Thursday, December 29, 2011

The Brewhaha on... "Dragonball: Evolution"

 “Everybody at school treats me like I’m nothing, Grandpa. […] Sometimes, they push me so hard, I want to…explode.”
-Goku, not as himself

Hey!  Goku, right?
Chi-Chi, summing up this movie

This movie is a sin against God.  All fifteen or so of them.
-Me, summing up this movie and DBZ’s deities

Dragonball Evolution!  Next on F/X!”
-F/X, making my day

Most of my reviews aren’t actually this long.  If it’s something like “The Secret of NIMH,” “Death at a Funeral,” “Citizen Kane,” or any of my dad’s “special” DVD’s…you know, films which clearly have some level of work put into them…it gets maybe two pages (Microsoft Word).  If it’s something I can look up on Wikipedia and get the general gist of?  Three pages.  If it’s something I’m a fan of, like “Bleach,” the EVA movies, or the acclaimed “How-To Guide On Preparing Photo Frames For Your Home,” it gets five pages, maybe more, clocking in as one of my longest reviews.  (The exception, of course, was “The Watchmen,” to which I gave a lukewarm “If it’s your thing, do what you wanna do…”)

“Dragon Ball,” along with its various spinoffs, sequels, and other media over the years, is a unique beast, though.
  It’s something which started off as a simple, almost infantile gag manga (albeit with some “adult” material thrown in) written and drawn by now-richer-than-God-and-Bill-Gates-combined Akira Toriyama, and soon became one of the most influential action series out there (for given values of “action” or “character development” or “anything other than heavily-muscled Bobble Heads talking trash about each other while making the ground beneath them blow up”). 

Even here in the States, its influence on pop culture has been noted by fans and professionals alike.
  So it should come as no surprise that when trailers and ads for a live-action Dragon Ball movie first surfaced here in the U.S., fans went apeshit.  Personally, when I first saw the previews, I wasn’t receptive to the idea.  “Dragon Ball Z” isn’t exactly an artistic venture, but as excruciatingly loooooonnng as its arcs were, I didn’t feel like a two-hour movie would cover any new ground.  (Just see any of the original direct-to-video movies based on the cartoon continuity, or lack thereof.  For instance, a fellow by the name of Lord Slug…)  Besides, “loooooooonnng” and “two-hour movie,” as many fans picked up, are quite mutually exclusive.  Two hours just isn’t going to cut it.

I didn’t see it.
  Others did.  Those suckers realized they’d been had.  “Dragonball:  Evolution” has since been savaged as one of the worst adaptations.  Of anything.  Ever.  This film is a key proof that live-action and animation are mutually exclusive, and that Western filmmakers should never be allowed anywhere near production of an anime adaptation.  It’s a black hole of anything resembling talent, effort, or respect for animation, filmmaking, or character.  Any good which comes in contact with this film is negated and warped into a twisted Bizarro of its former self.

This is what I’ve
heard, anyway.  But how does one know a movie is really that bad?  Well, either through a stroke of luck or a really twisted Christmas ratings ploy centered around bile fascination, I discovered ten minutes before the fact that this movie was going to be airing on F/X.  I grabbed my bag of Cheetos, set aside my meetings for the afternoon, and got my laptop out to do a real-time review of the film as I went along.

So how bad could one movie be?
  Much less a martial arts movie based on a manga and anime all but marketed toward kids?  Sure, it’s probably stupid, ineptly produced, and a terrible Dragon Ball adaptation, but it’s not like it’s harmful or actually bad for you.

Little did I know…


The film starts with a voice-over narration detailing an ancient tale of…Pee-colo?
  I’m sorry, who is “Pee-colo”?  And he got sealed away?  For two thousand years?  Namekians don’t live that long.

So after a seizure-inducing opening credits (I think I missed the first five minutes, and bit off my tongue), we see this kid who can stand on two very thin high-rise strings, and safely somersault on them.  He also kicked a man who was standing on these two strings, so he was basically standing on one string with one foot.  He’s a God damn super martial artist already, regardless of fans’ complaints about “emo” Goku.  Why, again, isn’t this guy getting laid?

