than any other Hollywood anime adaptation,
except arguably ghost in the shell. And yes,
that is INCREDIBLY sad.
But, the problem isn’t JUST Justin’s look
and what it represents – it’s that, in
pursuit of that look, and the “marketable”
escapist fantasy they wanted to build around
it, the people in charge of this movie abandoned
basically everything that made Goku likeable
– and made Dragonball successful in the
first place.
A lot that’s bad about this movie can be
traced back to that ass-backwards marketing-first
mentality. And the signs of that executive
meddling are so STUPIDLY OBVIOUS and poorly
handled, that at times DBE reads more like
a PARODY of this stale formula than a sincere
attempt to execute on it.
Take the bully characters, for example. The
way Justin and his Grandpa talk about them
sets up the expectation that they’re hurtful,
but relatively harmless – nothing to do
a violence over. Yet the first thing we see
the Flash Thompson knockoff, Gary Fuller,
do is TRY TO FUCKING MURDER JUSTIN WITH HIS
CAR, IN FRONT OF EVERYBODY.
Also, hey there’s that forehead vein again.
Are we sure this isn’t supposed to be the
Akira movie?
Now, high school IS a lawless hellscape, but
it’s absurd to think that even the richest,
douchiest rich douche could get away with
that. Still, the power fantasy demands that
our hero beat up the bully and steal his girl,
and the film’s only got like 20 minutes
to do that before the actual story starts,
so this lone instance of bullying has to be
pretty extreme to justify it. Then again,
it’s a pretty extreme, arguably irresponsible
power fantasy to be selling to angry, socially
isolated kids in the first place.
“I didn’t know goku had it in him”
“It’s always the quiet ones”
It also raises the question of why anyone
would be crushing on the kind of girl who’d
happily walk off with her arm around a dude
who JUST tried to run him over.
Justin doesn’t seem to care, though. He’s
so thirsty for Chi-chi he can’t even get
his Ki up when she’s not around. Like, the
film makes a BIG point of showing that he
can’t use ki blasts, but then right after
first grade astronomy, he sees a chance to
impress her, and suddenly he can blow open
a whole row of lockers like it’s nothing.
And just so you know it’s not a coincidence,
the same thing happens AGAIN when he’s trying
to learn the Kamehameha.
“Every time you light a torch, you get to
take one step closer to me”
“What happens after five steps?”
“very impressive”
Forget Super Saiyan – this boy’s Super
Simpin’.
Also, the locker thing is what passes for
a meet cute in this movie.
“You used your ki.”
“You know about ki?”
Ah yes, the popular pretty girl is a secret
nerd about the same thing he’s a nerd about.
Could this pandering be any more obvious?
And could Justin be any more overeager?
“Hey, I’m having a party at my house”
“I’ll be there”
Fuck, dude, at least PRETEND you haven’t
followed her there before.
Soon enough we see him getting ready for the
party, and one of the movie’s only decent
intentional jokes.
“Beauty awaits.”
Sure it’s totally out of character, but
anime hair do be like that!
Anyway, because Goku’s gotta be Spiderman,
he needs to let his adopted dad down in some
way right before he’s murdered. So even
though Gohan seems like he’d be totally
cool with it if he just… asked, Justin sneaks
out to the party while his grandpa’s busy
cooking him a special birthday dinner.
“Goku, happy birthday!
…Goku?”
“This is the best birthday I ever had”
What an unbelievable asshole.
Speaking of unbelievable assholes, a few goons
attack Justin as soon as he arrives at the
party, but because he suddenly cares about
promises to his grandpa again, he can only
evade their attacks and goad them into fighting
each other. He does the same thing to the
boss bully when he shows up, and… I know
you’re all expecting me to meme on this
bit now
but… one, that’s been done to death in
every other video about this movie. And two…
this is actually the best fight in the film.
Low as the bar for that is. You can follow
the action reasonably well, a few cuts last
long enough to appreciate some of the stuntwork,
and it’s clearly intended to serve as comic
relief before Gohan dies, so I’d say for
how many people have laughed at it, that hair
slide gag more than succeeds at what it sets
out to do.
Besides, I’m more concerned with what this
scene does to the characters. Because while
Justin doesn’t lay a finger on the bullies,
uh, Chi-chi… doesn’t know that. She just
walks out to find him surrounded by a circle
of her unconscious party guests. And given
that context, it’s kinda… fucked up that
she just follows him back inside to flirt
without bothering to check on any of them.
