Not Quite a Fail: Dragonball Evolution

I didn't watch Dragonball Z as a kid. It looked like a stupid waste of time. The art style was kind of weird, and the fight scenes took forever. However, other people my age found that exciting, and it became a huge franchise. I still stood by my opinion for most of my life, until quite recently. You see, some of my friends are huge fans of the franchise. Thus, I ended up watching the first three episodes, and they weren't too bad, but it wasn't on the top of my list to continue watching. I also started reading a fanfiction my friend wrote that made the series seem interesting again (read it here: Chemistry of a Car Crash (Warning: Chapter two contains explicit content and there is some language throughout, but besides the specified chapter, it is very well written and hilarious.). Also, I recently started watching Dragonball Z the Abridged Series. It was very hilarious, and managed to engage people who had never really watched much of the show. So, I've been immersed in Dragonball Z recently, though I had never watched very much. And I knew next to nothing about its predecessor, Dragonball, though it did look better than its more-well-known sequel.
So, when I found out that Dragonball was getting a live-action movie, and that it really wasn't just some stupid rumor, I wasn't sure what to think. I mean, out of all the animes out there, Dragonball wasn't one of the ones that I thought would translate well in live action. However, some of the creative choices they made impressed me, mainly with the hair. As you are probably aware of, the main character in Dragonball, Goku, has extremely spiky hair, which would not look good on an actual human. Also, as much as some people would like to disagree, Bulma's blue hair is not something people would be willing to accept in real life. Thus, Justin Chatwin, who plays Goku, only got tiny spikes in his hair, and Emmy Rossum, who plays Bulma, got a streak of blue hair in her bangs and in her ponytail. These changes are reminiscent of the original character designs, but don't look ridiculous, and I liked that. The huge fans of the Dragonball series were outraged, however, that they would dare change their looks like that. To them I say this: Over-the-top hairstyles in anime are there to show personality, not to show what the character would look like if the show was written for live action. So if an anime is transferred to live action, the human characters, at least, should have more familiar hairstyles. Maybe if they aren't human, their hair could be kept the same, but otherwise, no. It just makes most people not take the movie/tv series seriously. So I applaud the makers of this movie for this area.

However, the movie still looked pretty stupid. But those are fun to watch anyway, so I went with my friend to see it a few nights ago. After an opening sequence that gave expostition they gave in the actual movie anyway, we are shown Goku with some sort of liquid running down his face. I was not sure what it was. I was thinking it was tears, since I knew that his grandfather died (sorry guys, but if I knew that beforehand, then it probably wasn't much of a spoiler anyway...), so I guessed they were starting there, especially since some of the water seemed to be coming from his eyes. But then we cut to a fight with him and said grandfather. So I guess it was sweat. That's a pretty disgusting way to start a movie.

However, the rest of the movie wasn't that disgusting. I found myself liking the lead characters, though the villains were pretty shallow. I mean, there was no place for us to actually understand why Piccolo wanted to destroy the world, except for revenge for being placed in solitude for thousands of years by some old guys. But why did that happen? Because he was trying to destroy the world. I'm sure this was answered in the series, but it would be nice if the movie would make a more complex villain, like I'm pretty sure the anime did, considering the Piccolo fanbase. Also, his hench-woman is even blander than him. She says about two lines the whole movie, and for the most part, she's just sort of there. She fights, she wins or loses, and then she leaves. Yay.
But still, the leads were pretty cool. Goku seemed very awkward, and not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he's still a lovable and original main character. I enjoyed Bulma's sarcastic attitude, and her backstory and motives were probably the most interesting. Master Roshi was a funny character, with his perverted tendencies and his mostly laid-back attitude. Yamcha didn't get very much screentime, but I think he was also a fun character that tagged along. The grandpa was pretty likeable when he was alive and not giving any expostion, but a lot of his screentime was used being dead and/or giving exposition. Oh well.

It felt a little rushed, but you have to give them credit, since they were trying to make a movie out of more than one-hundred episodes worth of TV. The special effects weren't perfect, but they were pretty good. The fight scenes could be a little cheesy at some points, and they definitely used slow-motion way too much, but they still kept my attention, and were pretty exciting. Plus, it was based off of an anime famous for its over-the-top fighting.
All in all, Dragonball Evolution wasn't that bad. It wasn't GREAT, but it wasn't TERRIBLE either. I enjoyed watching it, and it actually made me kind of want to watch the series. Now THAT'S an achievement.....