It turns out it’s little Goku’s eighteenth birthday, and because this wouldn’t actually be a Dragon Ball movie without the title artifacts, Grandpa Gohan caps off their training exercise by giving him the four-star ball, their family’s keepsake since the first issue of the manga.


The Dragon Balls, when collected together, will grant you one perfect wish.”  Remember that at the end.  Remember that once the good guys collect the Dragon Balls (as they always do in the real series), they can get one “perfect wish.”  Apparently they don’t even have the restrictions of the actual Dragon Balls, such as, say, only one “Get Out of the Afterlife Free” card.  Remember that at the end of the movie.

The scene (the second one) up at the high school, where a guy crashes into Goku and wrecks his bike, is also demonstrative of what is wrong with this movie.
  I get the feeling a shitload of fans saw emo-Goku, stood up, and left the theater altogether.  I also love the move with the hood.  “Ha ha, he looks like he’s going to cry.

Geek-O”?  For Chrissake, the guy isn’t even Asian.  He looks like he should be a main character on “Life of an American Teenager” or “Dawson’s Creek” or “Wannabe Asians:  Extreme Edition.”

And theeeennnn…an airship.
  Guy with a glowing energy ball in his hand.  He blows up a town.  Anonymous hot chick and her little sister.  They’re running through a burning…village. 

Now there is a chick with cleavage and red tights.
  There’s even a little “window,” just like Powergirl.  I’m guessing cleavage girl is Mai (Pilaf’s female bodyguard from the first story arc) and the village chick is…just someone.  Piccolo shows up for the split second before the commercial break, and for that split second, he doesn’t look bad.  His face, I mean.

I hate to even mention Dragon Ball Z and Scott Pilgrim in the same breath, but if they’d gotten the deranged minds behind the latter to produce this movie, it might have been a pretty good adaptation.
  Most fans are acquainted with the Saiyans and power levels and stuff, but before the “Z” portion, there was just Dragon Ball.  Toriyama was a gag writer, and Dragon Ball was originally a slapstick take on wuxia films, before transitioning to a genuine action spectacle and then to the planet-scale epic we all know.  To properly adapt Dragon Ball at all, the movie would have started off as an absolutely surreal experience for at least the first act (not unlike the clusterfuck that was “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” but with talking animals and slapstick violence instead of…whatever the hell I was seeing in Scott Pilgrim…).

Aaaaand…solar eclipse.
  Goku’s in science class.  Checking out a girl.  We go from Piccolo…I’m sorry, “Pee-colo”…blowing up whole towns and trying to collect artifacts of doom…to astronomy class and high school angst.

In addition,
why the hell is Goku telling his high school teacher about the Namekians?  My guess was that King Piccolo was something of common knowledge, if incredibly ancient and therefore more of a legend than anything, but even in this warped movie-verse, that seems like the equivalent of telling your math teacher that two plus two equals Jesus

The original Goku gets a lot of flak for being the first “idiot hero,” but the fact of the matter is that he was just uneducated.
  He didn’t have a context for things like that (though this gets better as he grows up).  Meanwhile, “Geek-O” here, despite being a supposedly well-adjusted (if anti-social and emo) member of society, thinks bringing up the Dragon Ball equivalent of Satan is a good idea to score points in the classroom and start a conversation and win the girl and not at all get beaten up by the background characters.

Oh, and he gels his hair.
  That’s…kinda Goku…if Goku was a cast member on “The Jersey Shore.” 

Of course, the way he “lets” his background high school antagonists instigate a fight, I’m surprised he hasn’t broken his promise not to fight already.
  If you’ve seen the previews, you remember how Geek-O let the school bully tear up his own car through “Deadly Dodging”?  The scene right before that is our hero essentially telling him, “Bring it, bitch.”   He then shows off his mad dodging skillz while basically provoking his school bullies, keeping to the letter of his ceasefire agreement with Grandpa Gohan while all but violating its spirit.  I know the girl was there, and I like showing off for the ladies as much as the next guy, but you can’t tell me this is the first time our hero’s been stupid enough to do something like that.

Piccolo…I mean, Pee-colo…shows up, kills Grandpa Gohan, destroys house.
  End scene.  (As far as Dragon Ball is concerned, thirty seconds is probably the record for shortest fight ever…)  Geek-O touches the Dragon Ball (insert dirty joke here) and somehow senses that Piccolo is back, including knowing what he looks like (barring some bullshit about Geek-O’s destiny and a possible connection to Kami himself, that is not how the Dragon Balls work).  Grandpa Gohan spouts off some expository bullshit, and then is the dead. 

