Thursday, September 4, 2008

Why The Dragon Ball Movie Will Break My Heart I

Well as and when I find more details trickling out on the web or by any other means, about the Dragon Ball live action movie, I'll keep posting them on this "mini blog" series. Here is the first of "X".

According to the new post on Kotaku, I just keep finding more and more reasons for my heart to get broken into pieces by the impending and nearing premiere date of it, on DVD/Blu-Ray or the big screen which doesn't make a difference.

*FYI* I'm a huge Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z and luke warm Dragon Ball GT fan, I was born within the same week or more like around the days that the original Dragon Ball anime was premiered in Japan. It was destiny... no wait, Dragon Ball chose me. XD

So some new pics have been released and from all of them, two just rip out my heart and dance the Jarabe Tapatio on it (Full House reference, watch it, it's a nice family show); not that the rest of images aren't crap because they are... MEGA CRAP!

First:

Piccolo, as seen in the "movie"

WTF?! OK, before just loosing it and as the image was loading I saw something white and said: "Calm down! Your a grown ass man!, it could be the turban Piccolo uses." The image kept loading and I saw the eyes and thought: "OK, too much white now but the eyes look menacing... cool :S ?." Anyone who has seen DBZ knows that all Namekians are nice but basically scare the life out of anyone just physically... kinda look like demons (Piccolo was at once affiliated with them and their leader Garlick Jr). After that just watching the rest of it loading, I was asking myself: "Why is that shiny black thing on his body?"; and then the gruesome truth appeared before my eyes, they had given Piccolo a spandex suit. To make it worse, a black "didn't you see the X-men movies and how dumb that was" spandex muscle suit.

By the end I wanted to know what the hell were Eli Damaskinos (Blade II) or The Ubvervamp (Buffy The Vampire Slayer) doing in the movie? I kinda knew that Goku and many of the human characters where going to get messed up from day one, but it really, really hurts when they do this to the cool/strong/few words/loner type characters from any story. I'm talking of the Vegeta's, Sasuke Uchiha's, Wolverine's, Sabertooth's and yes Piccolo's of the fiction world.

Second:


A Dragon Ball as seen in the "movie"

From this batch of images, this one hurts the most but not on a nostalgia value as the Piccolo image did, but more on common sense level. What is the name of the movie? Dragon Ball. Why don't the friggin Dragon Balls have stars on them. It can't be a huge budget expense, I'm guessing, if at least to get something right in the movie.


I really cannot believe that anyone whose name is affiliated in any shape or form to this sham even thinks this is a serious/"good decision for my acting career" movie. The director is just doing it to get a directorial seat push of some sort or publicity at a Uwe Boll type of "Their is no such thing as bad publicity" level. Of course make his way in the most mediocre form possible and using such a beloved story as his stepping stone through the Hollywood swamp.

At this rate and from whatever half-baked production is behind this blasphemy as my evidence, I'm guessing someone can put out a movie where the Nazis are the good guys and get a budget and support for it.

I'm not trying to sound like some angry nerd, I know that stuff like DBZ, Naruto, Bleach, Gantz (maybe), Blue Dragon cannot be faithfully recreated, but at least anime and/or video game movie should have some stream of decency and character behind them to make them more credible. Like, take the original idea and use stuff approximate to it, and if some things are particularly hard to do then twist the concept in another direction while keeping the spirit of what was originally intended. Thats not so hard.

Better yet, this movie could be great if they had stuck to the Dragon Ball idea but used an aesthetic closer to reflect Journey to The West (in the fantastical aspects of the Dragon Ball story), which is the classical Chinese novel from which the original idea of Dragon Ball cribbed from and has the look and feel of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon to it(aesthetically speaking).

Of course that's just an idea, but I think it would be at least a bit more decent then what the movie has become up to now.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

As a great fan of Japanese manga, I am looking forward for this movie too.

SM2099 said...

@kuanhoong: Geez, I think I didn't make the point of this post come through clear enough apparently.

I hope you have a good time when you go and see it, but really I think nothing good can come from this movie. Maybe its just me and the movie will proof me wrong... (sigh) I hope so.

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