Rating:
0.5 out of 5
Short version: Dragonball: Evolution is a badly written film with horrible dialogue, lackluster action and a sense of fun that’s nowhere to be found.
Screen Rant’s Ross Miller reviews Dragonball: Evolution
When you head to the theater to see a movie called Dragonball: Evolution, you obviously aren’t expecting Shakespeare. From the advertising, the whole thing gives off a feeling of light, campy, action-packed fun that you would hope would allow you to just sit back, relax and turn off your brain for 90 minutes or so.
Yeah, well, that’s why we have words like “hope” as a counterpoint to “guarantee.”
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Dragonball: Evolution may very well be one of the worst films of the past 12 months or so – I am actually struggling to think of the last movie I thought was quite as bad as this one was. And it’s not one of those cases where it’s just not my cup of tea… No, this is a flat-out bad movie in pretty much every area that makes up a motion picture.
Based on the popular anime series of the same (or at least similar) name, Dragonball: Evolution follows Goku (played by Justin Chatwin) who carries out his grandfather’s dying request to find Master Roshi (played by Chow Yun-Fat) and locate all seven of the powerful Dragon Balls. He already has one of them, but with the help of Bulma (played by Emmy Rossum), Master Roshi and Yamcha (played by Joon Park), he must find the others before the evil Lord Piccolo (played by James Marsters) does, whose intentions are to use them to take over the world.
Now let me just point out that I very much represent those who are not fans of the source material, and in fact know next to nothing about it. I can say without reservation that I am in the majority – if you’re a fan it may feel like everyone in the world is a fan of the cartoon, but trust me, most of the general movie-going population (who will be exposed to this through TV and other marketing) will barely even have heard of it, never mind having seen any of it.
So I then have to judge the film purely on its own merits, without having the prior knowledge to be able to compare and contrast it with the source material. Some fans of the cartoon may get a kick out of seeing such things as a certain costume or a hairstyle appear in some form, but as a movie this thing flat out stinks. And not even in a “yeah it was bad, but kind of fun in spite of that” kind of way – in pretty much all areas you can think of, it is awful.
The main problem with the film is the script, meaning both dialogue and the story. First off, I can’t believe how bad the dialogue was in this movie. From the very first scene in the film, which sees the movie starting off with a short back story explanation, the dialogue is painful. Near the beginning of the movie we see Goku being trained to fight by his grandpa while balancing on two ropes – and the back and forth exchange of dialogue is like something written to sound cool, but is delivered and pulled off so poorly that it’s cheesy and downright cringe-worthy.
That’s pretty much representative of the entire movie right off the bat – everything comes off as cheesy, nothing can be taken seriously, not even when Goku is supposed to be upset right after his grandfather dies (which happens within the first 10 minutes, so that’s not really a spoiler). Every time a character opens their mouth and delivers this atrocious excuse for dialogue, I felt like covering my ears and shutting my eyes in embarrassment (which I did do a handful of times, I’m not even kidding).
Well, you might be thinking “so what?” Who cares if the dialogue is bad and high on the cheese-meter? The action has to make up for that, right? Well, wrong. Actually, dead wrong. Action is the one thing that could have saved this movie from the abyss, but they even manage to muck that potential up. The action is not just mediocre or even sub-par – oh no, it’s worse than that - it’s terrible. Director James Wong clearly doesn’t know how to direct the needed action (although he seemed to do okay with Jet Li’s The One), and the attempts he makes are reminiscent of a young kid having fun in a special effects studio, just randomly pressing any of the fancy buttons on display.
They attempt to have 300-esque action scenes of things going from normal speed to slow-motion and then suddenly speeding back up to normal again. But for such a technique to be effective you have to know what you’re doing, and it’s evident from this movie that Wong doesn’t. Zack Snyder, although using it a bit too flippantly in 300, timed the slowing down thing pretty much perfectly, matching up exactly with the action on-screen and giving that extra bit of kick. But here it’s used far, far too often for no reason other than to just have it in there for the sake of it. There’s a strange sense that the movie thinks what it’s doing is cool… but “laughable” is more the accurate description.