Even the one she’s dating.
Movie Chi-chi comes off as this flakey, amoral,
fight-slut who’ll fall for any guy who can
beat up the last guy she fell for. This is
apparently motivated by the artificial off-screen
conflict that she loves martial arts but her
parents just don’t get it… which is literally,
exactly the opposite of what a Chi-chi is.
As he’s busy mackin on her, Justin’s spider
sense starts tingling, signifying that it’s
finally time for the plot to happen. Back
home, Piccolo shows up looking for the 4 star
ball… which I guess has just been in this
same house for the last 2000 years? Because
if he had a way of detecting it he would have
just gone to the party. Anyway, it’s not
there, so he gets pissed and force chokes
Gohan – a thing he can apparently do – before
dropping the whole ass house on him out of
spite.
Which is not a thing that would even daze
your average ki user, let alone kill him,
but that’s a nerd nitpick. And there’s
a much more fundamental problem with Gohan’s
death.
The sole purpose of the film’s first act
is to give the audience time to get attached
to him, so we’ll feel something when he
dies in his grandson’s arms. It doesn’t
work, because everything about the movie is
terrible, but it does create the impression
that this relationship is the emotional core
of the story. Which it absolutely is not.
And that means you get some big ol’ narrative
blue balls when, at the end of the film, our
hero uses the Dragon Balls to revive an old
weirdo he’s known for like a week, and not
the man who raised him, or “everyone who
died because of Piccolo.”
The final scene of the movie, on the other
hand, implies that Justin’s relationship
with Chi-Chi is supposed to be its real driving
force – and the heavy focus on her in this
intro does support that idea. But if it was
true you’d think she’d be…. In the rest
of it more.
As uncharacteristically eager to brawl as
this version of Chi-Chi is, the film only
ever uses her as a sex prize for Justin to
enjoy when he does a thing. She doesn’t
get involved in any major fights – and in
all of the minor ones she very conspicuously
leaves her sports bra unzipped – and her
only contribution to the actual plot is getting
knocked the fuck out because Goku knows so
little about her that he IMMEDIATELY fails
the doppelganger test.
Even though he can sense Ki, and like, you’d
think that, as her stalker, he’d have gotten
a feel for hers by now. But that’s besides
the point. Her character is so completely
disposable that the only time Jamie Chung
interacts with any member of the main cast
besides Justin is when she’s playing Mai
in a Chi-chi costume.
“Hey, what are you guys doing out here?”
“nothing”
Oh, yeah, in case you missed it, the random
ninja lady who follows Piccolo everywhere
is supposed to be Emperor Pilaf’s servant
Mai, and, like, now that I say it, I’m sure
you can see the resemblance. Mai’s hair
is basically a bob cut only longer and not
at all, and a trenchcoat is pretty much the
exact same thing as a skin tight bodysuit
with a boob window. It’s downright uncanny
how the production design team managed to
capture the spirit of her character.
Now, the whole Pilaf gang does end up serving
Piccolo in the original manga for a spell,
but the other two are MIA here because I guess
a talking dog ninja and megalomaniacal gremlin
were too unrealistic for a movie where a monkey
man kung fu fights a green space alien for
magic wish balls. So Piccolo just sorta shows
up out of the blue riding around on a random
airship that I think is supposed to be Pilaf’s
Flying Base, even though it looks more like
something out of Final Fantasy.
And aside from killing Gohan, pretty much
all he does in the film is occasionally show
up at a random place to do evil shit and,
like, remind us he exists. Because Piccolo
– the antagonist of the movie – doesn’t
directly interact with Goku – the protagonist
of the movie – until the last 10 minutes
of the movie. He mostly only talks to his
Tiddy Ninja ABOUT Justin, and then one time
he sends some rubber suited power ranger goons
to attack him at the one place that conveniently
negates their healing factor.
And that is maybe the worst thing about this
whole movie. Because while every 90s kid loves
both dragon ball and power rangers, any nineties
kid can tell you that Dragonball is NOTHING
LIKE POWER RANGERS, MOM! YOU JUST… YOU JUST
DON’T GET IT.
