Saiyan Island

Hi everyone, I hope you’re enjoying your summer. I’ve been pretty busy as of late so I apologize for the lack of updates. I intend to make the site more active as soon as I can.

And isn’t this interesting, today is the 1 year anniversary of when Dragonball: Evolution was originally supposed to release in theaters, on August 15th, 2008. Why it was delayed is still a mystery.

But anyway, here’s what’s been going on in the Dragonball world!

• Dragon Box One DVD Set – DELAYED?

Amazon is sending emails to some of those who pre-ordered the first Dragon Box set from FUNimation, stating that it has been delayed from November 10th, 2009 to December 15th, 2009. This has not been confirmed by FUNimation, yet.

• Dragon Box One DVD Set – 30% Off Retail Price on Amazon!

Speaking of which, Amazon has a great deal going on for the first Dragon Box. Pre-order it, and save $23.99 off the retail price, for just $59.99.

• Dragonball Season Two Remastered Box Set – Releases November 10th, 2009!

Amazon is listing the second season of FUNimation’s recently-announced remastered Dragonball season box sets to release on November 10th, 2009 for a pre-order price of $34.99. Season two contains episodes 32-61 on 5 discs.

• Toei Causes Mass Suspension of YouTube Users – New TeamFourStar Account!

Fans of the hit Dragonball Z parody series “TeamFourStar Dragonball Z Abridged” will need to update their bookmarks. Due to a massive take down of Dragonball related videos on YouTube orchestrated by Toei, TeamFourStar has had their account suspended by YouTube for copyright infringement. Head on over to their new YouTube page for further updates.

Phew. That should be everything important. Oh, and I suppose I should mention that, despite a horrible run in theaters, Dragonball: Evolution is doing very well on the Playstation Network. According to Sony, it’s the #1 movie right now. But still don’t hold your breathe for a sequel.

Welcome! This is the admin of www.dbthemovie.com, a blog that was dedicated to non-stop coverage of the live-action Dragonball movie.

Unfortunately, the movie is out, and… it’s not very good. As a result, interest in the movie has died down (as well as hits), and I can no longer afford to run DBthemovie.com alone. The good news is, the owner of SaiyanIsland.com graciously offered to host the website on his dedicated server, so our hard work wasn’t for nothing.

But there will be some changes. Namely, this is now a blog dedicated to all aspects of Dragonball, so stay tuned for updates on DVD releases, Dragonball Kai, video games, and of course the live-action movie(s).

We ask that you please be patient while we get everything working. Thank you very much for your support, and your understanding. It’s been a blast following the movie with you guys.

- Adam

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.

Now that Dragonball: Evolution has been in theaters for a while and you’ve had time to reflect and calm down (or not), we’d like to know what you thought. What did you love, like, and hate, and what do you want to see in the future (if anything)? Have your say in the comments below, but please remember to be respectful.

Happy holidays from dragonball.saiyanisland.com!

This was a surprising bit of news I received from a Fox representative. Apparently, Fox is so sure the first movie will be successful that they’re already planning a Weaver (Luis Arretia) television spin-off.

“The anime was pretty good, but it wasn’t great. Weaver, a new character made by our marketing team, is a different kind of super hero. When we set out to create this new character, we made it our top priority to make a character that we felt everyone would be able to relate to, and we think we’ve been very successful in that regard.”

“He’s a nerd, but he also has super strength. He’s not good with the ladies, but that all changes when he’s bitten by a radioactive dragon. I don’t want to give anything away, but he plays a huge part in the first movie, and maybe in the sequels as well. The first movie ends with a huge cliffhanger, but it’s a surprise that the fans will have to wait for, and we don’t think they’ll be disappointed. Oh, hell, I’ll tell you: Weaver is Goku’s father.

“Dragonball Origins: Weaver,” airs on the Fox television network May 4th, 2009. Fox also hinted at further projects with other movie-made characters.

UPDATE: As you may have guessed… April fools!

In our effort to make this your definitive Dragonball movie source, we have added practically every image released for the Dragonball movie (so far) to a gallery. We scoured the internet and uploaded all the images we could find to our servers, which can now be viewed and downloaded in our gallery. Not all of the images have detailed explanations, but that’s mostly because Fox is keeping their lips sealed on many, many aspects of the movie.

There has been no actual news lately, unfortunately, so we have been using this time to make things for the website. Expect podcasts, forums, and more in the future…

For a detailed look at the current cast and crew working on the Dragonball movie, click the links on the right under “Pages.”