You probably want to know how the cast did… Well unfortunately, like the rest of the movie, pretty awful. Justin Chatwin is completely miscast in the role of Goku (for some reason an American playing this character just doesn’t feel right), Emmy Rossum is hot but nonetheless terrible as Bulma, and I feel embarrassed that Chow Yun-Fat has gone from amazing stuff like Hard Boiled and The Killer to eye-rolling stuff like this. The only actor who did all right (and I stress, just all right) was James Marsters as (an underused) Lord Piccolo – he’s not in any way good, but, let’s just say… he was less terrible than the rest of the cast.
The only thing I can think of that’s even remotely positive about Dragonball: Evolution is that the special effects are pretty cool at times. Not during some of the hand-to-hand combat scenes (where the effects are so obviously… effects, if you know what I mean), but when they use what is known as “KI attacks,” which are basically blasts of different colored energy from their hands.
Props go to Amalgamated Dynamics for creating special effects which are, on their own, quite visually stunning. Also, the movie is really quite short, so at least I didn’t have to sit through the pain for all that long.
However, that’s pretty much where the positive stuff ends – you just know a movie is in trouble when you are literally straining to think of something you liked about it.
I don’t know if the story they used here in any way resembles the original cartoon/anime stories, but how they told it in the movie was abysmal. There were clearly elements taken from the source material, and it is then clearly a story (or one of the stories… I don’t know, I’m not a Dragonball fan) that may work well in a cartoon but it does not work well on the big-screen. Not for even the slightest moment.
I lost count of the number of times I rolled my eyes, snickered, groaned, and shook my head in embarrassment and shame during this movie. I can’t actually believe the filmmakers looked at the script and thought, “Yes, this is good stuff. Let’s go ahead and make it!” It’s probably just one of those cases where they saw the popularity of the source material and thought that they could make a quick buck by just throwing anyone in the roles, sticking together bits and pieces from the cartoon to form something resembling a story.
So needless to say I don’t recommend Dragonball: Evolution. I wasn’t expecting this to be any good, but I don’t know if I was expecting it to be this bad. Please, if you believe in the magic of cinema, avoid this with as much effort as it takes.
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242 Comments
@Harumi
You still contradict yourself, because you even agree that its not necessary to to have to know the whole back story to understand or enjoy a film.
Harumi April 12, 2009
“There was no complicated plot. Dragonball has a complicated plot, or it should have,…………You don’t have to know the whole background of something,…………”
I think the reason I dont see your point is because it appears layered with with fanboyism. Is your point ultimately that the movie fails??? Sorry but the DB plot is not that difficult to understand to make a movie about that doesnt fail. Seems like you’re starting to get upset for no reason other than I dont agree with you (hence the attempt to try and belittle).
Well aside from the layers of fail topped with fail frosting that is this movie, I think it served the purpose of the back story. Probably if the live action started off in DBZ there would be short and choppy flash backs, and people would still be confused. Sorry Harumi but your point is hard to see aside from that the movie fails. Those analogies the other guy stated appeared to make sense. I also to agree that after seeing this film that the plot to make a better DragonBall movie based off of DragonBall does not appear complicated.
I finally got around to watching it, and even after going into the cinema with the bare minimum of expectations, i have to say this is one of the worst films I’ve ever seen on the big screen. I Just went to see it because i like many others grew up watching Dragonball Z….. Just like i grew up watching transformers, Thundercats, Ninja turtles etc…..
I’ll admit i don’t know much of the Dragonball story, growing up on Dragonball Z, but there was enough flashbacks in Z to give you a basic idea of goku’s childhood. This isn’t really my point. What I’m trying to say is that if your gonna do something do it to the best of your abilities.
And on every level this was a half arsed attempt at making a film, seriously i mean this is there job and your meant to take pride in your work. But i don’t think these guys even sat down and watched the shows, They should of been given the entire DB collection told to go home and study it.
If they did that then as soon as Justin chatwin was mentioned they would of laughed and said “next” Amongst other things he was probably one of the worst castings I’ve ever seen. Chatwin is not goku in any shape or form, and as i sat there watching DB he literally got worse as the film went on, he grew out of the character.
