Oh Dragonball Evolution, Dragonball Evolution…..how much did I love thee? Let us indeed count the ways.Oh who am I kidding? Everyone knows this is an absolute turdburger. I mean, just look at it. I know you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover and all that but it looks plain ridiculous. I had almost contemplated not writing a review of this movie it was so bad. It’s like picking on the smelly kid who eats glue in elementary school. It just feels freaking mean to rag on this obvious abortion of a film, but I’ll go ahead and opt to do it anyway, because it freakin’ deserves it man.
To be fair, it’s not like the source material for this movie was all that great to begin with. I mean, let’s face it, Dragonball kinda sucked. I used to watch it years ago as a kid but now that I’m a little older, and have since seen much more sophisticated anime over the years, I now realize that it’s just not that good. It’s not the bad English dub or anything like that; even the Japanese original isn’t that good. Even still, this franchise deserved much better treatment on the silver screen than what it was given with this pile of nonsense. For starters, let me clarify something. This film is actually based on Dragonball, not Z; as in, the original series. This is a somewhat strange decision as in the US at least, DBZ is immensely more popular than the original series because we were introduced to Z first and Z has much more of a focus on action than its original counterpart. So why in the world did they not just make a DBZ movie? Did they honestly think this movie would sell? Guess what, it didn’t. It did horrible numbers at the box office and apparently the people who made the film realized their mistake a bit too late and tried in vain to slap “Z” edition on the DVD and BRD in an effort to sell more copies I guess. This film is only very loosely based on the original series, however. To say that this movie takes liberties with the canon of the manga is a pretty big understatement. This movie roughly combines Goku’s initial meeting with Bulma and then fast forwards to the very end of Dragonball itself where he takes on King Piccolo. Therein lies one major problem. This one 90 min. film can’t possibly express Dragonball’s long 3 arc manga in such a short time frame. The film barely has anytime to exposit any dialogue explaining what is going on and making any effort for the viewer to care. This leaves virtually no room whatsoever for things like character development as the story rushes from one scene to the next. Piccolo is easily one of the most dull, uninteresting villains I have ever seen. No explanation is given for how the seal that kept him locked away for a millennia was broken. No reason is given whatsoever why he wishes to destroy the world, or whatever his wish will be. The movie doesn’t even explain that to any degree of satisfaction. As a result, the viewer is given little reason to care about the goings on. Not a single character in this film displayed any sort of individual personality.
Seperated at birth?!
So yeah, I mean, look at it. Should I honestly have expected a decent plot? Of course I didn’t. I figured at least the choreography would be sound. Nope. This has got to be some of Stephen Chow’s worst work ever. Combat is slow, boring, and predictable. Everything Dragonball is not. Where was the over the top action? Where was the crashing into mountains and battling at breakneck speeds? That is what Dragonball is about. That is what everyone wants to see in this film and that is why it made little money at the box office when everyone dumb enough to go see it the opening weekend spread the word to others that this is not what the film offers.
Perhaps this is a good thing, however, as many of the special effects were absolutely laughable anyways. Goku’s Kamehameha wave looked like a propane gas leak. The Oozaru transformation looked like it could have been done on an Xbox 360. In short, this film offers nothing visually, nothing choreographically and nothing from a storytelling standpoint.
Overall, it’s exactly what I figured it would be and that’s why I felt almost bad to rag on it. It already embarrasses itself. Perhaps when they decide to do Bleach: Evolution 10 years from now and Tite Kubo sells his properties and his soul for more cash, maybe I’ll be feeling a little more generous and not rip apart a film that just simply doesn’t know any better. But I doubt it.
Perhaps this is a good thing, however, as many of the special effects were absolutely laughable anyways. Goku’s Kamehameha wave looked like a propane gas leak. The Oozaru transformation looked like it could have been done on an Xbox 360. In short, this film offers nothing visually, nothing choreographically and nothing from a storytelling standpoint.
Overall, it’s exactly what I figured it would be and that’s why I felt almost bad to rag on it. It already embarrasses itself. Perhaps when they decide to do Bleach: Evolution 10 years from now and Tite Kubo sells his properties and his soul for more cash, maybe I’ll be feeling a little more generous and not rip apart a film that just simply doesn’t know any better. But I doubt it.
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