It’s a real shame that Piccolo especially
doesn’t get to do more, or play off the
other actors, because James Marsters absolutely
KILLS IT in this role, owning every line of
dogshit dialogue they gave him.
“So much easier to find, without the water”
Clearly, this piccolo fucks
If you read interviews from the movie’s
release, it’s also clear that Marsters cared
deeply for this character. And for dragonball
as a whole.
He immersed himself in the lore of the film
universe – yeah, there’s lore. Remember,
they were planning to make at least three
of these things – in order to portray the
villain sympathetically and convincingly,
and even purportedly asked the makeup team
to make his head look grosser and wrinklier,
to better resemble old king piccolo. Yet for
all that effort, all the movie can think to
do with him is have him loom into frame like
a dollar store darth vader and spout vaguely
menacing one-liners.
And it’s not like they couldn’t have made
room to do more with him. Both Gohan and Chi-chi
are completely ancillary to the plot, remember,
so every scene of terrible flirting – and
the whole first act – could have been cut
without changing anything else.
And if they’d done that… hey, whaddaya
know, the movie would have started with Goku
meeting Bulma. Just like the good versions
of this story do.
Okay, to be fair to screenwriter ben ramsey
- who did personally apologize for writing
this, so… thanks for that, dude - feature
films are very different beasts from serialized
comics or tv shows, with totally different
narrative constraints that any adaptation
will need to adjust for. But to be even fairer,
the biggest constraint is that movies are
way shorter than those other things, and maybe
inserting 20 minutes of padding before an
already stupid long story begins isn’t the
best way to solve that.
I guess, in a roundabout way, that brings
us to Bulma, who… honestly I don’t even
know what the movie’s trying to do with
her. Her personality’s all over the place
in every scene – and by random chance it
does line up with her manga counterpart a
couple times, when she’s oscillating between
uncomfortable flirting and petulant outbursts.
Other times she’s portrayed as a sorta…
no nonsense, “shoot first, ask questions
later” rogue character who says every other
line in an angry whisper. No matter how silly
the line itself is.
“Listen idiot, if I was a piccolo, whatever
that is, I wouldn’t tell you”
Though because subtlety is a foreign concept
to this movie, she ends up coming off as more
of an… unhinged, blue-fringed psychopath
than loveable rogue. I mean, yeah, Bulma also
tried to shoot Goku dead when they first met
in the manga, but that was because he picked
up and threw her car while she was in it.
Whereas her sole motivation for cold-blooded
murder here is that he has a thing she wants
in his pocket.
Also, the whole thing where she calls the
dragon ball a “promethium orb” and wants
to turn it into a power source is just…
super dumb. The contrast between her manga
counterpart’s genius intellect and puerile
adolescent motivation of collecting the dragonballs
to find a boyfriend was brilliant, and since
basically all she does in the back half of
the movie is make Goo goo eyes at Yamcha,
it would have fit THIS VERSION of the character
better also.
Other than that, she’s really more of a
plot device than a person. Her main purpose
is to whip out the dragon radar when it’s
time for a scene transition. Though they,
uh, don’t call it that.
“you made a dragon ball energy locator?”
“Dragon Ball Energy… DBE. Catchy Name!”
I don’t have words to properly convey how
angry that line makes me. So lets just move
on.
Acting on grandpa gohan’s last words, Bulma
and Justin travel to find Master Roshi in
“Paozu city” – which is named after
the mountain Goku grew up on for… some reason?
Like, guys, if “East City” wasn’t vaguely
Asian sounding enough for you, you could have
just called it “Azuma city.” But whatever.
There’s a brief glimmer of a far better
dragon ball movie in the scene where they’re
looking for Roshi. Justin actually acts kinda
like Goku, pigging out on a big ol’ turkey
leg and being endearingly dumb about stuff.
“I have tried every possible spelling of
roshi in the directory. He’s not listed”
“Have you tried master?”
The film also sneaks one bit of genuinely
interesting worldbuilding in when its interpretation
of Kame house is revealed – a lone dilapidated
brownstone, perched atop an isolated rocky
outcropping, surrounded by a vast construction
pit carved out to make room for more of the
crazy future city off in the distance.
It’s not much, but it feels like there’s
a story here – some hidden darkness in the
city. A reason Roshi chose to live off the
grid. Although all of that flies out of the
window as soon as we actually meet him.