Like i said they didn’t even try, to make a good film, there was so much missing, The music & sound effects, there was none, watch an episode, DB, it has iconic music and sound effects, the ka me ha me ha sound, as iconic as a lightsaber, which would of been easy to translate, No world martial arts tournament(well not from what i saw) no nimbus (cloud), no krillin, no Tein, no spirit road (goku did die remember) the capsule corporation was cack, that was some run down bike.
In all honesty it was like they tried too hard with the special effects, the kah me hah me hah, is more like a perfect ball of energy, not a vapour cloud.Common this is 2009 balls of energy and nuclear esqe explosions are not that hard, you can get that on a tv show! Jesus the Ozarooo (ape) is meant to be like 5 stories high not actually a man in prostetics. Piccolo not King piccolo, WTF at least put him in his original fighting outfit. At least try and give him a similar voice.
And the end of the day i wasn’t expecting much and would of given them a pass if they made some form of effort. Look at Watchmen not a lot of people knew about that, but they made a good film, i mean i didn’t actually feel it, but i appreciate, the work that went into it and as such went to see the movie twice bringing a friend. Should of given it to those guys
Overall this is a major dissapointment because DB had the potential to be one of the biggest sagas ever but now it’s put this in the same class as Streetfighter the movie and Fist of the north star….
James Wong and the writers should be ashamed of themselves.
“growing up on Dragonball Z, but there was enough flashbacks in Z to give you a basic idea of goku’s childhood”
As a matter of fact you really don’t, the flashbacks are to basic, because I thought the same before I watched DB and saw it as an argument to not watch it, but after I watched the first episode of db, I already noticed those flashbacks mean nothing …
A ‘fanboy’ if you will, I actually refused to support FOX’s adaptation of the series. So I bought a ticket to F&F and went to Dragonball (hahaha). I cringed throughout the entire film.
DB could definitely be a great movie series if done correctly. I agree that the equivalent of this flick would be trying to squeeze the first 4 Harry Potter films together into one 75 minute movie.
@Ross
I LOVE the review! =) But obviously not EVERYONE will have heard of Dragonball before this film. It depends on the generation. I don’t expect many 30+ year old fellow Americans to be huge fans of Dragonball, they would be more likely to be older ‘fanmans’ of Transformers or Thundercats. Just because your circle of friends aren’t familiar with the series, doesn’t mean it doesn’t have THAT MUCH of a fan base.
**** SPOILERS AHEAD ****
I can live with some of the changes (Piccolo’s uniform, Master Roshi not being bald, no animal-human hybrids, even Yamcha having blond hair) but some of the changes were just awful. Oozaru should have been much larger and not the slave of Piccolo. Come on! Piccolo used Oozaru 2000 years ago and Goku is suppose to have been a baby when Gohan found him. For those who saw the film, did Gohan look 2000 years old to you? Also, Yamcha is some type of thief without martial arts ability. I really can’t blame Chatwin for this failure, I blame the director.
@John
I completely agree with you.
What frustrates me the most about the movie is how they didn’t pay ANY attention to he little details that make dragonball so unique and original.
The sky should’ve turned completely black, the dragon should have been the biggest thing ever seen, the way the dragon made its appearance, oozaru should’ve been HUGE, and outrageous, in other words, not obeying to some random guy and ignore the ones he loves(wtf?). And so much more little things(and bigger things) that would have made the movie so much better and interesting. And NONE of these things is to blame to the actors, but to the director.
I’m really wondering what they were thinking hiring someone who clearly doesn’t know a THING about dragonball.
@Kahless
No one is putting all the blame on Chatwin, but his performance as Goku sucked. There was nothing to make any one feel as if he was Goku aside from the failed spiked hair. Even his being a clue dart was a fail. The only people I don’t blame is Ernie Hudson and Chow Yun Fat. The Oozaru thing probably had to do with reincarnation or something like that. You know how it goes in some movies, the evil wizard knows that the hero is linked to some demon or beast that they controlled for evil, and then get the transformation to occur.
@Sin
True, but I think the bad performance is linked to bad directing in the first place, because the director should be the one saying how chatwin should behave in his role as Goku.