Geek-O mourns him, and the fried crab that was supposed to be for supper.
  He takes out the iconic orange uniform associated with the real Goku (alas, you shall be missed), and Bulma some chick with a blue highlight tries to shoot him.  Apparently, she has a Ph. D and wants to use the Dragon Balls for unlimited energy.  Geek-O introduces himself, not at all wincing at the fact that her last name is “Briefs.”  Geek-O offers to be her “big guns” in pursuing the Dragon Balls, even though she has a fucking gun and a Ph. D in Dragon-Ball-gathering or whatever. 

The two now set off on her (Transformer!) motorcycle to track down the great Master Roshi via pay phone.
  As the chick with the blue highlight looks in the phone book, Geek-O spells out “M-A-S…”, presumably trying to tell her his evening pastime.  He proceeds to not be attracted to her, even though she…exists.  And is willing to give him the time of day.

Cut to the residence of one Master Roshi, who, as an older character and still generally the same goofball martial artist and mentor from the manga, is one of the few saving graces of this film.
  Thinking Geek-O and his platonic female friend are trying to rob him, he attacks them.  The chick with the blue highlight, being the only girl in the film so far, stops them from fighting long enough for our not-Goku to reveal that he’s Gohan 1.0’s student, and for Roshi to decide that they’re all good people. 

From about 45:00 on (counting commercials), I missed a chunk of the movie because my mom showed up rambling about a relative in an accident or some such thing.  I don’t know why the hell she wouldn’t just let me “enjoy” my movie.  This is “Dragonball:  Evolution” we’re talking about, the greatest threat to the sanctity of Dragon Ball’s existence since the abomination that is GT.  You’ve gotta keep these things in perspective.  I think I missed “Pee-colo” getting a Dragon Ball or something.

So after the next commercial break, I get to see a sweaty
Chi Chi token love interest (played by the finest cast member of “The Real World:  San Diego”) participating in a desert martial arts tournament.  I guess it was supposed to show that she was into martial arts and “deep” and sexy and “right” for our hero, even though there’s this one super-smart hot chick who’s traveling with him and is willing to give him some response other than indifference.  For his part, Geek-O acts like a nerd in front of Chi-Chi Token Love Interest while all but quipping back and forth with the girl who just tried to kill him.

After about a minute, we move on to a car ride.
  The previous scene with Token Love Interest lasts two minutes.  This movie has fucking A.D.D.  It reminds me of when I was younger and I had a different best friend, and he would always want to channel-surf whenever DBZ switched to a commercial break.  That’s what this damn movie feels like.

They fall in a hole which wasn’t there before, which just seems like lazy editing or something but is actually courtesy of a mysterious blonde-haired Asian desert bandit who, by process of elimination, must be Yamcha.
  Yamcha Blonde-Haired Asian proceeds to ham it up while gloating over them.  Chick With Blue Highlight argues with Blonde-Haired Asian, setting up what passes in a “Dragon Ball” film produced by Fox as (intentional) sexual tension.  It turns out Bul…I mean, the Chick With Blue Highlight…has another strand of blue hair.  So I shall name her Chick With Two Blue Highlights.

Pee-colo senses that Master Roshi is training Geek-O, so he hooks himself to an overly-futuristic-looking chair to extract his Namekian blood.
  This creates a…monster, I guess.  In the manga, King Piccolo (not to be confused with the eternal badass that is his son, Piccolo) used to create eggs out of his mouth which would hatch into demonic minions, back when Toriyama hadn’t made up his mind on Piccolo’s origins or the presence of aliens in the series or even the general direction of the manga Piccolo’s full powers and heritage hadn’t been revealed yet.  Showing him playing the hen to his various little chickens would have been accurate to the manga, but would have probably been cartoonish and over-the-top and wouldn’t translate well to film without the guiding hand of Peter Jackson.

