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
Dragon Ball is one of the most popular manga series of its time, and it continues to enjoy high readership today. By 2000, more than 126 million copies of its tankōbon volumes had been sold in Japan alone. By 2007, this number had grown to pass 150 million.
http://tv.ign.com/top-100-animated-tv-series/78.html
http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=53713
http://www.dragonballz.com/index.cfm?page=history
Transformers No. of episodes 98
Dragon Ball/Z No. of episodes 444
Transformers No. of animated films 1
Dragon Ball/Z No. of animated films 16
Give it up kid you failed to prove your point. Dragon Ball has a bigger fan base then Transformers. It all up there.
Stop insulting each other, let’s face it already, DB is for a small group of fans. Transformers is a part of general pop culture, DB isn’t. That’s simple.
Dont try to put numbers here because there’s a lot of crap that make more millions than both franchises together.
There’s nothing wrong that DB is not popular in the mainstream, maybe its big, very big if you want in the anime comunity and that’s all.
It’s really stupid to say it’s at the same level that Star Wars.
Prior to the adaptation, Transformers’ franchise wasn’t nearly as successful as Dragonball’s.<– this is the end of this discussion because this statement is completely absurd, or maybe a 10 year-old wrote this.
Back to this particular film “DB EVOLUTION”, it’s clear the studio know the limits of this franchise, thats why they go with a d-list cast (except Yun Fat) and a bad director. Nobody was going to threw the money in this project, thats a fact. Or are u going to tellme that they should put Leonardo DiCaprio in it directed by Martin Scorcesse? Come on. Not even Michael Bay could direct this.
I remember, back in the day, movies that WE THOUGHT deserved more by its popularity, but lets face it, anime, games, are not mainstream. Even IronMan, a not so-popular character had more bugdget and A-list actors, why? because it has potential.
A kid looking for dragon balls and all that silly plot, could not have a chance at all, even with Del Toro in the chair.
This review proves that.
He’s right, you are in denial .. and pretty immature. What is it all worth fighting over to you?
Oh, And excuse me for my english.
Backing up my comments, its kinda the same with the Watchmen effect. Many fans thought that is a widely common comic while it’s not.
It’s a fantastic one that’s for sure, and we can put numbers too, but the fact is that its popularity stands in comic book fans, not the general public.
Why watchmen had a big budget? Because Hollywood saw potential, a big and excelent story, great characters, etc. So, the money is in it. Now we know how the story ends, with a not-so-great box office, but that’s a different topic.
Watchmen suffers from the same than DB, the regular viewer, the common citizen has no knowledge about it. And that’s a fact. Stories like watchmen has a lot of potential and big budgets, stories like DB are produced with small money and for fans only. (whatever the result is). That’s a fact.
JM, are you going to exude the same redundant thick-headed opinions as SIN?
Dragonball sells better than plenty American comic franchises and is larger in more countries. To exclude it from the running of the world-wide mainstream comic franchises is absurd within itself.
There was a time in the U.S. when Dragonball Z was a stronger property than Star Wars in more than one avenue of market. So stop trying to single it out as if it’s only successful or popular within ‘Anime’ fandom. And once more, to assume that the ‘Anime’ fandom isn’t as large as the American comic/cartoon fanbases is another absurdity to riddle at. Movie audience will always be larger than cartoon audience — this is simply common sense…and its not the same kind of audience, mind you.
This is why people are under the illusion that Star Wars is so beloved and popular, when its demographic is no higher or its true-audience no bigger, and when Star Wars and Dragonball are on almost par with one another in terms of finance and fanbase.
The comic of Dragonball began outselling X-Men in mid-90’s in the United States, and then later became one of the most popular cable programs on all TV, narrowly beaten by Sports broadcasting. Around this juncture, its merchandise exceeded market sales of many of the American-born Super-Hero franchises, and then its games easily outsold any and all American Super-Hero themed games, and became a cultural phenomenon. The same sort of results were found in many other parts of the world.
So again, what you’re suggesting is irrelevant nonsense. You can’t justify a franchise’s quality and worth by what you see Hollywood do with it.. in Hollywood.