Chow Yun-Fat playing Roshi should have been
an easy slam dunk. He’s by far the best
martial artist in the cast, an all around
fantastic physical actor – and while this
has no bearing on his performance, he’s
also just a great dude in general.
Sadly, the camerawork and editing absolutely
butcher his impeccable stuntwork, bringing
him down to the level of the goddamn white
belt protagonist, and speeding up the one
halfway decent long shot in the film until
his skillful moves become an incomprehensible
blur.
ATATATATATATATATATATA
The other thing that strikes me about that
shot is how bad it SOUNDS. Why does Goku grunt
faster when he punches faster? That’s not
how breathing works, guys. You should know
this. You do it literally all the time.
But I can’t chalk all of the problems with
Roshi up to bad editing. Because when he’s
called on to express emotions, Chow Yun-fat
tends to… overdo it. a bit.
“I am Wu-tan roshi, the invincible”
“my grandfather’s dead”
This isn’t “bad acting,” per se – he’s
just a very ANIMATED performer. But when everyone
around him delivers their lines with all the
energy and charisma of a department store
mannequin, and he’s literally the only member
of the main cast who knows how to act with
his hands, he ends up coming off as a bit
of a bug-eyed lunatic by comparison.
“Finally, I can see! You! You are the key!
Gohan knew it. That’s why he trained you”
Roshi’s defining character trait in the
original series was his perverse hedonism
– a subversion of the pious mentor archetype.
Which even in the original series was more
eyerolling than funny a lot of the time. But
this movie’s halfhearted way of dancing
around it is somehow even more uncomfortable.
“Bikini quarterly?”
“That’s a collector’s edition”
“Leave your hand there one more second and
you’ll lose it!”
“Let’s go!”
Either embrace his shameless side for the
fans who enjoy it, or write it out for those
who don’t. flimsy compromises like this
leave no-one happy. Adding insult to injury,
they don’t replace the missing personality
with anything of substance. This roshi’s
just a generic wise old Asian guy with some
wacky mannerisms– pretty much the exact
kind of character the original was made to
spoof.
With Bulma having been downgraded to clueless
sidekick, Roshi takes up the mantle of the
team’s resident Dragonball expert. Which
mainly involves telling us things we already
know in a vaguely mystical sounding manner
“seven dragonballs must be found, or all
men’s fate will be bound”
That’s a real first draft ancient prophecy
if I’ve ever heard one. Which I guess makes
sense because it’s also… completely irrelevant
to the story. The balls contribute nothing
to stopping piccolo in the climax, and in
fact, by gathering them, Justin and the gang
end up HELPING HIM with his evil plans. And
there are so many loose threads left dangling
across the various studio-butchered revisions
of this script that I genuinely cannot tell
if the prophecy is supposed to be subverted,
or they just forgot about it.
It’s mainly there as an excuse for Justin
to have these cheesy apocalyptic visions whenever
he picks up one of the balls, which are, sadly,
the only even remotely interesting thing the
movie does with any of them.
In the original manga, the Dragonballs were
an ingenious plot device that allowed Akira
Toriyama to whisk his heroes off to whatever
far flung corner of the world he wanted, and
tell… basically any story he could imagine
there. The early series is largely driven
by the joy of discovering what crazy nonsense
they’ll have to deal with to get the next
one.
But building fun side stories and memorable
set pieces around the balls would take time
this movie thinks is better spent on vapid
high school drama, so instead, most of them
just sorta… show up. Like, fall in a hole,
find a dragon ball! Evaporate a lake or burn
a village down off-screen, dragonball! Play
a 5 minute lava level – which I’m just
now realizing was supposed to be fire mountain…
yeesh… dragon ball! Literally just rummage
through an old man’s garbage - Dragonball!
This is some of the most profoundly unsatisfying
storytelling I’ve ever seen in anything
– and for most of its second act, from the
moment we meet roshi to the appearance of
Chi-chi’s doppelganger, it’s kinda all
the movie is. It follows the manga’s structure
of using the dragon radar to drag our heroes
whereever the plot is, but then, when they
get there, there is no plot to be found. Only
TERRIBLE dialogue and a mounting sense of
disappointment.
To break up the monotony – in theory, at
least – the act is interspersed with cutaways
to Piccolo saying “hi I’m Piccolo, I’ll
be important later,” and a couple asides
where our heroes’ conveniently run into
Chi-chi so we can get more of this SCINTILATING
romantic chemistry.