If you compare King Piccolo’s very first appearance (in Master Roshi’s flashback, seen on the “King Piccolo” page on the Dragon Ball Wiki (*edit:  picture is right here if you go Google images)) to later pictures of Namekians, or even pictures of a rejuvenated King Piccolo at the time, you'll notice a difference.
  King Piccolo was the first bona fide villain (unless you’re willing to count a certain Communist pig), but he was still a cartoonish one.  So it’s hard to reconcile the maniacal, pointy-eared green man from “Dragon Ball” Classic with Spike’s poetic, almost methodical take on the character.  Admittedly, it’s probably the one thing from the manga that’s taken halfway seriously at all.

So Geek-O and the gang are in some sort of strange lava world.
  I think they just “dug” there while I wasn’t looking.  Geek-O has to fight off some…things (which may or may not be Pee-colo’s minions), then cross the rocks atop the pool of lava.  This does nothing to disprove my belief that shonen was invented exclusively for video games.

Mai (the Red Chick With the Cleavage Window) appears out of fucking nowhere and tries to punch out Geek-O.
  True to the plague of DBZ storytelling known as power levels, the punch does absolutely nothing to Geek-O while he knocks her thirty feet away.  After collecting the Dragon Ball, they hastily exit the world of lava back the way they came.

Despite trying to collect the Dragon Balls and avert the end of the world as we know it, Geek-O still has time to come to
Chi-Chi’s Token Love Interest’s martial arts tournament and cheer her on.  Meanwhile, Chick With Two Blue Highlights and Blonde-Haired Asian exchange vaguely romantic dialogue.  “I never thought I’d enjoy talking to you.”  Meanwhile, The Brewsky laments that two human beings who just met each other would talk like that.  Your Mom asks The Brewsky if he’s watching “Dawson’s Creek.”  The Brewsky responds, “NO, this is supposed to be GODDAMNED DRAGON BALL Z!!!

As our hero begins training with Master Roshi, the old hermit states that in order to master the legendary
Kamehameha wave, you must control all of your bodily units, channel some shit, and rip off “Avatar:  The Last Airbender” (which, as many fans can tell you, got its own shitty live-action movie not long ago).  Token Love Interest shows up and tries to motivate him (is that what the kids call it these days?) with a relatively shonen-like training exercise.  Somehow, Token Love Interest knows a thing or two about airbending ki manipulation, and about unleashing the protagonist’s power via first base.

But then Fake! Love Interest comes in to challenge her rep, and the two different love interests have a somewhat fanservice-laiden fight.
  After Geek-O makes a complete mockery of everything Goku might have accomplished in the same situation, he winds up in the world of the dead or a nerd coma or something.  Contrary to what fans have known about the afterlife for years, the “next dimension” manifests as a farmside conversation with Grandpa Gohan and looks like someone poured blue Kool-Aid all over the film frames.  Master Roshi does…something which is admittedly awesome as far as martial arts techniques are concerned…to revive Geek-O.  (If only the real Roshi had taught the gang that technique when the Saiyans came to Earth…)

After the next commercial break, they say they have to get to Pee-colo before the eclipse.
  Something to do with the Oozaru, I guess.  Pee-colo says he’s gon’ smack some bitches up for trapping him inside a Hot Pocket for the last two thousand years.  He’s busy harnessing the power of the Dragon Balls when Geek-O and the others attack from a flying car (about fucking time they showed a flying car). 

Master Roshi starts things off with a
ki blast, showing Pee-colo just who representin’.  As the monster moves to deal with his latest guests, Geek-O weakly states that he will defeat him, gather the Dragon Balls, slay the Jabber-Wocky and free Narnia.  However, Pee-colo reveals that Geek-O is “Oozaru” reincarnated or something, and as the eclipse begins Geek-O transforms into...some kind of Wolf Man. 

Why the hell
is the “Oozaru” a fucking Wolf Man who jumps around and bursts through walls rather than…than a fucking Oozaru?  Why am I not convinced that this Wolf Man is the same world-destroying monstrosity that Geek-O has been seeing off and on in stock footage glimpses of a possible future through the Dragon Balls?  If Geek-…if Goku is supposed to be “Oozaru,” what the hell does that make the other Saiyans?  Or did the anime-illiterate twelve-year-old who wrote this vile excrement and his doting parents not have the Saiyans in their notes when they pitched this movie to the fine people in charge at Fox?