If a sci-fi epic is inked for the big screen, it will probably succeed on the big screen. If a sci-fi epic is inked for comic and animation it will probably succeed in that medium, too.
@JM
Dragon Ball has so much potential to become a great film for fans and non-fans alike.
Dragonball Evolution did NOT follow the same story from the original manga.
You have to truly be a Dragon Ball fan to understand that this film was made for nobody.
0.5 !!!!!???????
That’s harsh Ross. By the way the sequel has be Green lit !
Wow, I’m glad my review has spawned so much discussion between obviously passionate fans (thats fans in general, not all fans of DB:P).
But I just want to clarify and expand my point about there not being as much fans as fans may think there is: Okay I am not for one second taking away from the fact that Dragonball (and all of it’s linked shows, comics, movies i.e. Z etc) has a loyal and loving fanbase. It’s certainly a long-standing series, and in the comic book/”geek” circles, you’ll hear people talk about it all the time like it’s a religion of some sort.
BUT… when I said it’s not got THAT MUCH of a following I was looking at the overall movie going picture. That means not the people who look at movie/anime/cartoon websites, who thankfully spend a fair amount of time discussing things on comments sections like this (or we here at Screen Rant wouldn’t be here:-), but the general, average movie going audience who maybe see a handful of movies a year. I’m talking about the average Joe & Mary who turn up at the movie theatre on a Friday night once every few weeks… chances are they will barely even have heard of Dragonball much less actually watched any of it (to quote my own review^_^).
So if you travel in the “fanboy” circles, watch action movies, watch anime/cartoons, then yeah, you’re going to think EVERYBODY watches what you do, because naturally that’s all you hear is love for what you love. But if you take a step back and take a look at the general movie going audience of the entire world, then do you, then, REALLY think Dragonball is all THAT popular?
Btw no WAY is DB anywhere NEAR has popular in mainstream culture as Transformers. Not for a New York minute. If you asked the average middle-aged woman, for example (just an example!:P), what DB is… they’ll probably give you blank stare (”Dragon what?”), but most likely they will at least know that Transformers are giant robots.
But as I said don’t think I’m saying DB has no fans whatsoever, it does, just not THAT many. We’ll just see if Dragonball: Evolution makes as much as Transformers in its opening weeked come Sunday/next Monday.
If it does even remotely well… God help us all:-)
Really good article, Ross. (yeah, a comment on the subject! Who’d have thought!)
Yeah, as a dragonball fan I hope the movie bombs. I couldn’t care less about giving things to a wider audience.
I’m a geek. To me Bruce Campbell is a god among men. John Carpenter makes the coolest movies. The Venture Brothers rule. And the Expandables is the biggest thing on my horizon.
To most normal people, they either don’t care or don’t even know about these things. That’s the way I like it.
last update. a conversation between me and myfriends again. dragonball evolution is not that bad.. it depends on how u see the movie itself. if u look at the original manga with this movie..then u see as a horrible movie. BUT, if u see it with a different point of view example as an entertainment.. u dont too disappointed. Good Luck
This is what I never, eeeeeevvvveeerrrr, understood. When a director, producer, people involved in a property say that they are “huge fans” of the source material, why is it that the end result is something that is complete and total trash?
Didn’t this guy, Justin Lin spoke out about how he was a huge fan of DragonBall? And he puts out this? You can say what you want about studio involvement, etc., but just like professional sports, at the end of the day, all the blame goes to the Head Coach translated to the film industry, that is the fault of the director.
This goes out to Mark Steven Johnson for DareDevil, dude, if you are such a HUGE fan how did you mess it up? I’ll agree your director’s cut was somewhat decent but the whole thing with Coolio, you saying that was good? The mans played a stereotypical black guy and he stank as an actor! I’d rather have Fiddy in that role!
steven the git, I got one thing to say to you man…
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GO TEAM VENTURE!
@CyberpunkCentral & SIN187UM
Ok, BOTH of you guys need to relax and DROP the “my franchise is bigger than your franchise” discussion. I’ve gone through and deleted a number of both of your comments and I don’t expect to see any more dick measuring contests about it.