“come to the tournament in toisan. Maybe
we can find some time to mix it up?”
“o-okay”
the closest thing to a story development that
happens in this stretch of film is the introduction
of Yamcha. He doesn’t… actually… do
anything – like, he drives the team around,
but Bulma was already doing that. His car
contributes more to the plot than he does.
But he’s there. There’s, uh, this one
pretty funny gag where he goes in for a fist
bump and Roshi thinks he’s attacking him
And he delivers this one line pretty good:
“you’re nothing but a lowlife bandit”
“yeah, but one with a ladder”
Real shame about the rest of them.
“Cheese and rice! I just fried my nads!”
It doesn’t help that most of his dialogue
has very obviously been dubbed over in post,
which makes his already awkward lines sound
even more jarring.
Yamcha’s presented as this flippant, self-assured
surfer-bro-douchebag who cares for nothing
but money and has a way with the ladies. Which
is… a slight deviation from the manga’s
gynophobic but otherwise brave and serious
lone wolf martial artist whose ambition exceeds
his ability.
Seriously. Were they… trying to make every
character the exact opposite of that character?!
Even Justin treats Yamcha like an afterthought
when he finally relays his visions of doom
to Roshi.
“He will kill you. And bulma… and yamcha”
He almost sounds… excited about it.
“and yamcha”
“It’s always the quiet ones”
After all the balls are accounted for, Roshi’s
like “oh shit it’s almost time for the
climax and we haven’t established any of
the things we need to use in it,” So they
go to toisan to do that.
Roshi asks his old master, Sifu Norris, to
prepare a containment vessel for the ma fu
ba. Norris responds “oh no, that’ll kill
you, are you sure?” and roshi’s like “have
you fuckin SEEN our Goku? Besides, it’s
dragonball. Death is meaningless”
Chi-chi’s there too. She fights mai in front
of some confused extras for a couple seconds
before getting her blood stolen. Then Justin
shows up to say congrats and walk her up the
arena steps, where the camera can get a better
look down her top.
“Are you in the tournament?”
“Na I’m here for something else” “Something
more important than me”
“actually, you’re one of the reasons why
it’s so important”
That line made it through five script revisions.
Also, the match that’s happening behind
them is somehow the most coherently shot fight
in this entire movie, and that’s just…
incredibly sad.
As is the film’s rushed attempt to establish
a “romance” between Yamcha and Bulma.
“y’know, I’m not so bad once you get
to know me.”
“Maybe I like bad men.”
We cut back to Roshi and Justin training,
and OH BOY was it a mistake to put Chatwin’s
flacid fake tai-chi in the same frame as the
real deal.
Suddenly Roshi’s like “hey, the Kamehameha’s
a thing,” to which justin responds “right,
my grandpa told me about that. It has always
been an important plot point. We just never
brought it up”
Roshi shows Justin how it’s done and leaves,
though not before showing the audience what
real romantic chemistry looks like
“I’ll see you in the morning. Mhmm.”
On a completely unrelated note, Chi-chi pokes
her head in to help him train. He gets it,
then gets some. and then Mai finally show
up to give you a new nightmare and/or fetish
and whisk the dragonballs off to greenscreen
land.
Though not before firing off a laser blaster
thing that nearly kills goku in a single shot.
Which is the least dragonball thing ever,
but luckily, the Kamehameha doubles as a defibrillator
in this movie. An idea that… Akira Toriyama
apparently liked, because he made it canon
in Resurrection F.
While Roshi’s busy saving him in the living
world, Justin meets his grandpa at the threshold
of the other one. Who sends a bit of a mixed
message by pulling this spooky bullshit
“It’s not your time goku. there’s much
left to do”
Then he takes advantage of this rare parting
of the astral veil to tell Justin a thing
he’s already told him.
“How do I defeat Oozaru?”
“Always have faith in who you are”
This vague advice is the closest thing Dragonball
Evolution has to a theme. In that it is the
sequence of words that comes up most often
in the script.