@T-Grave
I agree with you on that. Still Chatwin just doesn’t have the acting strength to play Goku. I mean come on at least Chow Yun Fat was somewhat believable as a version of Roshi even if he was reading a fail script and directed towards failure.
@Sin
When I first saw that Chatwin was going to be Goku, I wanted to hunt down the idiot who made that decision. But watching the movie, I understand what the director was trying to do, make Goku a type of Clark Kent with a super secret. If they are going to do a DBZ, I would hope they get a more muscular/cut actor. In the end, the director is the one responsible for how the character is represented. I’m not a Justin Chatwin fan but I think he did what the director told him to do.
What a lousy film, this is seriously a bad film.
I think one of the main reasons they chose for Chatwin is because of his facial characteristics. I don’t know any other actors that have that same resemblance with Goku. And no he’s not all buffed up, but Goku wasn’t buffed up either in Dragonball(if you’ve seen the last saga where he is a teenager, he’s quite skinny).
Chatwin and the film still FAIL.
The movie could have been better, for me they only concentrated in creating a dragon ball movie.. its like they just made the movie because they know that a dragon ball movie will be catchy and intriguing. They did do the movie because they want to make a great movie, a movie to be remembered. They just did it for money.
The movie was all compressed in just one and a half hours therefore making the story quite lame and the narration was so bad. The movie was so fast phased. They didn’t tell the story of Goku in an entertaining manner..the movie just gave me a taste of every thing. A little comedy, a little action, a little love story. JUST A LITTLE!! In addition, the story line was greatly changed and fight scenes were boring and lacks excitement. i don’t really know why it ended up this way, maybe they have no budget.. i don’t really know. If it where a movie with a different title i would give it 6/10 but for it to be titled “DRAGON BALL”, its score would be 3/10.
ok, couple of things, this new movie is like all the other comic book/ video game/ cartoon shows turned movie. Why people never stick to the original script kills me. another thing is this, there are way more people in asia then america, and yes, Goku and his homies have a bigger fan base than Optimus and his. The transformers movie sucked just like this one, just had Shia Lebeauf and Optimus prime who looked closer to his cartoon form than Goku. and right now, for all those out of the loop, naruto is getting a bigger fan base than both, they may be classics to us, but they are also the stepping stone to greater things when used properly. To all the director and script writers reading, sometimes you just gotta stick to the script that you already have.
I can’t believe they did such a bad movie. I really can’t. Dragon Ball is a great franchise and they could have made (very easily) a lot of money on a 2D animation with probably half the budget they spent here. But no, they had to do pretty much the worst movie ever (even if you’re not a dragon ball fan.) As a Dragon Ball fan, it’s even worse than the worst movie ever cause it ruins the original story which is very funny in the beginning. I would REALLY love to talk to the people who made the movie (director and writer) cause I can’t believe they really thought it was okay. They really believe the public is stupid and is gonna be amazed by CHEAP visual effects that aren’t even innovative (the transformation of the capsule into a bike is very used recently in ads), the KI effect is used anytime Hollywood want to make obvious that there is “energy” somewhere. It’s horrible. I can’t believe it. I went to see this thinking it was gonna be awful but I could laugh at its awfulness. It’s just impossible, it seems like an insult. No one in the theater was serious, everybody was laughing at the movie, criticizing it etc.
Sorry for my english, i’m french!
well…I got my own head sleep in theater while movie played. And hope next of this movie sequel “if” they gonna remake it, to have a good Dragonball the movie…
One change to the original material is one change too many,the Suck-to-Win ratio of comic book films is far too high.
The difference between films like this and say, Batman, is that the way we (the fanboys) imagine how we would have directed it etc. is a million miles away from the mass-market-friendly viewpoint the studios have. Batman only had one viable route to take (grittier etc.) which was exactly what the fanboys had in mind but also what the mainstream consciousness expected of batman = great success.
The points that ruin the films for me were when they very obviously switch emphasis from one age-group to another e.g. Optimus Prime hiding outside Sam’s house – cringeworthy.
Through reading/watching/growing up with these very well-defined characters we create our own unique bond with them, as well as a very stylized image in our head of how they would look/behave in person (e.g. when playing with their toys as a child – lets not forget the role of imagination in all of this!) Which is exactly what they are designed to do.