Vic
Seems like this was meant to be a cross-hybrid of the original Dragonball, where Goku was a happy-go-lucky child (and I DO mean child) with super strength going around on cartoony adventures for the dragonball, and Dragonball Z which was all serious fighting with over the top, yet by modern comparisons very stiff, fighting sequences that lasted for several episodes.
I actually called how bad this would be from the first trailer I saw. Sometimes you can trust trailers to convey their “Suck Factor”, as this, and sometimes they don’t (Matrix Revolutions)
you’re very generous with this movie! it’s only a “nanar” in french(i don’t know the word in english)
I dont know, but this movie remind me “Double Dragon”. I am the only one?
omg, I can’ believe how many of you guys are WAY off on every subject. First of of, the guy who tried to write the background story, dude, you don’t know A THING about it. Here’s the real bg story:
Goku lives alone in a far mountain region and has a dragonball which he got from his grandpa before he died, he just enjoys life, then bulma comes along, finds out goku is special(she shot him like 4 times on the head and he’s still alive, just a little hurt, but not a scratch), bulma is looking for the dragonballs to wish for a boyfriend. She teams up with goku , meet all kinds of people like yamcha, master roshi, emperor pilaf and his gang, red ribbon army, he searches for the dragonballs like 3 times or so in the series. In the final adventure(there are 8 sagas I think), picolo shows up(thats like after 120 epsidodes or so). He is an OLD man, goku beats him, but picolo spits out one final egg with his son in it without anyone knowing about that. Then 5 or 6 years later the story goes on, he beats the young picolo in a tournament and only THEN the db series are over and DBZ begins.
About the fanboy thingy, you guys don’t know what you’re talking about … saying stuff like “This anime has a bigger fanbase because my mom and sister know it too and don’t know the other anime”, what kind of statement is that? Knowing an anime doesn’t mean you are a fan of it.
A fanbase consists of fans, not of people who have seen a commercial of a freakin toy..
I don’t know which one has the biggest fanbase, but I do know you guys are giving proof that is not actual proof…
@Ken J
ROTFLMBO!!! I never said the plot was Shakespeare. I didn’t like Dragonball but I did like the action in DragonballZ. Both were pretty corny.
Oh yeah, another thing, there are differences with the anime series because it wouldn’t of have worked otherwise? Well, seems like it didn’t work out this way either.. + most of the differences I noticed were things that WOULD have worked and made it a better movie for sure(well, for the fans at least, maybe not that much of a difference for other people).
- Picolo doesn’t know anything about oozaro’s up until goku’s son changes into one in the dbz series, and that’s the good picolo(well, kind of).
- Goku changes into an oozaru when it’s full moon, not when it’s an eclipse that only comes after 2000 years, how can a story tell about goku being an oozaro 2000 years ago.
- When the almighty shenron arises, the sky turns black.
- Shenron in the series was HUGE, but huge as in “Hey, my ass is sticking out a cloud”, not as in 5 meters …
- There is only one charcter(at least an important one) in the WHOLE series that has a japanese kinda look, Gohan, goku’s grandfather. ALL the other characters are americans.(well, not really official, but certainly not japanese). They live in places like “West City” and stuff.
-When goku turns into an oozaru, he is like 2 buildings high, AND wreckless as hell, he doesn’t take commands. + he only turns back to a human being when his tail had been cut off.
- A lot more…
Some of these things are only things fans know, but it would have made it a better movie without completely having to rewrite a story(even though the writing sucked).
If the team who created this movie were so called “fans” of the series, they would’ve made shenron way WAY more impressive, because that is one of the things the series keeps saying, he is impressive. Even in db gt, when they’ve summoned the dragon for like a billion times already, they are still heavenly impressed by shenron.(they actually say it out loud ..)
By the way, @Ross Miller, Goku isn’t japanese in the series, japanese people don’t like the way they look, so they drew western people for the animes. And I really wouldn’t know what actor could have played his role better than Justin Chatwin, he looks a lot like it if you ask me(as in, more than other actors)
@T-Grave
Yeah, I’m not much up on Dragonball, just DragonballZ. I remember seeing a couple of episodes of Dragonball and thinking they were horrible. The only thing I liked about DBZ was the fighting. Thanks for the proper synopsis.