“Always have faith in who you are”
“always have faith in who you are”
None of the film’s conflicts actually speak
to that theme in any meaningful way. In fact,
it’s not even what stops Oozaru – that
would be Roshi’s death shocking Justin back
to his senses. And between that, the tragic
dick move he pulls on his grandpa, and his
hormone powered ki attacks, the movie’s
subtext better supports the alternate theme
of “always think of your loved ones,”
but the fox execs probably figured that wouldn’t
resonate too well with their imagined audience
of friendless nerds, so instead we’re left
with a generic refrain of “be yourself.”
Anyway, I’m getting ahead of MYself again.
Once Justin comes down from his post-ressurection
orgasm, the gang – minus chi-chi of course
– hops in Yamcha’s jeep to go stop Piccolo
from summoning Shenron. In this film’s universe,
that has to be done at a special location
called the dragon temple, which rises up from
a barren rocky canyon when all seven dragonballs
are gathered there. And while that’s not
faithful to the source material, I do think
it’s a decent cinematic conceit.
The temple’s design is pretty cool, with
all those eroded dragon statues running up
its towering spires even if the CGI used to
render it all is a little… early 2000s for
a late 2000s movie. Speaking of bad CGI, it
turns out Yamcha’s car flies. That’s neat.
Weird they didn’t use it to get the dragonball
in the volcano, but whatever. The flying car
lets them get close enough for Roshi to attack
with the Kamehameha, though Piccolo’s able
to fire back, and their beams clash.
The resulting blast knocks the dragonballs
out of temple, but it also sends the Jeep
careening into the ravine below, jettisoning
roshi in the process and sending an avalanche
of rubble crashing down on his head. Which
he immediately brushes off like it’s nothing,
further emphasizing just how lame Gohan’s
death really was.
Before exiting the vehicle, Justin finally
takes a second to don this film’s approximation
of Goku’s iconic orange gi. Then he steps
out to fight in a moment of tepid fanservice
that comes a good 50 minutes after anyone
who might appreciate it would have left the
theatre.
Still, Goku is finally here, in almost the
Goku shirt and everything, and after an hour
of waiting, we finally get to see our hero
and villain trade blows. But first, they must
trade words.
“You will bear witness to my glory, when
I compel Shenlong to grant me the power to
rule this diseased rock”
“I will defeat Oozaru, and I’m here to
destroy you”
*pause* okay, can I take back what I said
about wanting more character interaction?
This limp turd is only dragging the glorious
King Piccolo down.
“When the blood moon eclipses the sun, you
will become oozaru!”
“wha-no”
Anyway, the eclipse happens, and despite Justin’s
best efforts to hold it in
Nothing can stop the shitty CGI from oozing
out of him.
And the effects only get worse from there.
Originally, Oozaru’s design was TOTALLY,
bafflingly different from the manga – like,
it made human teeth sonic look downright sensible
by comparison – and much like that other
abomination, it had to be changed at the last
second after a predictable backlash. It’s
obvious that the likely already overworked
and underpaid effects team didn’t have the
budget or will to live left to actually composite
the new design into more than a few seconds
of live action footage, so when justin gives
chase to take the last dragonball from Bulma
and Yamcha, they can only sorta… imply he’s
there by staring and screaming at something
off-camera.
They didn’t even have time to decide how
big he’s supposed to be – in some shots
he looks huge like his anime counterpart,
but in others he’s barely taller than the
other actors, and then for some shots of his
legs they just use a regular guy in boots.
These contradicting images are cut together
so rapidly that it’s straight up dizzying.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a LESS convincing
creature effect in a Hollywood film.
The scene built around it isn’t much better
– it kinda feels like the other characters
are competing to see who can do the most clichés
the fastest. After they run into the caves,
Yamcha stops and does this old thing
“Go”
“No”
“GO!”
Wasting time they both could have spent getting
away. Bulma throws him a gun to defend himself.
But the American Saiyan in Toisan clever girls
him through a solid rock wall before he can
do anything with it.
Outside, Roshi makes Piccolo vibrate uncontrollably
with the
“MA-FU-BA!” (piccolo jiggling noises)
His obligatory dramatic mentor sacrifice doesn’t
actually accomplish much beyond winding piccolo
for a few seconds, but that’s conveniently
just enough time for him to grab the rampaging
Justin’s attention and pass on one more
nugget of wisdom before passing on himself.
“Oozaru can’t be beaten with fists. Only
with faith can you win”
It’s not quite enough to stop Justin from
choking the life out of him, but after that
he gets real torn up about it and has a revelatory
montage. And I shit you not, to show him changing
back, they just play the animation of him
transforming backwards. And that’s not the
only thing they re-use here
“impossible!”
