Saiyan Island

Our source in Japan has translated the October issue of Roadshow magazine. In this issue there are new interviews with the cast and crew, and today we’ll be posting the interviews with Justin Chatwin (Goku) and 87Eleven (stunts).

Justin Chatwin interview
First of all, it’s an honor to play Goku, because he is a very important and epic character. He is always seeing the positive side of things, does good things, and always trys to help and take care of the weak, not only pursuing his power. He is a dependable and loving man as well as a boy. So I like Goku.

In preparation for the role, of course I read the original manga (all of it), in addition, I read Monkey King a little, because Dragonball is based on Monkey King. And during the break time of shooting, I got into Goku’s character, telling jokes with other cast in search of the real communication which can be used in acting.

This is the most interesting movie for me. Because I have never fought with anyone though, I trained martial arts and acrobat, and then we shot it. That’s fun as well as challenging. Fighting with Eriko (Tamura), she punched me in the face, actually she intended to hit lightly, but…it was a clean hit (laugh) She said “I’m sorry!” and apologized to me, but thanks to her, we could shoot very powerful action scene. Through this work, I think I could learn a lot of things.

I like Durango very much. Because a lot of my favorite movie like “The Wild Bunch” was shot here. And there are locations like sand dunes, cave, lava field and rocky hill like the Grand Canion, so I think the background of this movie are very epic.

Highlights of this movie are the action scenes, and amazing visual effects will be made at post production, so I’m looking forward to see it. About Kamehameha I only can imagine it now. I’m so excited. And this movie is the coming-of-age story about a boy, though this is set in a sci-fi world, in my opinion, my best scene is the moment when the characters who got together for the same purpose relate to each other.

Action coordinator 87eleven staff interview
Each characters has a different fighting style. For example, Goku’s fighting style is a hybrid of capoeira, karate and so on. Chi-Chi’s fighting style is based on kick boxing (Muay Thai) style, Master Roshi and Gohan are based on traditional Chinese martial arts (southern style). Justin has good muscle strength of the lower body so to harness this strength, we let him do action. His capoeira motion is very good. He has no experience of martial arts at all, we had to teach him from scratch. But he is doing very well for two months training period.

Highlight of this movie is fighting with Goku and Piccolo, I think it has a tremendous impact. Goku and Gohan’s fight is comical, and Chi-Chi does Jackie Chan-like battle. Each character has a unique twist on martial arts.

Part 2 of this article »