Thursday, March 12, 2009

Dragonball Evolution

First off, I enjoyed the movie.

Despite all of the people hating the movie before it even came out, I have faith in it. Though, somehow I believe it could have been better but the movie is still a decent adaptation to the Manga & Anime.

The character's looks are different. Of course, you can't expect an adaptation to follow exactly like the source material. Besides, I couldn't think of anyway to make somebody to look exactly like Goku.

Goku in the movie looks Goku enough for me. Bulma looks fine. Chi chi looks okay. Yamcha... no comment. My only complaints about character's looks would be Roshi. If they doesn't want to make him bald with beards, they could have at least make him looked older.


Next, about the characterization of the characters.
Goku feels right. And yes, they inserted modern aspect inside Goku's character which in the Manga/Anime, Goku is practically a 'jungle boy'. In the movie, he still has Goku's innocent character to a certain degree. His goofy & foolishness characters there. The way he mocks his opponent when he fight with bullies is very Goku-ish.(Goku-ish in the sense of Goku in Dragon Ball, not DBZ.. the small Goku)

Bulma is OK. She's tougher than her manga/anime counterpart, but not that its a problem though. Her intelligence is not really shown besides the fact that she said she had a pHD in applied dynamics. She's more adventurer-type in the movie.


Chi Chi doesn't have much role in the plot of the story actually besides being Goku's love interest. The way Chi Chi is being portrayed is fine with me. Like Goku, instead of a daughter of the Ox King of an amazon area, she comes from a rich family..and her house do look like a castle.(Maybe a little nod to the fact that in the manga/anime, she's the daughter of a King) Her love for martial arts is apparently a secret from her family though, her fight's not very well choreographed or maybe Jamie Chung doesn't really fight well.


Roshi, besides his appearance, I don't have problem with anything else. He still retains his comical character and a pervert(though it has been toned down).


Yamcha is a bit too foolish for me. He seemed... overacting at times. He doesn't have much role either.

Picollo looks good. Though his antenna doesn't stick out like the manga/anime, he looks fine. He got a bit too little screen time though. There's no explaination about how he escapes from his prison after 2000 years. He's a bit underused for this movie in my opinion.


I don't know if its just the asian version of the movie, the movie feels rushed with running time of only about 85 minutes. One plot jumps to another so fast that it feels underdeveloped. The final fight scene between Goku and Picollo is also too short.

Apparently the US version have a run-time about 100 minutes. I will have to wait till the DVD came out to watch the full version..T_T

Now talking about budget and quality ratio. The budget for this movie is suppose to be 100 million... though it doesn't feel like a 100 million movie to me... Even Lord of the Rings's budget is around 97 million(individual movies). So IF the budget really is 100 million.. I would be so much dissappointed with this movie because the quality I expect would be very much like LOTR movies.

So...it looks like my assumption is not wrong. There's a source that says that the actual budget for Dragonball Evolution is 45 million. Now the quality of the movie make sense. So, people! You can't compare this movie to Watchmen like how in most forum does. "Watchmen is a lot better... bla bla bla..." Watchmen's budget is 150 million!.. more than 3 times more than Dragonball Evolution.

At the current stats, for the sales in Asia... by 29th March 2009, Dragonball Evolution has a total gross of about 21 million from 8 countries. Almost half the budget for the movie. Not doing so bad actually. It will only be released in the US 10th of April.

Like some say, this movie is not great, not epic, but not bad like most people think. Most people that hate this movie usually is very close-minded when watching the movie, thus making them dissappointed. And alot also expect Dragon Ball Z adaptation. Remember, this movie is adapting Dragon Ball, not Dragon Ball Z.. So, there will be no gigantic blasts, Super Saiyan, Super Speed, Epic battle than destroys planets and so on.

Akira Toriyama says, "this movie is another dimension of Dragon Ball." So treat it as a new story, not expecting everything stay the same with the source material.

Again like some say, this is a decent movie, an enjoyable action flick. This is all only my opinions of course.

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