“Something my grandfather taught me: First
rule is, there are no rules!”
Okay, reincorporating lines to make your script
seem cleverer is a pretty stale and lazy writing
trick to begin with, but that doesn’t even
make sense as a response to that. Try a little
harder.
Anyway, they throw ki blasts back and forth
at each other for a bit, which… for some
reason sound like star wars blasters sometimes.
*pew pew*
With the two of them flipping all over the
place and the editors moving at an average
of like two cuts per second, this fight is
already pretty much impossible to follow on
its own, and the film makes things even more
confusing by cutting back and forth between
it and bulma battling mai in the caves so
she has something to do.
When we cut back, Justin and Piccolo can suddenly
fly, I guess, and after trading a few blows
they knock each other through some rocks in
what’s probably the most dragonball part
of the movie.
It lasts 15 seconds.
We cut back to Bulma as she tries to bamboozle
Mai by tossing her capsule bike at her. It
doesn’t work, but luckily Yamcha did that
thing earlier, so now he can show up and dramatically
save her at the last second.
Back in the fight that actually matters – relatively
speaking – Goku finally understands what
his grandpa was trying to tell him all along.
I… think?
“I am goku. I am… oozaru. To be at one
with myself, I must be two”
I’ll have what he’s smoking.
He charges up his Ki for one final attack,
and Piccolo responds in turn. Finally, he’s
doing the thing.
“Kame”
This film has one last chance to make the
anime real.
“Hame”
We’re gonna have a big screen beam clash.
“HAAAAAA”
Kami DAMN IT. What the FUCK was that?! Why
did he fire a beam if he was just gonna jump
up and punch him? WHY CAN’T THIS MOVIE GET
ANYTHING RIGHT?
The beam clash is, like, the simplest dragonball
thing to do. It’s free tension and payoff
in a bottle, and a perfect formulaic denouement
to cap off any fight. it would have been EASIER
to do it right than do whatever that was.
It’s like the movie is ACTIVELY trying to
do as many things to disappoint dragon ball
fans as it possibly can.
Though, on the bright side, they do… finally
get Justin’s hair looking almost right after
he dusts himself off for the last scene. Good
job, guys.
In that last scene, they finally summon the
dragon. And the way they do it looks really
dumb, and it doesn’t even look anything
like shenron – kinda just seems like they
grabbed a random dragon off the unity asset
store – but… the movie’s almost over
and frankly, I’m tired.
Once Roshi’s alive again, Justin runs off
to make out with Chi-chi, so the movie can
pretend she was important. And then for some
reason they get arguing about who’d win
in a fight, and the final shot is them leaping
at each other like Andrew Garfield jumping
the Rhino. Like it’s supposed to be ambiguous
who’d win. Even though chi-chi fought to
a draw against Mai, whose punches didn’t
even phase fustin.
The credits roll, and after the fancy CGI
part, there is one more scene left. Because
this came out after Iron man, so of course
there is. But it’s literally just a lady
walking over to a bed, and then the camera
leans in like… who’s in it? who could
it be? OH MAN! IT’S THE BAD GUY! DRAMATIC
MUSIC!
This is an utterly meaningless shot that provides
no new information, and only serves to roll
back the lone bit of closure the film’s
ending actually gave us. I don’t think you
could write a more perfect parody of this
cynical sequel-baiting trope if you tried.
Yet it’s not a parody. That scene, and this
movie, is 100% serious about trying to milk
the Dragonball franchise for all it’s worth.
Dragonball Evolution is what every good filmmaker
working for a studio must fight against to
make good films. It is focus testing, market
research, demographic pandering, trend analysis,
a franchise roadmap, merchandising opportunities,
and everything else that capitalism “contributes”
to cinema, extracted and isolated from the
meaning, artistry, passion and basic storytelling
ability that creators forced to work within
that system bring to the table. It is a product,
soulless and empty, produced solely to empty
your wallet.
And the system that produced it. The only
system that could ever produce something like
it… is the dominant governing force in all
of our lives.
There, now that silly virus thing doesn’t
sound all that bad, does it?
Wait. Fuck.
I’m Geoff Thew, Professional Shitbag, Signing
out from my mother’s basement.
