James Marsters (And I) on Dragonball: Evolution
A fan recorded and uploaded part of a Q&A session with James Marsters (Piccolo) on April 25th when he was in the Netherlands last month. He speaks, off the cuff, about Dragonball: Evolution, and gives his thoughts on the movie as a whole.
He’s right about one thing. The suits at Fox don’t care, and never cared, about this movie. And that wouldn’t have mattered so much if they had stayed away from the production and let the crew do their job, but Fox is unlike any other movie studio. It’s almost as if they want to piss their workers off and create horrible movies. It’s not that the other major studios like Warner Bros. and Paramount are perfect, but they at least seem to care about quality.
Anyway, it seems like a lot of people want to know my opinion on Dragonball: Evolution, and because I haven’t had the time to write a full review, I’m just going to give you my quick thoughts here.
I enjoyed it. It was fun, cheesy, and forgettable entertainment. But probably not in the way the filmmakers intended, because it was also cheap, poorly made, uninspired and bland. And I really want to stress bland. The movie is supposed to take place in a futuristic, fantasy world but it looks exactly like any city in America (if cities in America had cheap green screen effects) and Mexico. It’s the opposite of the world that Akira Toriyama created.
But the biggest problem was the script. It sucked Dragon Balls. The plot made absolutely no sense and no one seemed to care, the dialogue sounded like it was written by a 10 year old (that was a fan of Pokemon and not Dragonball), and the cliffhanger during the credits was by far the worst cliffhanger I’ve ever seen in my life. I don’t blame Ben Ramsey for all this though, because it’s obvious Fox had their greedy little hands on the thing since day one (Goku in high school? I doubt anyone but a out of touch Hollywood executive could think up something as stupid as that), but I don’t think he was the man for the job regardless.
Still, I’m not angry. Like I said before, I did enjoy it. But I am disappointed. I just wish that Stephen Chow was given a $30 million budget to direct Dragonball at a different studio, and was allowed complete creative control. It certainly would’ve been better than this Foxed up movie.
Loading ...
@Buddy: I agree with almost everything you said, but I just wanna point out to all those who keep saying “Chatwin was bad because Goku’s supposed to be this this nd this”. Based off my completely vague knowledge of the movie business, actors are usually not the people who decide what direction their character gets to go in; that job belongs to either the director, or writers (or both)! I’m going to assume that Chatwin was given this sorry excuse for a script, also at one point was approached by the director, and was basically told “this is what we want Goku to be”. What’s he supposed to do? He’s not a seasoned actor who has the leverage to say “F*** you I’m not doing this to this character!”.
Think of it this way: its an employee-boss relationship, Chatwin’s the employee, the director/producers are the boss. SO I can’t really blame him for the changes made to Goku because more than likely, he wasn’t the guy that came up with them.
Japanese ain’t really white, 70% of them have dark skin just like most fellow asians. The same amount of what you see in their TV programes, films or magazines are either Dr.Surgery or make-up artists’ creations. Do you really think they were born with manga eyes? Be realistic. Whoever participated in this movie totally americanized it; partially the cast, the set, the background, the soundtrack (use J-rock, not the american way), and everything else. And as someone said before, Ray Park (Darth Maul, from Star Wars) would have been even better than James Marsters as Piccolo. Not only because he’s an fast and skilled martial artist (exactly what we need for Piccolo) but he also looks fantastic with face make-up. Chatwin as Son-Goku ruined it all, his hair, etc… Stephen Chow (Kung Fu Hustle) would’ve been a great choice as director. Or the directors from TFK, DB fans should really take a look at The Forbidden Kingdom movie (the set looked awesome, exactly what DBE needs) which is based on an old chinese saga that inspired Akira Toriyama to create the manga series Dragonball. The Monkey King, also known as Song Wu Kong in China was the key to Son-Goku (notice the similarity of those two characters?). I can imagine Jet Li as Vegeta, he’s always good as the bad(ass) guy.
That was so disapointing! The studio changed everything. They took a movie that could of been like Star Wars and The Matrix combined and totally screwed it up. I hope someone who actually has a say in movie rights and run it thru another studio! They could make a killing and the best part is they dont have to change the story line one bit, THE STORY IS ALREADY PERFECT PEOPLE WHO DONT EVEN CARE ABOUT THE STORY SHOULDNT CHANGE A PERFECT STORY TO SUIT THERE LAME IDEAS! Dragon Ball Deserves much better….
i think they need to make a requel for this movie…like a different beginning. Kinda similar what they do for “Hulk” and the “Incredible Hulk”.
Amen brotha .
1st: find a new writer
2nd: director have to have executive control over his movie
3rd: stick to the original plot ( the character personality is the most importance. No more stereotype “tomp raider ” gun’s expert. and for the love of god , find a better fight Choreographer. Prefer Sammo Hung )