“japanese people don’t like the way they look, so they drew western people for the animes”
Just… wow.
Vic
“japanese people don’t like the way they look, so they drew western people for the animes”
You’ve lost all credibility there my friend.
@JM
Sorry, but Double Dragon was better than this film.
I’m intrigued by the passionate response from the fan base on this one. Having tried to watch “Dragonball” on TV, I’m amazed to see that the show has this kind of strong fanbase, because I think the TV show is dreadful. When I saw the list of “number of episodes” showing “Dragonball” has so many, all I could think was, “It requires so many episodes because each individual attack by a character (and by “attack,” I mean a single move within a fight) seems to require five minutes of each character thinking over the inner turmoil leading up to this single action… which is just boring. Sorry, this show just doesn’t seem to work for me. I get that some folks are nuts for it, but I find the source material weak to begin with. That’s why I’m not surprised to see a review like this one bashing the film adaptation.
@SK47… I’m always baffled when these filmmakers try to pass themselves off as “fans” of the source material and then change everything, too. I realize films require changes, but when the changes are so great that it changes almost everything, then their claim really does sound like a con job. In that respect, I feel sorry for the folks who really do love the original cartoons and had hoped for a successful live-action film version. You get the feeling the film never had a chance when the filmmakers clearly are just in it for buck and don’t have a sincere love for the original product.
@Ross Miller
I’m going to give you the facts. Dragonball Evolution is going to flop and it’s not going to make as much as Transformers at all. But just because it is going to bomb doesn’t prove the size the of fan base. Everyone knowns that Dragon Ball is HUGE in Japan more then anywhere alse and even there it flop because it wasn’t sticking to the original story from the manga thus making it a bad film. Dragonball Evolution has so little marketing that most fans are not even aware of the film and it’s not even being marketed to them. Transformers on the other hand had plenty marketing to attracted fans and non-fans alike.
Here are 3 main reasons why Dragonball Evolution is going to flop:
1. Lack of marketing.
2. Most fans are not going to see it (even myself).
3. Doesn’t appeal to the general movie going audience.
So it isn’t fair to judge the size of the fan base when most fans and non-fans are not even going to watch this garbage movie.
I’m serious about the Japanese people don’t like the way they look. I was stunned myself when I first heard it, of course this is not the case for ALL Japanese people, but it is the reason why they chose to not give the characters in db a japanese look. One of the guys from the db team(or dbz, not sure which team it was) told this in an interview. Long time ago though, a friend of mine send me a link to a translated version of the interview last year. So it’s not really something I made up myself and I’m not trying to offend them or anything.
Even if this movie had been “marketed” properly. The main reason it failed is because or poor writing, casting, and acting. It appears that some one assumed the name alone was going get a good turn out of people to see the film and get a lot of people behind the film, which obviously is what got Fox to back this abomination. There was no way to market this film as being something of quality. Bill Blume has some good points, especially about the 25 minutes of talk 4 minute of power up and 1 minute of a teaser fight that the series had gotten into at one point while in DBZ. The fact that this film was a FAIL was established back during the “leaked trailer” segment on here a while
@Cyber: I think another reason why this is going to flop is the fact a LOT of fans of the series aren’t going to watch it in the theaters because other people think it’s just a childish movie. I do hope despite of the bad ratings there will be a sequel, all though they have a LOT to learn before they make one.
For the people who have seen the DB movies, the fourth one, made by the GT team isn’t my favorite because of the drawing style, but the story would’ve been perfect for a real life movie, it’s not just a part of the db story(unlike the first 3 movies), it’s the story of DB, a little rewritten and compacter(2 hours or so).
Even though picolo wasn’t in it and they probably wanted him in the real movie because he’s one of the better known characters.
As a half Japanese, all I can say is that I’m dissapointed about this film. The actor who plays as Goku is terrible. They should’ve casted a Japanese or Asian actor for Son Goku. This movie is really disgusting.
@T-Grave
Exactly, it already happend in Japan. It’s sad how non-fans of the comic books think this is the actual story but it’s NOT. Not that the story GREAT in all but Dragon Ball had a lot of great characters and the story for this film has really RUINED them.
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