The sick part is that, in rough drafts of the film, it was supposed to look more like Captain Ginyu after getting attacked by a car wash than anything a Saiyan would transform into.  So the Wolf Man was actually an improvement over what they originally came up with.

Master Roshi initiates the Mafuba/Evil Containment Wave, which is doomed to fail (as any fan can tell you).
  Blonde-Haired Asian tells Chick With Two Blue Highlights to “Run…RUN!!!” 

…just as Wolf Man comes barging through the nearby wall like the Kool-Aid Man, knocking out Blonde-Haired Asian for the rest of the movie.
  Okay, not really; he does get back up at one point to remind you that he’s still alive.  It figures:  in any medium, Yamcha is useless.

Chick With Two Blue Highlights proceeds to fight Mai, proving that Geek-O should be tapping that.
  In a series of events I don’t feel like recalling, Chick With Two Blue Highlights defeats Mai, who claims that though she has fallen today, she will be back to get Chick With Two Blue Highlights and “your little dog too!”

Wolf Man/Kool Aid Man/Oozaru is depowered, and digi-devolves back into Geek-O just as Master Roshi dies.
  The hero and villain exchange powerful attacks, flying into the sky in a weak special-effects-filled parody of what would pass for a fight in Dragon Ball Z.  After a lame, shonen-protagonist monologue clearly written by the twelve-year-old kid, Geek-O proceeds to end the fight by firing a Kamehameha, clashing with Pee-colo’s ki attack, stopping his Kamehameha just as Pee-colo’s attack meets with him…diving up through Pee-colo’s clearly lethal attack, drifting up from the attack in Piccolo’s general direction while magically turning the legendary Kamehameha wave back on like a damn light switch, and then killing Piccolo…  (As I like to call it, the Toaster in a Bath Kamehameha Wave, which sounds alarmingly appropriate for this movie…)

So now that this film has irreparably damaged
Piccolo, Goku, the Kamehameha, and the “Dragon Ball” mythos all in one final stroke, our heroes realize that Master Roshi is now the dead.   Gathering his Dragon Balls (insert trans-species joke here), Geek-O summons the Eternal Dragon, supporting my hypothesis that Justin Chatwin cannot and should not be relied on to give loud, hot-blooded speeches.  (Kamina would be disappointed.  Yes, even the dub version…)  He uses the power of the Dragon Balls to revive Master Roshi, who tells him how much the Blue Kool-Aid afterlife sucked.

Geek-O tells the others that he has one more thing to do.
  Since the movie’s about over, he goes to meet Token Love Interest, literally apologizing to her for punching her out (‘cuz otherwise, this emo knockoff of Goku would have seemed like a complete dick).  Token Love Interest tells him it’s no big deal in the same breath that she challenges him to a martial arts fight to the death.  This supposed fight takes place offscreen, leaving the things goddamn Chi-Chi has accomplished in the movie at one win in a tournament, one win by default against Mai, and getting knocked the fuck out by her own supposed boyfriend.  Who is supposed to be “Goku.”

Directed by James Wong
Screenplay by Ben Ramsey
Based Loosely on the “Dragon Ball” manga by AKIRA TORIYAMA if some twelve-year-old kid took someone’s “Dragon Ball” manga collection and ran it through a blender, picking out a hundred random panels and then watching a random assortment of episodes from the Ocean Dub

If you look up “Dragon Ball,” they say Toriyama loosely based the initial chapters on “Journey to the West,” one of the Four Great Classics of Chinese literature (re: Wikipedia).  Now, some Fox exec can say that his brainchild, “Dragonball:  Evolution,” was loosely based on “Dragon Ball.”  (There’s a place in HFIL for that exec.)  As a fun martial arts movie marketed toward children -5 years old and under, this film might work.  As a piece of filmmaking even remotely connected to its source material, it fails on nearly every level.  My best guess is that the execs in charge took one look at the main characters in the actual series, and then tried to make them as
unlikable and different from their original characterizations as possible.  They most likely did this with the consultation of their twelve-year-old writer and storyboarder.

Note:  The Brewsky is an enthusiastic contributor and movie reviewer.  And it turns out, they actually did the “dragon balls” joke in the first issue of the manga.  Seriously, Goku says, “Aw, you find a poor dragon and…?”

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