Review of Dragonball Evolution (2009) by Maineutral R — 10 Nov 2013

Dragon Ball is probably the best anime ever made. It was everything: epic, hilarious, fun, emotional, etc. But the producers of Fox doesn't know that, nor they care.

Dragonball Evolution is probably the second worst adaptation ever (just behind The Last Airbender and how it could not: the dialogue is full of cliches, unfunny jokes, repetitive and dumb, all in really bad acting (except for Chow Yun-Fat) clumsy editing during the fight scenes and sceneraios that belong more to a rollercoaster; also full of bad Nintendo 64 special effects rip-off. Let's crumble this movie a little bit to examine all the things wrong with this piece of shit:

The beginning includes a backstory about King Piccolo and how he tried to destroy the earth. At this far, it seems to follow the original Dragon Ball. However, it goes off-track quickly after that: Piccolo has a beast called Ozaru that serves him. Some magicians create a spell that encages Piccolo and stops him. With Piccolo defeated, Ozaru dissapears, and peace comes to earth. However, two thousand years on the present, Piccolo escapes and is on to get the 7 Dragonballs and summon the Dragon Shenlong to make his wish of conquer to come true...well that's the first 3 minutes and it already has a lot of fails:

First, Ozaru is the transformation that every Saiyan goes through when he is to unleash all hos power, also when the moon is at full. If he's Piccolo's minion here, then that means the Saiyan's doesn't exist here. One prime element of the series eliminated from this "adaptation". Second, Piccolo was defeated by Goku in the manga and series, thus creating Piccolo Jr. that would become Goku's rival at first and then one of his most beloved friends. Here, is some damn Magicians. Third, they never explain how Piccolo escapes, and fourth, get use to the legend of the Dragonballs, cause the movie tells it a lot of times through the hour and twenty-minutes, like if we could forget it soon, because sure, we are some fucking idiots.

As you can see, it's only three minutes in and I already hate this. You can guess how the rest of the movie goes. The rest is bad fighting, exposition, bad acting, bad special effects, bad jokes, stupid dialogue, stupid characters, dumb decisions, and other things. Just to quickly explain why this is a really awful adaptation, here's a list:

-Ozaru is a Piccolo minion.

-Goku is 18 and has none of the attitude of the original (he was innocent and naive, but with an unbeatable spirit).

-Goku is a copy of Peter Parker here: he's constantly being bullied for no reason.

-The bullies are the most stereotypical of all time.

-The Nameks are a destructive race.

-An eclipse is nessessary to awake Ozaru, instead of a full moon.

-The powers of the "ki" rips-off the Airbender abillities style.

-The Dragonballs actually talk to Goku.

-Bulma is american. Totally different attitude to the series. She's more like a dumb Bond girl rip-off here, except that she isn't hot.

-Muten Roshi lives in an abandoned house.

-Goku is some kind of "chosen one" here.

-Roshi's training metods are nothing like the manga or series.

-Goku actually shows in-love attitudes towards Chi-Chi.

-Yamcha is even more useless than in the series. Plus, he's blonde and has no powers what's so ever.

-Piccolo's blood apparently can create story-undeveloped monsters.

-Goku's staff is never used but to punch a creature...only once.

-The ki blasts from Roshi are Firebender rip-offs.

-Goku doesn't learn to increase his Ki by himself.

-Goku doesn't get to do his famous Kamehameha in his first try.

-Goku and Chi-Chi kisses.

-Turns out the Kamehameha can be used to revive people.

-Goku's outfit barely represents the manga or series' one.

-Goku's hair is spiky, but doesn't help to make him look closer to the original.

-Goku's origin: after Piccolo's defeat, Ozaru somehow transformed into a baby human (Goku) so once he had 18 years, he would become Ozaru and serve Piccolo again...yep.

-Goku kills Roshi.

-Goku defeats Piccolo by using a Kamehameha, something that never happened in the original.

-Shenlong isn't long, and is a very stereotypical chinese Dragon.

-All the movie is wrong overall.

Dragonball Evolution is so bad it's entertaining to say the least. But be aware, it's one of the shittiest movies ever.