Millions of people with similar, but not identical, expectations cannot all be satisfied at once, so compromise is reached at the expense of the fans at the hands of the toy-purchasing younger populous.
I’m a big DB AND Transformers fan and i think they both stank, studios try to cater for all audiences when making these films to get the most $$$ and ultimately leave hardcore fans out in the cold.
I’m available for psycho-analysis, kids parties…
This moveie wasn’t the worst thing I’ve seen in the last year. As for the dialogue, Dragonball Z always had bad dialogue. Further more, every storyline in the anime series was the same. How it lasted as a series as long as it has is amazing.
Just saw it….. WTF!?!?!?!? I remember watching an interview with Justin Chatwin and Emmy Rossum before the movie came out saying the movie NOT a Dragonball film. However, may I just say…. WHY USE THE WORD DRAGONBALL in the title? Why name the main characters the same as the manga/anime if it’s not even lightly based on the “Dragon Ball” Series’. This film could have been GREAT!!! I wasn’t too upset with the actors and even the visual changes in their character. The most upsetting part of the film was the storyline changes. Yes, Goku and Chi Chi were older and in High School, Yamcha was A LOT older and blonde, Bulma didn’t have blue hair, Roshi wasn’t bald and as much of a perv as in the manga/anime… THERE WAS NO KRILLIN!!!, and Piccolo was totally different looking. BUT why did Piccolo have a woman do all his bidding when Piccolo is a solo act? Also, why did they say that Oozaru was Piccolo’s partner in crime 2000 years ago when Goku was shipped to Earth only 18 years prior? First of all, Saiyans are not that old of a race to ship one of their own to Earth so long ago. Second of all, Goku would have been able to turn into Oozaru on every full moon of his life (as long as he had a tail, which was nowhere to be seen in the movie), and Piccolo wouldn’t have been able to control him… (It was almost like Underworld with the Vampires controlling the Lycans… pshh). Finally, Piccolo would have spit out an egg at the end when he was defeated, forming a “good” Kame/God and “evil” Piccolo. Overall, I thought the acting was cheesy as is most of the dialogue in the manga/anime which was ok, and the visual effects were disappointing but after all it was only Dragonball… the visuals don’t pick up that much till Dragon Ball Z anyway.
I think if another movie was made I would give it a shot, but only if the directors and script writers correct the storyline.
even the fans of the original dragon ball hate this film…
I don’t know how anyone involved with this film sleeps at night
every aspect of this piece of crap movie was horrendous
script/storyline/music/effects/casting/costume/acting were all disgustingly cringeworthy
i hope that this movie gets forgotten quickly so that a proper attempt may be made at completing a successful dragonball film in this future
i….. i dont know wat to say except that that waz the worst movie ever like wat the hell it made me so fustrated i wanted to beat the crap out of the producers i really did i am a diehard dragon ballz fan i have read the whole manga i know every fight every battle every near to death expereince that happended this movie got every thing wrong like did the producers actually watch the t.v show or at least read it? if they did then wat the hell happended yes i realize that not evey thing could have been correct they are turning a animation into a movie but they could have at least tried like for example they could have made the great ape transformation correct saiyans transform when there are a full moon as long as they have a tail they dont need a.wtf? an chi-chi should not have been a real impt charachter at the time, piccolo should have come during the budakia, there waz no budakia, krillin waz not in there,all the unnessarry hand movementz, to me it waz more like a lame kung-fu movie not drangonballz,
This movie was a complete fail. It had nothing to do with DragonBall, except for sharing the same name. The script should have been thrown out and the casting was terrible.
Let me make another important point: Goku is NOT a white guy! I don’t buy the “he’s an alien” copout either; since aliens in the DragonBall universe ARE Asian. DragonBall is an Asian genre cartoon. Hence, the charaters have Asian names, eat Asian food, wear Asian clothing, etc… No one ever mistakes Superman for being anything other than white; and he’s an alien.
So, yeah, the film sucked big time with White Goku.
ok so i just watched the movie..it was really bad. when i went on the bonus features and saw the gag reel i thought it was going to show me the whole movie
wow. i was thinking about renting it for my 15 yo but i guess not…
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